Life has not always been a cake walk for this young lady. She was born as Tabitha Smith to an abusive father. Its been forshadowed that she spent some time in prostitution before she discovered her mutant ability to create plasma bombs that can detonate on her command. She originally started as a member of the X-Terminators (a junior group of X-Factor). Soon she was shacking up with the New Mutants. During her time under the tutalage of Xavier and Magneto she was known as Boom-Boom. Later, soon after X-Force was established she changed her identity to Boomer. And then after years of holding back the anger and frustration of all the abuse she's taken from everyone that took their turns shitting on her life, she decided to cut loose, become more agressive, more indipendant, and became known from there on as Meltdown.
Alot of tribulations were thrown at Tabitha over a period of time that led to the creation of Meltdown. I think mainly it was her fault for becoming very selfish and allowing herself to become very close to certain individuals. One example would be Victor Creed, also known as Sabretooth. Victor was cased as "Animalistic coma" due to Wolverine popping his claws straight throw Vic's head. Tabitha helped nurse Victor back to health (X-Force #44-48), only to be used by Sabretooth in letting him free to go back to his criminal activities (Uncanny X-Men #328). Her father would also be another case. After finally putting away her anger she decided to establish a relationship with her father. But it was short lived because he was soon hospitalized by Sebastian Shaw and Holocaust (X-Force #49). And then of course there were also her love intrests. Sam Githrie for one seemed to be very inconsiderate of Tabitha's needs, him being on the X-Men didn't help much either. The relationship soon hit the wall when Sam caught Tabi and his best freind Roberto DaCoasta making out (X-Force #76). Roberto and Tabi didn't last long as couple very long either.
The change from Boomer to Meltdown was to show the rest of the world that she wasn't going to take anymore crap off of anyone that would push her to do anything she wouldn't want to. She was becoming more like Cable, agressive, without remorse, and a bad attitude to match (too bad Cable was going a bit soft on his old tactics during this point). Over the period of several issues, Tabitha has slowly returned to her lovable self that she once was. But keeping the look and the name of Meltdown is a way for her never to forget the past, its good to see that she's finally learning the lessons in life properly.
