Fox
Fox was once a member of the Pack and is now the wife of David Xanatos. She was born as Janine Renard, although she has since had her name legally changed to "Fox".
Contents
History
Born in 1966, Fox is the daughter of Halcyon and Anastasia Renard. [2] Unlike her father, Fox had no interest in strong moral principles such as integrity and responsibility, preferring a life of excitement and scheming. When she was twenty-five years old, her parents divorced. [3] This event, and the marital problems that proceeded it, greatly affected Fox's views on love and relationships. [4]
She met David Xanatos early on and fell in love with him; later on, she joined the Pack when Xanatos set it up, becoming its leader. (She was also, so far as we can tell, the only member of that group who knew that Xanatos was behind it).
When the Pack first learned about the gargoyles in 1994 and decided to hunt them, Fox met with Lexington and persuaded him to bring Goliath to them. She and the rest of the Pack then attacked the gargoyles, but were finally bested after a long and fierce battle. In an act of utter desperation, Fox took a swimsuit model hostage during the final confrontation, which quickly resulted in her and Wolf being arrested and sent to prison on Rikers Island. ("The Thrill of the Hunt")
In prison, Fox remained in contact with Xanatos, and helped him set up the scheme to lure Derek Maza into his service, by employing Jackal and Hyena to carry out an attempted assassination of Xanatos in early 1995. Not long afterwards, Xanatos sent Coyote 1.0 and Dingo to break the rest of the Pack out of prison, but Fox refused to leave, insisting on serving out her sentence, and even saved a guard from Hyena. The parole board for the prison granted her an early parole in view of her actions; in fact, Xanatos and Fox had planned the Pack's break-out precisely to ensure this. Fox moved in with Xanatos at the Eyrie Building after leaving prison, and not long afterwards, they became engaged. ("Her Brother's Keeper", "Leader of the Pack")
The engagement present that Xanatos presented Fox with was the Eye of Odin, which transformed her into a sort of werefox that ravaged New York at night, while also draining her life-energy away. Xanatos and Goliath managed to save her in a temporary alliance, however, and it was during this adventure that Xanatos realized he truly loved Fox. ("Eye of the Beholder") Not long afterwards, Fox and Xanatos were married. ("Vows")
Soon after the wedding, Fox made an effort to ruin Halcyon Renard and presumably thereby secure Cyberbiotics for herself (she could have simply asked her father for it, but she considered the other way a lot more fun), by suborning Preston Vogel into sabotaging Fortress-2. Goliath foiled her plan, but she took it well, maybe in part because at that same time, she discovered that she was expecting (the baby that would become Alexander). Some time after that, Fox and Xanatos together set up the upgraded Pack, largely as a means of playing with the gargoyles for their amusement (Fox actually tipped the Trio off so that they could rescue Goliath, Elisa, Hudson, and Bronx from the Pack). ("Outfoxed", "Upgrade")
In 1996, during the events of the Avalon World Tour, Fox went to Australia to set up the Matrix, with help from her mother (as a scientific consultant) and Dingo (as a security guard). When the Matrix went out of control, Fox received help from Goliath and Dingo in stopping it. ("Walkabout")
Fox returned to New York City afterwards, and not long thereafter, gave birth to Alexander Fox Xanatos. It was then that Anastasia revealed her true nature as Titania, and decided to take Alex away to Avalon to have him magically trained; she was disappointed that her daughter had apparently learned no Third Race magic, and did not want the same fate befalling her grandson. The gargoyles, Xanatos, Renard, and Puck all joined forces to stop Oberon from carrying out Titania's instructions and kidnapping Alexander, but all failed; when Oberon had overcome all the rest of the opposition and was about to snatch her child out of the cradle, Fox in desperation summoned up the magic buried deep down inside her and blasted Oberon with it. Goliath used her act as a means of persuading Titania to let Alex stay in the human world. Fox was still angry with her mother for attempting to kidnap Alex, even if the resolution had ended happily, but Titania hinted that getting Fox to use her halfling magic was her real motive and whispered something in her ear, before departing. ("The Gathering" Part One, "The Gathering" Part Two)
After the gargoyles moved back into Castle Wyvern, they and Fox have done what they can to mend their bridges with each other, particularly Lexington, mainly because of Alex, whom they both have strong bonds to. It remains to be seen how well they will fare. ("The Journey")
For Halloween that year, Fox helped the Clan arrange costumes in order to attend the masque that was being held below the Castle in the Atrium (although Lexington was briefly suspicious if the costumes were safe). While Fox had every intention of joining them at the masque, instead she and Alexander accompanied her husband to the White House when he was called away to receive a mission from the Illuminati. While there, she showed off her newborn son to Ambassador Amanda Chung who guessed that Alex was a year old and was surprised when Fox corrected her, saying her son wasn't quite four months old. ("Invitation Only", "Masque")
She then accompanied her husband to London where she stopped to buy a new pair of shoes. Satisfied with her purchase, her husband asked to take the shoe box as part of his gambit to distract the authorities at the Coldstream Bridge with a bomb scare so he could switch out the Stone of Destiny with a relica. ("The Rock", "Rock & Roll", "Rock of Ages")
Over the next several months, her innate magic began to manifest even more. In 1997, when a pregnant Maggie the Cat was abducted from the Labyrinth her husband became the primary suspect behind the kidnapping. Talon, Goliath, Elisa, Angela, Broadway, Coldfire and Dr. Sato invaded the Great Hall and confronted Xanatos, with Talon grabbing him by the throat and pinning him to the wall. In her anger, her magic began to manifest before Broadway realized that Xanatos likely wasn't the kidnapper and calmed the situation down. ("Idyll or Nightmare", "Miracle Child")
Shortly after, while watching Goliath's Hearing on television, Fox was summoned by Titania to her father's bedside. Halcyon Renard was dying. As they spoke, father and daughter made peace as Renard shared that Fox would be the new Chief Executive Officer of Cyberbiotics and given forty-nine percent of the company's shares. With an additional forty-nine percent put in a trust for Alexander (with Preston Vogel acting as his proxy) and a tie-breaking two percent bequeathed to Goliath, Fox finally acquired the company, albeit not in the way she wanted to. In their final moments together, Halcyon respected his daughter's choices and instead of addressing her as "Janine", called her Fox – her chosen name. ("New Rules", "Young At Heart")
Characteristics
Fox's most prominent distinguishing characteristic is over her right eye, a tattoo shaped roughly like a fox's head. She bore this tattoo even in her "werefox" form.
