History: Joshua Guthrie is the third of ten siblings in the large Guthrie family, which has seen more than its share of mutations. His older brother and sister have both been X-Men at various points in their young lives. For a long while, Joshua seemed as if he had no mutant ability, and his gifts were only musical in nature. As Joshua's father was dead, he also had to try to help raise the family in his older siblings' absence.

The Guthries were outcasts in Cumberland, in part to the high number of mutants in the family, but the real bad blood was with the Cabots, another local family. The feud between the two had gotten lethal as the Cabots were involved in Joshua's father's death. But Joshua had fallen in love with Julia Cabot and revealed to her the fact that he was a mutant, with wings and a mutant singing voice. This relationship took an already explosive rivalry and drove it to its logical conclusion. The X-Men stopped the war between the clans, but not before Joshua was seemingly killed by Julia's father, Chester. Longing to be with her love, Julia killed herself, unaware that Joshua had one more gift - a regenerative ability to recover from any wound. Joshua found his love dead and tried to kill himself. But his ability would not allow it.

Now known as a mutant, Joshua was sent to the Xavier Institute by his mother. To declare a new life for himself, he abandoned the name Joshua, which is what Julia called him, and took on Jay as his first name, going so far as to have it legally changed. But he didn't put the past behind him - he took on the codename Icarus to symbolize how far he had fallen. He was briefly a member of the Hellions training squad, but switched to the New Mutants after clashes with Hellion over ethics.