roblondon.bsky.social
Marvel Research Team/Handbook guy. Senior Writer at http://Collider.com. He/him/his.
327 posts
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227 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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We are getting Roger Korby, which will I guess technically be the first appearance of the real Roger Korby.
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For the sake of your sanity, sir, I hope your next Marvel book stars a character people are capable of being normal about. Like Jack of Hearts or something.
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So now you know the answer to the mystery of Marcy Kane! Pretty wild, huh?
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Since then, Jack has bounced around the cosmic corner of Marvel in the ‘90s, became an Avenger, died, came back, and most recently got busy with She-Hulk!
Marcy Kane/Kaina has yet to reappear.
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Oh, and did Peter ever find out about this? Yes, according to, of all things, a Fred Hembeck backup feature in 1989’s Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #9. It asserts that Jack told him at some point.
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So there’s no way Mantlo planned this when he introduced Marcy in the Spider-books, right? I mean, maybe, but…no way.
Unfortunately, with Mantlo’s condition, we’ll never know.
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He departs for the stars, and exhorts Kaina to help their people!
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Unfortunately, he’s absorbed so much power that he can never be with Kaina again, lest he destroy her.
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…but survives!
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He does so…
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Anyway, they end up on Contraxia, where Jack agrees to sacrifice himself to reignite the sun!
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When Jack’s mom died in an accident, Kaina was sent to replace her - and she ended up falling in love with Jack for real!
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Thus, Jack’s half-purple coloration is only an expression of his innate half-alien nature!
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When their sun started dying, they sent their people all over the galaxy to find ways to reignite it. One of those scouts was Jack’s mom, who fell in love with Jack’s dad while investigating his Zero Fluid.
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They’re both Contraxians, a race of half-purple people!
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Also, her real name is “Kaina.”
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Jack’s mother was an alien…and SO IS MARCY KANE!
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Jack flies off with Marcy to get some answers, and boy does he ever get them.
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…by flying saucers!
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She also drops some information about Jack’s dead mother and “her people,” which seems weird, right?
Before she can elaborate, the Hart mansion comes under attack…
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Jack is being real emo about his whole situation, despite Marcy’s attempts to help.
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And that leads into Jack of Hearts’ first (and so far only) miniseries, by Mantlo and George Freeman!
Everything you know about Jack of Hearts - and Marcy Kane - is wrong!
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Everything gets settled, but Marcy decides to use her scientific know-how to help Jack out.
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…and naturally he and Spidey end up fighting some SHIELD agents who are there to prevent Jack’s unstable powers from blowing up the place.
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She pretty quickly finds out that there’s something different about him…
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It just so happens that he’s on campus today, too, prompting an emotional reunion!
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But it turns out that a lot of the reason she gave him such a hard time is because he reminded her of her old college boyfriend…Jack Hart!
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Peter’s come to ESU to clean out his locker, and he runs into Marcy one last time so she can tell him how much he friggin’ sucks.
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Let’s take a look at 1983’s Marvel Team-Up #134, by Mantlo and Ron Frenz.
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He became a sort of pet character for Mantlo, who often used him in whatever book he was writing.
Okay, but what does he have to do with Marcy Kane?
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Jack Hart’s father was a scientist who’d invented the mysterious Zero Fluid! Bad guys killed his dad and doused him in the Zero Fluid, giving him strange new powers and also making him half-purple!
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Created by Mantlo and Keith Giffen in Marvel’s old black-and-white Deadly Hands of Kung Fu magazine, Jack of Hearts is a guy with volatile energy powers and a really hard-to-draw costume!
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Let’s talk about Jack of Hearts.
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Eventually, the pressures of being Spider-Man led Peter to quit grad school, which seemingly proved everything Marcy previously believed about ol’ Pete.
But that wasn’t the end of Marcy’s story.
(Art by Al Milgrom)
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But then by the next issue, which takes place a few days later, Peter gets a little affectionate with her, and she gives him the cold shoulder.
What happened? We’ll probably never know…
(Art by Ed Hannigan)
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However, things got a little more complicated when an uncharacteristically friendly Marcy had Peter over to study, and ended an issue on this rather…ambiguous note…
(Art by Bob Hall)
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Mantlo did try to deepen their relationship a little, and even hinted at a romance.
(Art by Rich Buckler)
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She got her own little subplot about hiding her naturally brunette hair with dyes, hats, and wigs, but then just became a brunette anyway.
It wouldn’t be the only thing she was hiding…
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From there on out, she and her fellow grad students become part of Spider-Man’s supporting cast. Peter had a romance with Debra Whitman (who is a whole ‘nother story), while his relationship with Marcy was antagonistic.
(Written by Roger Stern, art by Marie Severin)
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In fact, she pretty much tells him that he sucks and she hates him right off the bat.
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This is also how he meets fellow grad student Marcy Kane. His first impression of her gorgeous gams is not appreciated.
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Our story opens in 1979’s Spectacular Spider-Man #32, by Bill Mantlo and Jim Mooney! Peter Parker’s late for his first day of grad school, and he makes a great first impression by plowing right into his supervisor!
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So let’s take a brief look at the strange tale of MARCY KANE!
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Also I guess this means the young Rahne was one of the few viewers of the final years of the original series. She probably thought Ace was really cool.