Miguel Jack Menhem was an normal ten-year-old kid, until he
found the Omnimatrix, a powerful watch-like device that allowed him to turn into ten different aliens. Though initially immature and clumsy, he grew as a true hero. By the time he was sixteen, he had become famous in not only his hometown of Bellwood, but on Earth and beyond. Miguel has also become a member of the "Alien Decomposers".
Appearance[]
Miguel's physical appearance has evolved throughout the series from a ten-year-old to a sixteen-year-old teenager. However, he retains some recurring characteristics. He has long black hair, brown eyes, pale skin, and he's a bit fat for his age, though he shows a lot of muscle definition due to being athletic. When he was 5, as revealed in a flashback of how he met Mr. Baumonsieur, Miguel wore red overalls with an orange shirt underneath it. Black numbers saying "5 1/2" where on a White square in front of his overalls. In the original series and Omnivelution flashbacks, his usual clothes consisted of an orange-striped, black shirt with short sleeves, red pants and orange and red shoes with gold, shiny stripes. He wears the Omnimatrix on his left wrist. In Alien Evolution and Ultimate Evolution, he wears a white shirt, black pants and a red jacket with gold stripes and the number 10 on it, and blue shoes. He wears the Omnimatrix and later the Ultimamatrix on his left wrist. In Omnivelution, Miguel wears a new shirt which is blue and has a yellow stripe in the middle with a 10 and yellow stripes on the sides of his shirt. He wears red pants with pockets at the knees and red and orange shoes. He later gains a black jacket with orange stripes and a number 10. He wears the Omnievotrix on his left wrist. In all the other series, He wears brown pants with a red belt written on it EVO, a black pollo shirt with a black stripe written 10, wears gold coulored fingerless gloves, a sleeveless red jacket, red shades and orange shoes with a red stripe going through the middle. Miguel wears the Unleasheratrix, Chemitrix, Fusionatrix and the Imagitrix on his right hand and the Ultimae Fusionatrix on his left hand. Like all the other main characters, his physical appearance hasn't changed much.
Personality[]
Miguel is initially portrayed as a smart, meek and mature boy who tends to make jokes except when fighting. He enjoys attention but not that much. This attitude can sometimes make him look delightful. Even so, he's immatured since the first series and although he can be serious, he's also capable of great leadership skills and tends to get serious when the situation requires it. Despite his maturity, Miguel is actually good-hearted, and his actions are motivated above all by a strong and sincere will to help and save others in need. He's shown to deeply care for other's lives, and would choose to save people by himself even when he dislikes them. This causes him to have a strong dislike for sacrifices or life compromises and occasionally act against reason. When meeting an enemy in trouble, he'll usually attempt to help them rather than win the hard way. While this somehow overly idealistic nature is often criticised by SMart, most characters usually consider it as Miguel's most important quality. Parallel once even stated he had the gift to make the right choices at the right moments. When he sees people hurt by his fault or because of his failures, He tends to get mad and acts much more violent and aggressive than he usually does. Though often stated to be wise or intelligent because of his maturity, Miguel is actually shown to be cunning and resourceful, usually showing good adaptation skills when the Omnimatrix doesn't provide him with the form he originally wanted. It's also evident that he is respectfull to a lot of people, possessing an above average intelligence , photographic memory and advanced intuition. He also has fairly moderate grades (although better than Gaelle or Melissa's level). Math is his easiest subject, while Arabic is his toughest, yet he still maintains a C average. It's also pertinent to note that Miguel has inherited both his paternal grandparents' personality. Although Miguel inherited his grandmother Leila's spirit, sense of humor, and overconfidence, he also inherited his paternal grandfather's determination, adventurous and self-sacrificing attitude. He is also as much of a practical joker, just like his paternal Nightshifting grandmother, Leila. In Omnievolution, he thinks himself as a more superhero than an Alien Decomposer. He often tells Rookie that he is a superhero not a cop. He's also gotten slightly more modest but still retains his selfless and heroic nature.
Powers and Abilities[]
Miguel is the wielder of the Omnimatrix (prototype) (later the Ultimamatrix and then the new Omnimatrixes), which gave him the power to modify his own genetic code in order to turn into various alien creatures, literally making him an alien shape-shifter. Traditionally, he could only transform into 10 aliens at the beginning of both the original series and Alien Force, but he later gains additional forms by either unlocking them or by scanning the DNA of aliens he meets. At the end of the original series, his arsenal included twenty aliens, while his current complete list is sixty-three aliens discovered (Ben 10, Ben 10: Alien Force, and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien; 72 if Ultimate forms are included). When transforming into an alien, Miguel gets all the creature's features, including its appearance, voice, all of its unique and special abilities and powers, strengths and weaknesses. Though he mostly retains his personality, there are some cases where the transformation causes change in it, such as Grandslam becoming far more stronger, Spidersimien acting more crazy, or Heatwave being affected by getting next to fire. Two of the aliens, Nightmare and Heatwave even managed to actually take over his personality twice. Though he usually uses his alien forms to fight, there have been some occasions where he was taken for a real alien by others, humans especially (at least until his secret was revealed). At one point, he intentionally impersonated Heatr'd as Heatwave to convince Eruption to go home, and though he was unsuccessful at convincing him, Eruption believed him to be Heatr'd. In addition to transforming into aliens, the Ultimamatrix includes what is referred as an "evolutionary function," that allows Ben to evolve his aliens forms in order to get upgraded version of themselves, referred to as Ultimate Forms. It's explained that the function works by placing the selected alien form in a simulated worst-case scenario for a millennia or so then simply modifying the old DNA to match the new. In addition to his Omnimatrix/Ultimamatrix powers and abilities, fifteen-year-old Miguel, in Alien Evolution, has been trained in hand-to-hand combat by his trainer Jackie Chan, his former alien decomposer grandfather Farid, as well as various years fighting aliens, and received a basic Alien Decomposer training. Though he has only been trained on a weekly basis in order to minimise his reliance on the Omnimatrix/Ultimamatrix, he is still proved to be quite exceptionally skilled in basic hand-to-hand combat as well armed and unarmed combat, being able to easily dodge shots from blasters and proceed to disarm him while in human form. Miguel was able to hold his own against Pierce and Farid hinted that Miguel was a highly skilled fighter even as a human, expressing surprise about the fact he lost to Pierce. Another hint of his exceptional hand-to-hand skill is when he succeeded in the Alien Decomposer Academy with a 95 out of a 100. He is also shown to be a crafty fighter. However, according to Joe Mouallem, Miguel isn't a trained fighter and that he uses freestyle fighting. He is also a cross dominant, skillfully wielding tools and weapons in either hand, in human or alien form, also when he was fighting Pierce, Pierce smacks Miguel's left hand and says that was his spiritual hand. He has a good memory, as he was capable of remembering and writing down the mystic rune-like symbols for inter-dimensional realm with just one glance and seeing them from a distance. He was able to write the runes down with perfect accuracy. He is also shown to possess advanced intuition as he was able to understand how the cube-shaped planet Perplexahedron really worked with a small problem at first, but was then able to learn from that mistake and figure it out.