Writer Ann Nocenti, during her time on Daredevil from late 1986 to early 1991, told many unconventional stories that addressed a number of controversial topics. One of her vehicles for exploring certain issues was the character of Typhoid Mary who she co-created with artist John Romita Jr.
Typhoid Mary is definitely one of Nocenti’s most memorable creations. Mary Walker is telepathic, telekinetic and pyrokinetic. She also suffers from multiple personality disorder, switching between the sweet, innocent, naïve Mary and the sadistic, domineering, seductive Typhoid. This transformation is not merely mental but also physical, with her pulse rate & temperature changing.
After Nocenti’s departure from Daredevil, she continued to develop Typhoid Mary in a pair of serials that ran in the biweekly anthology Marvel Comics Presents. Working with artist Steve Lightle, she teamed up Typhoid first with Wolverine and then with Ghost Rider. The arcs of these two serials culminated in the full-length two-part story “Bloody Mary: A Battle of the Sexes” that appeared in Marvel Comics Presents #150-151, published in early 1994. The artwork was by Lightle and Fred Harper.
MCP #150 opens with Typhoid ostensibly in the care of psychiatrist Doctor Hunt. Unfortunately Hunt is badly in need of a refresher course on professional ethics, as he believes he has fallen in love with Mary, and their “sessions” involve having sex with her. Hunt is supposedly planning to integrate Mary’s personalities together, although more than one character suspects that what he really intends to do is obliterate the kindly Mary persona so that he will have the kinky Typhoid all to himself.
Wolverine removes Mary from Hunt’s care, not only because he can see that the psychiatrist is a quack, but also because he requires Typhoid’s help. A young mutant empath & chameleon named Jessie has been abducted by the Fortress, one of those innumerable nefarious scientific conspiracies that populate the Marvel universe. Wolverine needs Typhoid to infiltrate the Fortress and extricate Jessie. He is able to sell this mission to Mary by explaining that if Jessie is not rescued she will be subjected to unscrupulous experiments, much as the two of them also have been.
Typhoid’s rescue attempt goes awry and she is captured by the Fortress. She unconsciously sends out a telepathic SOS to not just Wolverine, but to her old paramour / adversary Daredevil and to Ghost Rider… although at this point in time the flaming-skulled cyclist is dead (well, deader than usual) and the mayday is received by his replacement Vengeance.
The imprisoned Typhoid is probed by the Fortress scientists, which results in a third personality bursting forth. Bloody Mary is a ruthless man-hater who vows to avenge the crimes “the patriarch” has inflicted upon women. She brutally decimates the Fortress personnel and departs with Jessie.
Later, arriving at a woman’s shelter, Bloody Mary is shocked to discover that Jessie is, in fact, a boy; his empathic abilities had previously caused him to mimic first Steel Raven, the female mercenary who brought him to the Fortress, and then Mary. Now, though, he is reverting to his true gender. Bloody Mary is furious. Calling Jessie a “filthy liar,” she violently slaps the teenager. Stealing the shelter’s files on battered women, Mary flees, intending to avenge them.
Bloody Mary embarks upon her mission of retribution, brutalizing the husbands and boyfriends of the women in the shelter, inflicting upon them the exact injuries they gave their victims. Attempting to track her down are Wolverine, Daredevil and Vengeance, who each have their own ideas about how to deal with Bloody Mary. The three vigilantes at odds with one another, as they argue over whether Mary deserves psychiatric help, imprisonment, or death.
Added to the mix is Steel Raven, dispatched by the Fortress to retrieve Jessie. Raven is beginning to have second thoughts about her employers, though, unsettled by their experiments on children. When Raven catches up to Bloody Mary, she finds that she is in agreement with her quest for retribution against abusive men. The mercenary holds off Vengeance and Wolverine so that Mary can continue on her mission.
Vacillating back and forth between her three personalities, Mary once again encounters Jessie, who has been looking for her. The empathic teen begins to copy each of Mary’s personas in rapid succession…
Mary: Look at you, my multiple personalities, they’re contagious. Look at you. You echo all I am. Stay away. I can’t be responsible!
Jessie: I want to be with you, Mary. I want to help you.
Mary: How did you manage to trick me, make me think you were a girl?
Jessie: Because I am a girl. I’m just trapped in this boy’s body. I want to be like you.