Because of her mother's true identity as Titania, Fox is also secretly a halfling. She has yet to control her latent powers, which now manifest when she feels her family is in danger. She is more than human enough to have been vulnerable to Demona's enchantments after the gargoyle acquired the Three New Keys to Power. ("Miracle Child", "Unequivocal Success") It remains uncertain if Fox will have a longer than usual life expectancy. [5]
Wearing the Eye of Odin was revelatory of Fox's inner-self. Greg Weisman has described it is "Werefox, predatory, self-hating, conflicted." [6]
Alongside being a wily and determined figure (and worthy mate for Xanatos thereby), Fox is also well-read. (She likes the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, but considers Nietzsche too "butch" for her tastes, and Kafka reminds her too much of the cockroaches that Hyena liked shooting rubber bands at in their prison cell).
Like her husband, Fox has a love of the game. However, she's not as acquisitive as her husband. He'd always take the path of least resistance to a goal. For example, if Renard would give her the company, Xanatos would suggest she ask for it. But she doesn't care about the company. Only the game. Xanatos likes the game. But he's about results. Fox is in this just for kicks.
She is also an excellent fighter, as her former role as leader of the Pack would attest. She is also a skilled helicopter pilot, as she has seemingly replaced Derek Maza as her husband's personal pilot and is skilled with a hang-glider.
Fox did not take her husband's last name, she's still just Fox. One word. But she does not object to being referred to, when WITH her husband, as "Mr. & Mrs. Xanatos" or as "David and Fox Xanatos". Though it would be more correct to say "Fox and David Xanatos". [7]
At CONvergence 2014, Greg Weisman revealed that Fox is bisexual.
Fox wears size nine shoes, and is fond of manolos. She is also left-handed.
Appearances
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Apocrypha
The Goliath Chronicles
Appearances: "The Journey", "Ransom", "Broadway Goes to Hollywood"
Fox appeared in "Ransom" where, after Alex was kidnapped by Pat Doyle, she uncharacteristically cried and screamed like a stereotypical damsel-in-distress while clutching a teddy bear in a rocking chair. She calms down when she is reunited with her son.
By the time of "Broadway Goes to Hollywood", she seems to have relocated her spine and engages in a silly plot to make Broadway a TV star by flying him out to Los Angeles (because the talk shows filmed in New York City are not convenient). While there, she ends up battling Jackal and Hyena after somehow commandeering Robyn Canmore's exo-armor.
Gargoyles (Marvel Comics)
Appearances: "The Pack Attacks", "Terror In Times Square"
Fox, along with the rest of her teammates escape from prison after a villain, disguised as Dingo, busts them out as part of a plan to kill Xanatos.
Production Background
Voice Actor: Laura San Giacomo (uncredited)
Alone among Gargoyles voice actors, Laura San Giacomo went uncredited for providing the voice of Fox. This was because her agent believed it would damage her reputation to have worked on an animated series, although Greg Weisman has said that Laura herself was "nothing but wonderful, working on the show. A real pleasure." Also, Laura gave birth to her son Mason at approximately the same time as Fox gave birth to Alexander. [8]
Weisman revealed that Fox was originally just intended to be a loyal minion who deeply admired Xanatos, but he changed the character when he heard how Laura read the line “He's the most brilliant man on the planet.” “I thought, ‘Holy shit. Fox is in love with Xanatos. That's really interesting. Let's run with that. We began to conceive of this idea of them getting married. We thought Xanatos wouldn’t marry a minion. He has to respect her. We began to develop her as a more fully realized character and develop their relationship.” [9]
See Also
- Fox at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
