TYPHOID MARY: Page 4 of 4

BIOGRAPHY - part 4

Mary's personality resurfaced in Typhoid over time and she returned to her career as an actress, beginning with a stage performance of "Death of a Salesman." [Deadpool (2nd series) #38] Eventually, she began working on a soap opera and developed quite a fan following. Mary maintained control of her Typhoid personality through a new form of hypnosis therapy, keeping her mind balanced. In her absence, the Kingpin has fallen from grace as crimelord of New York, but eventually returned to reestablish his power base. He approached Mary with the intent of recruiting her as an enforcer. Fisk brutalized the unsuspecting Mary until Typhoid's persona broke through the hypnosis and resurfaced.

Kingpin and Typhoid started operating from the back of Josie's Bar as he met with old associates and underlings who recognized how disorganized things had fallen without the Kingpin. When the FBI took notice of Fisk's return and warned him against any resurgence, Fisk used Mary to create a distraction. Typhoid approached Matt Murdock, who had recently been outted by the tabloids as Daredevil. During a date with his new girlfriend Mila Donovan, Typhoid walked up to Murdock on the street and pyrokinetically set him on fire. Matt was assisted by Luke Cage and Jessica Jones in a street fight against Mary while he tried to protect Mila and keep from confirming his Daredevil identity in public. Fisk got his distraction, but Typhoid was taken into federal custody once again. [Daredevil (2nd series) #46-48]

Typhoid Mary escaped from custody aboard the Raft when Electro initiated a massive breakout of the super-villains being held there. [New Avengers (1st series) #1-2] After the start of the Fifty States Initiative, all super-heroes were to be licensed operatives of the government and enough were needed to field teams for every state. Mary offered her services to the Initiative in exchange for help managing her personalities. Under the psychiatric care of Leonard Samson, she participated in "recombinant personality assimilation," a process somehow connected to the Zero Room at Camp Hammond where she resided 24-7 when not otherwise engaged. Her personalities began to merge into a singular new identity with no-nonsense, military efficiency, well suited for the Initiative.

Henry Peter Gyrich became her handler, prepping Mary for service in his covert ops unit known as the Shadow Initiative. Gyrich and Samson created a protocol for utilizing Mary in the field that complimented her treatment. Her personality assimilation was still a work in progress and so it was necessitated that she limit her field exposure and not be referred to by any of the old names she used. She was unofficially identified as Mutant Zero, the 199th mutant catalogued by O*N*E and the Initiative after the Decimation. Officially, she didn't exist at all. [Avengers: The Initiative #5, 21; Daredevil (1st series) #509]

When the Shadow Initiative was activated, Mutant Zero assisted the team in rescuing hapless Initiative recruits from the Hulk's stronghold in Manhattan. [Avengers: The Initiative #4-5]

She also protected Gyrich from K.I.A.'s onslaught, using her telepathy to make them temporarily invisible to the madman. [Avengers: The Initiative #10] Finally, base supervisor Yellowjacket was revealed as a Skrull during the invasion and took control of Camp Hammond. Mutant Zero joined the other members of the Shadow Initiative in opposing the takeover. They tried a surgical strike to execute Queen Veranke a.k.a. Spider-Woman when she arrived, but Veranke was using a body double. The Shadow Initiative were subdued and captured until the war was over. [Avengers: The Initiative #17]

Mary's true identity was revealed to the Shadow Initiative during the invasion and base instructor Taskmaster identified her as well shortly thereafter. Taskmaster and the Shadow Initiative went on a mission to infiltrate Madripoor and capture an Initiative recruit named Hardball, who had been revealed as a Hydra double agent. The infiltration forced Mutant Zero to dress like her Typhoid identity, putting her new centered personality in risky psychological territory. The mission became FUBAR when S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded while they were in the field, meaning the agency responsible for their extraction no longer existed.

Unable to return to the Zero Room for her regular treatment, Mutant Zero began to fall apart and the unit was captured by Hydra. In order to escape, Mutant Zero ended up manifesting another personality, mostly similar to her Bloody Mary identity. She created a hole in the prison cell for her and the Shadow Initiative to escape, but wanted nothing more to do with her teammates. The Mutant Zero identity was effectively gone forever and Mary fled into the night with a stern warning to the Initiative not to look for her, or they would regret it. [Avengers: The Initiative #20-24]

Typhoid Mary resurfaced months later at Shadowland, a stronghold of The Hand that had been raised in the middle of Hell's Kitchen. The Hand's new jonin, Daredevil, intended to enforce absolute order on his home neighborhood, by force if necessary, and he called upon heroes and vigilantes willing to go to extreme measures to join him. Typhoid presented herself as a possible ally and referred to the work the Initiative did with her as proof that her mind had been stabilized. Daredevil was under the influence of the Beast, a demon at the root of the Hand, which helps explain why he accepted Mary into the fold, even with reservations. Daredevil was soon defeated and the essence of the Beast was purged from his body. The Kingpin then arrived in Shadowland and assumed control of the Hand for himself. It was revealed that Typhoid was a sleeper agent for Kingpin the whole time, thanks to hypnotic code-phrases Kingpin had acquired from Initiative records to use against her. [Shadowland crossover]

