James Tagg

James Tagg was instated as the Director of PRT East-North-East following the death of Director Thomas Calvert.

Personality
Tagg has a combative personality that he leads the PRT on a warpath against the criminal element in Brockton Bay. Taylor described him as having "a soldier’s mentality at a time when we need peace", and someone who has a mentality of 'us versus them. Good guys versus the bad', being unsympathetic with villains regardless of their age and viewing them as mere thugs. Even though Taylor believes he isn't the type to torture Dinah Alcott to gain information through her precognitive powers, he threatened to periodically subject Taylor's father to lengthy interrogation sessions in order to pressure her. Tagg doesn't consider compromise to be part of the job of Directors of the PRT or those under their command, and views his duty of eliminating criminals from cities to be a war, and that the world is worse off with criminals winning. Tagg hates the concept of the Bird Cage as a cruel affront to civil freedoms but accepts it as a neccessary evil, although he considers execution to be a more merciful and efficient alternative. “Which takes me back to my original point,” Tagg said. “The Birdcage. I hate it. Hate what it stands for, the affront to our freedoms. The farce of it. You know what that word means, little girl? Farce?” I almost took the bait and responded, bit my tongue instead. “Guess not. And Miss Militia said you were smart. When it comes to the monsters and the menaces who are more trouble than they’re worth, I wish with all my heart that we had another option. Look me in the eyes, now. I want you to see I mean what I say.” I met his eyes. “I’d rather do what we did in Lausanne than use the Birdcage. End result’s the same. You’re gone from this world. It’s more merciful, understand? If it was legal, if I got the okay from on high, I’d make you kneel in the center of this very room and end you with one well placed bullet. Better than you getting in a van and getting disappeared, dropped into a pit that some of the scariest, meanest capes around haven’t figured out how to escape, a literal hell on earth.” Disappeared. “But as much as I hate the Birdcage, I’ll gladly use it if it gets menaces like you off the streets and out of the way of civilized Americans who are trying to live their lives. And my bosses know that. They know I’m just as stubborn as the worst of them, because I’ve fought bastards like the sad souls in Lausanne, who didn’t even knowhow to yield, and I outlasted them.” I wasn’t sure I could have responded if I’d been willing to open my mouth. “I want you to think on that. As much as you see me as an asshole, maybe you look down on me because you think you’re smarter than I am, but you think about what it means that I’d sooner shoot a misguided sixteen year old girl than send her to that place… and I’d sooner send you there than let you go free to keep perverting the system.” - Excerpt from Cell 22.2 Tagg was able to maintain his composure and confident posture even with his wife threatened, his wife shares his views regarding criminals and her death wouldn't dissuade him. He believes he was selected as the director of the city's PRT because he is a stubborn survivor who won't give up or get intimidated, and is willing to suffer as long as he gives his opponent a bloody nose in exchange.

Appearance
Tagg has black hair with heavily lined eyes and thick eyebrows. He wears a matching wedding band with his wife, and his voice is gruff due to being a long time smoker. He hides a revolver in his ankle, and likely wears a suit like his deputy director.

Background
Director Tagg had previously served in the Army and as a PRT Squad leader. Tagg was one of the people who helped respond to Lausanne and the Simurgh's first appearance, being in Lausanne for 2002 and 2003. As Tagg notes, "We shot them, the people who heard too much of the Simurgh’s song, who weren’t just walking disaster areas, but who’d listened long enough that they lost something. [...] Two years of fighting before we got the word down from on high, that they couldn’t rehabilitate the ones they’d captured, the ones who’d listened too long. The poor assholes would play nice until they saw an opportunity, then they’d take it, do as much damage as they could. Two years fighting good people who’d been convinced they had to throw their lives away fighting an enemy that didn’t exist. So we closed the perimeter, bombed them out, herded them and gunned them down.”

Post-Echidna
After finding out that Dragon and Defiant were inbound to Brockton Bay on business, Tagg contacted them and demanded that they confront Skitter. This led to the incident at Arcadia, where Dragon and Defiant were forced to confront Taylor in her civilian identity in the middle of Arcadia's cafeteria, publicly unmasking her.

Following Alexandria's 'killing' of an Undersider during Skitter's detainment, Skitter forced bugs into her throat the moment she returned. Clockblocker, seeing this occur, pressed the alarm, and Tagg - in the interrogation room with Skitter - drew his gun in an attempt to kill her before her revenge was carried out. However, Skitter's bugs drew his gun off course, and he was immediately swarmed by bugs, which she noted as including "spiders, hornets, black widows, brown recluses and more."

Stung by numerous bugs, Tagg still managed to attack Skitter, throwing Danny Hebert to the ground when he attempted to intervene and slamming Skitter's head into the table in an attempt to incapacitate or kill.

Following Skitter's awakening in her cell, having been tranquilized, her surviving bugs locate and identify Tagg's corpse in the PRT's morgue, her orders to sting him having kept going following her lack of consciousness.