Mary: Oh, yeah? Which me? Who shall I be for you?
Jessie: That Wolverine man was right. There’s one more in there. One more that’s the best of all. Don’t you feel it?
Prompted by Jessie, Mary looks within herself, and uncovers a fourth personality, a woman who refers to herself as “Walker.” This identity shares certain aspects of the other three. Walker is kind but assertive. She is not abusive, nor will she allow herself to be abused.
Walker reflects upon her various natures…
“I began to hate all the shrinks and doctors, all the men, and I divided myself into four parts: one helpless before men, one using them, one hating them… and now me, indifferent to them. Beyond them.”
Walker returns to the hospital where she was being treated and confronts Hunt on his unethical, criminal behavior, and then exposes what he did to her. As he is being led away by the police, she turns to address the reporters on the scene. Walker vows to continue Bloody Mary’s quest to avenge women, but it is apparent she will be doing so a more rational manner. And with that she departs, Jessie accompanying her.
The first time I read “Bloody Mary: A Battle of the Sexes” I was 18 years old. I found it incredibly thought-provoking. It raised so many questions that I had never really considered previously, about women’s roles in society and how these are often imposed upon them by men, about homosexuality & gender identity, about crime & punishment. Two decades later, re-reading it, Nocenti’s story still stirred a great deal of contemplation.
Interviewed in October 1998 by the Daredevil fan site Man Without Fear, Nocenti explained the creation of Typhoid Mary…
“As for where Typhoid came from, you’ll have to ask the shrink I’ve as yet never gone to. I think I wanted to shatter the female stereotypes–virgin, whore, bitch, ditz, feminist, girl scout, all-suffering mother, et al.–into tiny fragments and yet keep all the pieces in the same little female bundle.”
Through her character Nocenti addresses the identities that men often assign to women. Typhoid Mary is a challenge to the Virgin-Whore Complex, the idea often perpetuated by male-dominant cultures that a woman is either a virtuous, chaste innocent or a sinful, promiscuous seductress, with no middle ground in-between. Mary is the “virgin” and Typhoid is the “whore,” and neither of them is healthy. These two halves are the result of fission of personality. The splitting of an atom initially results in tremendous energy but ultimately leads to radioactive decay. Likewise, Mary Walker’s personality split to protect her from trauma, but over time this became detrimental, with neither aspect able to function as a whole individual.
Mary by herself is kind and caring, but also helpless and unsophisticated, unprepared to cope with the complexities of the world. Typhoid, on the other hand, protects herself from harm by acting as the aggressor and manipulating others, but this renders her incapable of forming real friendships and relationships with others. Both Mary and Typhoid possess attributes that, if united, would make them a strong, independent, healthy person.
Bloody Mary is another unbalanced splinter of Mary Walker’s personality. Nocenti casts Bloody Mary as an embodiment of the stereotype of the militant feminist, what some derogatorily refer to as a “Feminazi.” Bloody Mary views the conflict between men and women in absolutes, declaring that “All women are political prisoners.” She regards all men as victimizers, not realizing that she is guilty of the same broad judgments as those she opposes.
If, however, the determination and convictions of Bloody Mary were united with the qualities of Mary Walker and Typhoid Mary, once again you would have an individual who is secure and balanced. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I think that all of us, men and women, are incredibly complex. At different times in our lives, in different setting among different people, we play different roles, we assume different identities, emphasize different parts of our personalities. Sometimes we have trouble deciding exactly who we are.
Even with someone such as Hunt, Nocenti demonstrates that people are complicated. For all his sins, at one point the psychiatrist does express self-doubt and begins to question his objectivity. Ultimately, though, Hunt pushes aside his uncertainty. He attempts to rationalize his actions to Walker with a misogynist rant about how all women are seductive manipulators. Sometimes, when you get right down to it, people really are jerks.
Jessie is an interesting figure. Through him/her, Nocenti touches upon the question of what determines sexual orientation and gender identity. How much of it is conscious individual choice, how much is a result of socialization, and how much of it is biological?
When I was in my teens I was still trying to make up my mind about homosexuality. I will admit at one point I knew very little about the subject and the thought of people of the same gender having sex seemed really weird. Then in the early 1990s I read newspaper articles about how homosexuality was likely determined by genetics. At that point I must have started to understand that if sexual orientation was something that a person was born with, just like skin color or eye color or height or being left-handed, then it was unjust to discriminate against someone on that basis.