Typhoid Mary spent some time in Kingpin's employ, operating ninja and more traditional criminal enterprises from the heart of Hell's Kitchen. [Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive #525-529; Deadpool (3rd series) #50-52] Eventually, however, Shadowland was brought down by Spider-Man and Kingpin and the Hand fled into exile. [Superior Spider-Man #14]

A free agent again, Typhoid Mary was hired by Ana Cortes, host for the nano-intelligence Lady Deathstrike, to steal a new form of bio-tech from the X-Men. Typhoid briefly encountered Psylocke during her incursion, but returned to Deathstrike in Bogota with the needed materials. The bio-tech turned out to be a sentient signal-based bio-organism named Arkea, who assumed a host body and began working with Typhoid, Deathstrike and Enchantress as a Sisterhood. As enticement, Arkea offered various enhancements and upgrades to her sisters, including curing Typhoid of her alternate personality structure. Despite several hit & run battles with the X-Men and two new recruits (Selene and Madelyne Pryor), this Sisterhood was unable to maintain the upper hand against their foes. Typhoid was defeated in single combat by Psylocke and presumably lost her mental upgrades when Arkea's essence was dispersed. [X-Men (4th series) #7-12]

Typhoid began moonlighting for various crime families in and around New York as a freelancer. She worked for the Black Cat in an MK-Ultra style brainwashing plot that was undone by Hawkeye and Deadpool. [Hawkeye vs. Deadpool #1-3] She ran into Wade again soon after when he was protecting a banker who lost the money of various crime families due to bad investments. Typhoid was trying to kill the banker and recover his laptop full of digital evidence for her Russian employers and fought Daredevil, Power Man and Iron Fist, all in the same afternoon. Deadpool was still her focus, however, and she was his. Wade had never forgotten the way Typhoid Mary used him while posing as Siryn. In a rare moment of empathy, however, Deadpool recognized that hurting Typhoid was only hurting Mary and the woman needed care and treatment instead of a beating. When Mary was defeated, Deadpool and Daredevil arranged for her to be institutionalized under the care of S.H.I.E.L.D. instead of being sent to prison. [Deadpool (5th series) #13]

At an institution in Hell's Kitchen, Mary was placed under the care of a Dr. Charles. He believed his new cerebral inhibitor drug would help Mary by building up stronger walls between her personalities, blocking them all off in her mind until only Mary was able to surface. Another mutant named Amp was getting treatment at the hospital and Charles used Amp's abilities to locate Mary's personalities as they were being blocked off. Mary's treatment was stalled, however, when a pair of orderlies attempted to rape her and the trauma forced her powers back to the surface as a defense mechanism.

As Typhoid emerged from Mary's mind, she saw other uses for Amp's powers. Using her psionic abilities to activate his, Typhoid forced Amp to boost her abilities further, taking control of the hospital. Typhoid telepathically drew the staff and patients into a collection delusion based on her old soap opera stories. When Dr. Charles struggled against his role as her "leading man," Mary set him on fire and cast him out the window. This caught the attention of Spider-Man, but the web-slinger wasn't capable of resisting Mary's influence forever when he investigated the hospital and he soon became another player in her scenarios.

As Mary and Amp took their show on the road to the High Line, the X-Men also responded. Even Jean Grey wasn't strong enough to pierce Typhoid's amplified telepathic barrier. Instead, she got inside Mary's mind and discovered what was really happening -- by "amp"ing herself, Typhoid was writing Mary out of her own mind, erasing memories where Mary was dominant and replacing them with memories of Typhoid. Typhoid kept using Amp's boosting effect to keep the X-Men fighting each other in her soap opera contrived telepathic scenarios.

Finally, during a fight with Iron Fist, Typhoid pushed herself and Amp too far, causing her city-wide psychic "fever dreams" to short out. Jean Grey took the window of opportunity to reach down into Typhoid and pull forth Mary's personality. Amp got involved too now that he was free of Typhoid's influence and he helped Mary amplify herself while burying Typhoid deep, deep down in her mind. The change over was so total that the heroes on the scene didn't even recognize Mary and thought she was only one of the victims. Even Jean saw "Mary" as psychically different and could only confirm Typhoid's psi-signature was gone from the area.

Remorseful, regretful, Mary Walker was last seen in the borrowed robes of a nun in the church where she fought Iron Fist. Whether she chooses to seek redemption at the church or ventures out to find a new life free of Typhoid remains to be seen. [Typhoid Fever crossover]