Marianne Rodgers

• Marianne Rodgers is one of Tony Stark’s former girlfriends who has vast, overwhelming psychic powers and an unstable mind. She first appeared in IRON MAN VOL.1#36, although it’s possible that she first showed up as far back as TALES OF SUSPENSE Vol.1#40 in an unnamed appearance.
• At some point, Marianne’s telepathic powers began to develop. Over time, as Iron Man fought against the Slasher in front of her, saved her from Mikas the Soul-Father, and rescued her from the hands of the Night Phantom robot, Marianne guessed that Tony Stark and Iron Man were the same person. But in her dreams, which haunted her continuously, Marianne saw Tony either dead or dying. The image of his death tormented Marianne constantly, causing her madness to take the forms of possessiveness and insecurity, which was enough to make Tony reject her. Marianne finally snapped and was forced to be locked away at the Milford Sanitarium, a victim of madness and her own power, which continued to grow as her hatred of Tony Stark festered inside of her. Stark footed the doctor bills until he forgot about Marianne and stopped sending the money. The doctors released Marianne, who slowly made her way across country, harming people with mental blasts in the processes of getting to Tony Stark so that she could kill him. When she finally caught up with him during his battle with Midas, Marianne tried to kill Tony with one of her psychic blasts, but she hit Midas instead, wiping out his mind. Her own mind once again shut down, causing her to forget everything. Stark once again put her in an asylum and paid her bills.
• However, unbeknownst to both Marianne and Tony, the Avengers villain Immortus worsened Marianne's psychosis by tampering with her mind. He did this as a part of his campaign, the Crossing, a hoax that he orchestrated in an attempt to prevent the Avengers from leaving Earth and heading out into outer space, where they would be of great influence. In order to help convince the Avengers and everyone else involved that Tony Stark had been a pawn of Kang the Conqueror (supposedly since AVENGERS#8), Immortus manipulated Marianne into believing that she went mad not because of the previous reasons but because she had seen Tony’s true, evil side during one of her mental forays into Stark’s mind.
• When the Crossing campaign finally began, Immortus once again used his influence and caused Marianne Rodgers to break free of her straightjacket, attack the orderlies, and escape the asylum that she had been residing in for so long. Unbeknownst to Marianne, Masque had watched the whole thing from outside the window. She followed Marianne, who went straight to Tony Stark and attempted to kill him again, this time because she thought he was an evil cohort of Kang the Conqueror. Fortunately, Masque saved Tony before Marianne could murder him. As Iron Man, Tony then spirited Marianne and Masque away to the secret arctic bunker he used as a base whenever he did things for “Kang”. Slowly, Marianne’s sanity returned. She was eventually freed from Tony’s clutches and was last seen speaking to a bed-ridden teenage Tony Stark from an alternate timeline who had replaced regular Tony after the latter sacrificed his life trying to stop “Kang”.
• Except for Madame Masque and Bethany Cabe, Marianne Rodgers is one of my all-time favorite Iron Man girlfriends! I definitely want to see her again someday, and she’s out there on the loose, just waiting for the right writer to use her. Some of the Crossing stuff involving Marianne are personal assumptions on my part. A lot of people seem to think that the Marianne Rodgers seen during the Crossing was a Space Phantom, but Kurt Busiek himself said on Alvaro’s Thunderbolts Message Board that the only characters who had been Space Phantoms were the ones actually depicted as such ON PANEL in AVENGERS FOREVER#8: the evil Mantis, Moonraker, Tobias, Malachi, and the Cotati Swordsman. That’s it. Everyone else was just a dupe manipulated by Immortus, including Marianne Rodgers. Since I believe the guy who actually wrote the Crossing retcon, I came up with a believable scenario as to how Marianne fit into things, and I will believe in this scenario until it is proven otherwise, which will probably never happen.
• ODDITY: Marianne Rodgers also appeared in IRON MAN#74-75, during the “War of the Super-Villains” storyline, although she wasn’t named. When she was first seen, Marianne Rodgers mentally contacted the Mad Thinker, warning him that a meteorite would strike the prison wall and subsequently open a hole in his cell so that he could escape. Later, Marianne appeared psychically inside Firebrand’s mind while he was suffering from psychic feedback caused by the Black Lama, a character who was suffering from hallucinatory madness because of the effect that his interdimensional transporter had on him when he used it to cross over from his Earth to the regular Marvel Universe Earth, designated Earth-616. Marianne also appeared in one of Iron Man’s delusions, having become linked with him and Firebrand and all of the other people affected by the Black Lama’s psychosis, which had infected them all as their lives intersected with the Black Lama’s. Iron Man even recognized Marianne, but she cut him off before he said her name, giving me proof that this unidentified woman was indeed Marianne Rodgers. Further proof was given a few issues later in IRON MAN#80, where the Black Lama explained that he found someone on regular Marvel Earth to substitute for his daughter, Susan. That someone was Marianne Rodgers, although she was once again not officially named. To quote the Black Lama: “Do you begin to understand what my deranged mind had created? Why, I even found someone to substitute for my daughter, an acquaintance of yours, I believe, Iron Man.” Being a psychic, I’d wager a guess that her mental powers had picked up on the Black Lama’s madness, and the Lama had become aware of her through that psychic connection. He brought Marianne to him, and then she was later returned to the asylum after the Black Lama returned to his home dimension.
• MARIANNE'S LIST OF APPEARANCES:
• (Tales of Suspense Vol.1#40)
• Iron Man Vol.1#36-37, 40-46
• Amazing Adventures Vol.2#12
• Iron Man Vol.1#47-52, 58-59, 74-75, 103-107, 320-325
• Iron Man: Age of Innocence#1

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