The man who would become Madcap was a religious man belonging to a group that organised a trip. This man, his parents and his sister Katy went to the trip in a bus, with some other forty people.
Terrorist scientists from A.I.M. were trying to destroy a chemical developed by themselves, Chemical X07, which apparently included enzymes to incite a rapid healing in human bodies. The accident killed all of the people in the bus, except for the man who would become Madcap. Coincidentally, this man laid unconscious for hours on a pool of X07, which would eventually evaporate. He would recover consciousness in a hospital, but then discovered that he was the sole survivor and his faith in a rational universe collapsed. He ran away from the hospital and threw himself to a car trying to commit suicide. To his surprise, he was unharmed and felt no pain at all. This drove him completely mad. He correctly suspected that the accident had given him this immunity to damage, but could not understand why he was to obtain power from an accident who had killed forty people, including his family and friends.
Finally, this man decided that things happen without a reason, and that nothing has a purpose. He soon discovered his other power, which allowed him to drive people crazy. He bought a bubble gun in a general store and stole a harlequin costume. He called himself the Madcap and wandered through New York City driving people crazy. He had no compunction about putting people in danger: as he could not be hurt, he could not understand that other people could be hurt.
