When the fact that Bruce Banner was the Hulk became public knowledge, Langkowski conceived a new goal for his life.  He entered a graduate program in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and rapidly earned his Ph.D.  He was then appointed to the faculty of McGill University in Montreal.  Since leaving his football career, Langkowski had accumulated all the information he could find on the Hulk and on other human beings who had been transformed through exposure to gamma radiation.  Langkowski intended to recreate, under controlled circumstances, the conditions which produced the Hulk.  Langkowski spent over a million dollars of his own money on his research into this area, and finally applied to the Canadian government for additional funding.  James MacDonald Hudson, who was organizing a group of superhuman agents for the Canadian government's Department H, arranged for the funding and procured an isolated laboratory near the Arctic Circle for Langkowski.  During a leave of absence from McGill University, Langkowski designed and constructed a means to generate gamma radiation bombardments similar to those which had create the Hulk, but under laboratory conditions.

Because of the potential for radiation leakage, Langkowski performed his experiment in self-transformation in the isolated laboratory north of the Arctic Circle.  There he used the equipment he had designed to bombard himself with gamma radiation, and was transformed into a ten-foot-tall, superhumanly powerful creature which went on a savage rampage for hours before finally reverting to human form.  One of Hudson's agents, Snowbird, found Langkowski in human form lying in the snow after his rampage, took him to a hospital, and summoned Hudson.  Another of Hudson's agents, Dr. Michael Twoyoungmen, asked Snowbird, who was herself able to change shape, to teach Langkowski how to maintain his normal personality and intelligence in his bestial form.  This teaching proved to be entirely successful until only recently.

Langkowski called himself "Sasquatch" when he was in his bestial form, after the Canadian word for Canada's legendary "Bigfoot" creature, which he resembled.  Once he had learned how to maintain his normal human personality and intelligence as Sasquatch and had undergone a period of training in Department H's team of apprentice superhuman agents, Beta and Gamma Flight, Langkowski became a member of James Hudson's fully trained team of superhuman agents, Alpha Flight.  He became the lover of another Alpha Flight member, Aurora, and is responsible for the alteration in her superhuman powers.

However, Langkowski was wrong in believing that he had gained his Sasquatch form from gamma radiation.  The equipment he used in the experiment in the Arctic laboratory had actually unleashed for a fraction of a second enough physical energy to sunder the mystical barrier separating Earth from the otherdimensional realm of the Great Beasts, enemies of the god of native Canadian mythology.  A mystic link was formed between Langkowski and the Great Beast called Tanaraq, enabling Langkowski, without knowing what he was really doing, to take on Tanaraq's form and control it.  But with each "transformation" of Langkowski into Sasquatch, Tanaraq's mind was able to supplant Langkowski's personality whenever Langkowski, in Sasquatch's form, felt intense anger or pain.  Finally, Tanaraq took full control of Sasquatch.  Snowbird, realizing what had happened, transformed herself into a being like Sasquatch and tore out Tanaraq's heart, killing Langkowski's physical form, which reverted to normal in dying.  Six members of Alpha Flight journeyed into the otherdimensional realm of the Great Beasts and recovered Langkowski's soul, intending to return it to his body.  Langkowski's body had mystically been crystallized to preserve it, but the body entirely crumbled away while the Alpha Flight members were recovering Langkowski's soul.  So, instead, Michael Twoyoungmen, then known as Shaman, projected Langkowski's soul into the robotic body that its inventor Roger Bochs, called Box.

Langkowski thus remained alive in Box while he and Bochs sought for a new body for Langkowski's soul to inhabit.  They finally located a nearly mindless humanoid form existing at an interdimensional nexus. Langkowski abandoned Box and his spirit was projected to that nexus, where he discovered that the body was that of the Hulk.  Unwilling to take over the body belonging to his old friend Bruce Banner, Langkowski seemingly allowed his spirit to vanish from the mortal plane.

Langkowski was later able to use the physical body of Smart Alec, within Shaman's medicine bag, to return to reality.  He briefly reentered the Box robot and then transferred to Snowbird's body (in its Sasquatch/Great Beast form), which had been re-animated by Pestilence.  Although he can now transform back to human form, it is the form of the female Snowbird.  Langkowski now calls himself "Wanda" and has remained with Alpha Flight.