As for the transgender aspect of Jessie’s character, two decades later sex change remains even more controversial than homosexuality. It still seems a bit odd to me. The concept of a person’s psychological gender identity being different from their physical one is difficult for me to understand. But just because something is beyond my conception doesn’t make it wrong. It is important to keep an open mind. And I recognize that it is crucial for people to be comfortable in their own skin, to be happy with who they are.
“Bloody Mary” is a good story, although not without its flaws. Perhaps Nocenti’s plot is overly ambitious, attempting to fit in its in-depth exploration of Typhoid Mary, appearances by Wolverine, Daredevil and Vengeance, and the introductions of Steel Raven, Jessie and the Fortress.
There may have been certain editorial directives at work that Nocenti had to work within, such as the use of Vengeance. It would have made more sense to have Ghost Rider appear but, again, the character was (temporarily) deceased, and so Vengeance was slotted in even though he’d never met Typhoid before. He doesn’t have much to do in this story. Daredevil also seems to be fighting for space. Halfway through MCP #151 he rather abruptly agrees to just let Wolverine handle Typhoid, and then vanishes from the story.
The division of artwork between Steve Lightle and Fred Harper isn’t ideal. Both Lightle and Harper are very talented artists, but they have extremely different styles. Consequently the two halves of this story are visually quite different.
Lightle’s detailed artwork on the first half of “Bloody Mary” is amazing. I have been a fan of his since I first saw his covers for Classic X-Men in 1989. So I was happy his work began appearing regularly in MCP starting in 1992.
Lightle works in tangent with colorist Maryann Lightle who, as you can probably guess by that last name, is his wife. It seems likely that her familiarity with her husband’s work enabled Maryann Lightle to do an extremely effective job coloring his art on this issue.
I especially liked Lightle’s design for Wolverine’s stealth uniform. Lightle also designed the Steel Raven character, and co-plotted the first half of the story with Nocenti.
It appears that Lightle was originally intended to illustrate the entire story. In late 1993 I met MCP editor Richard Ashford at a store signing. He had preview artwork for upcoming issues including this story, which he stated was going to run in #149-150. Fast forward to early 1994 and MCP #149 came out with no sign of Typhoid Mary but instead four stand-alone eight page stories. “Bloody Mary” by Nocenti & Lightle did begin in the next issue, but the letter column announced that the artist on second part would be Harper.
I don’t know if there were deadline problems and work on this story was running late (hence the story being moved back an issue), or if Ashford was worried that it would come in behind schedule, but whatever the case he assigned the second half to Harper, who was a regular contributor to MCP. Lightle did illustrate to cover for #151, though.
On the second half of “Bloody Mary,” Harper does very solid work. His layouts and storytelling on many of his pages are dramatic and inventive. As I said, Harper’s art is very unlike Lightle’s, but judged on its own merits it is good.
Regrettably sometimes the coloring doesn’t do Harper too many favors. I don’t blame colorist Joe Andreani, who did quite a bit of work at Marvel in the 1990s. Apparently MCP didn’t get the best color reproduction that was available at the time. Or perhaps it is just that Harper’s style with its heavy use of blacks is better-suited to appearing in black & white. I’ve seen a number of his original pages from MCP and they look so much more impressive in person, revealing a lot of detail that was unclear or obscured when they were printed.
In any case, despite certain problems, Marvel Comics Presents #150-151 are still a strong pair of issues. Ann Nocenti’s writing on “Bloody Mary: A Battle of the Sexes” it thoughtful and intelligent. Nocenti does an excellent job continuing to develop her creation Typhoid Mary, and through her addresses a number of controversial topics while crafting an entertaining story.
UPDATE: I was just notified by Steve Andreski, via the Back Issue Magazine group on Facebook, that there is an upcoming trade paperback from Marvel collecting the Typhoid Mary serials from MCP including “Bloody Mary,” as well as several other excellent stories featuring the character written by Ann Nocenti. Here’s the info…
I highly recommend purchasing a copy of the Daredevil: Typhoid’s Kiss trade paperback when it comes out. There are some really great stories that are going to be contained in this volume. Thanks for the info, Steve!
In My Not So Humble Opinion 