Mary MacPherran (Earth-616)

Early Life[]

Mary MacPherran was born prematurely in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. Mary was often overlooked as the smallest of her siblings and would immerse herself in fantasy books. She grew little over the years, remaining short and scrawny compared to her peers; a popular girl at school named Vanessa Ashwood gave Mary the nickname "Skeeter" (a slang word for mosquito) because of this. Her only real friend was Marsha Rosenberg, who was similarly unpopular (in her case for being awkward and overweight). Consistently mocked and humiliated since childhood by the wealthy Vanessa and her social clique, Mary (and Marsha) had to take menial jobs to survive. Mary grew bitter over her hard life, and fantasized about something improbable in her favor such as winning the lottery. These fantasies soon turned to gaining superpowers to be admired, and to exact revenge on her tormentors.^[4]

When the second Spider-Woman Julia Carpenter began to make appearances in Denver, Rosenberg remarked that her hair was the same color as Mary's. Mary falsely confided in her friend that she was secretly Spider-Woman, and when Rosenberg spread the rumor, Mary saw her popularity grow and was invited to a party by Vanessa and her clique.^[4]

Secret Wars[]

In the midst of the party, however, their suburb of Denver was ripped from Earth and used by the alien Beyonder to create the makeshift planet Battleworld. When the real Spider-Woman arrived on the scene and saved the guests from falling debris, Vanessa and her friends realized they'd been duped and chased MacPherran and Rosenberg into the forests of Battleworld. Frightened and exhausted, the two young women were found by the villain Doctor Doom, who was looking for recruits for his army of supervillains; he offered the girls the chance of gaining superhuman powers, and they accepted Doom's offer.^[4]

Doom recreated both women using highly advanced alien technologies found in the aptly named "Doombase", which were powered by immense energies from a ferocious alien storm outside. Able to use the technology entirely as he desired, Doom induced high-level metahuman abilities of a specific and particular design. While Rosenberg (now known as Volcana) received a fiery form composed of ionized plasma, MacPherran became far taller, muscular, and more buxom than average. She now had an incredibly high level of superhuman strength and durability, but the change also affected her mentality. Where Mary MacPherran had been small and timid, the newly-named Titania was proud and confident, perhaps to extremes. Soon after, she challenged Carl Creel, the Absorbing Man, to a fight, but he refused, reasoning that he had "nothing to prove...to a dame."^[13]

The time did come for her to try her new powers in battle, first against She-Hulk (marking the beginning of a long rivalry between the two), and then against Spider-Man, but during both fights Titania realized that strength wouldn't be enough to defeat her enemies and that her arrogance was getting the best of her.^[4][14]

After her run-in with Spider-Man, she grew close with Absorbing Man, who tried to cheer her up,^[15] and, after she decided to deliver payback against Vanessa for the years of abuse, she was talked out of going further by him.^[4]

Return to Earth[]

The pair did not settle down to the quiet life, instead joining Baron Zemo and his latest incarnation of the Masters of Evil. Their first assignment was to recruit the powerful Moonstone into the group.^[16] Later on, Zemo kept them at large to field new recruits, which prevented them from joining the main group in the assault on Avengers Mansion.^[17] To kill time, Titania robbed a jewelry store, only to come to the attention of Spider-Man; too afraid to fight, she ran from combat, only to encounter the hero again in LaGuardia Airport. There, once more Titania tried not to fight, having Creel do so on her behalf; yet the sight of his near-defeat at Spider-Man's hands was enough for Titania to temporarily overcome her arachnophobia, charging into combat. It was a moot point, though, since Creel ended the fight by threatening to destroy a plane full of innocents if Spider-Man refused to leave the scene, which he reluctantly did.^[18]

The villainous couple received another assignment from the Masters: this time, they were to kill the Avenger Hercules, who had been gravely injured previously by the Masters, and was in a coma in hospital. Hercules was saved by a guard of only the diminutive heroes Ant-Man and The Wasp; Creel was stung by the Wasp as he switched from liquid to human form, and Titania was shrunk to the size of an insect and then blasted through a wall by Wasp. The villains were easily subdued, with Titania taken to the Vault, a superhuman penitentiary.^[19]

The Vault[]

Titania's stay in the Vault was not to last long, however. When Tony Stark, Iron Man, began the Armor Wars - the battle to destroy or disable all enhanced armor types based on stolen Iron Man designs - this inevitably led him to the Guardsmen, the Vault's wardens. The ensuing conflict, while successful from his point of view, created a power failure, allowing Titania and Mister Hyde to escape. While Captain America, then known as The Captain, managed to subdue and capture Mister Hyde, his colleague Demolition Man was humiliated when he tried to apprehend the far stronger Titania; when allowed the opportunity for a rematch later, a scared Demolition Man simply let the villainess escape.^[20]

Using her newfound freedom, Titania traveled to Washington D.C., where she wrecked havok to attract She-Hulk's attention for a rematch. After losing a succession of battles with She-Hulk, however, Titania promised to never attack her again, and to return to jail.^[21]

Frightful Four[]

Broken out yet again, Titania joined with the Wizard, Klaw, and Hydro-Man, to become the new Frightful Four. Battling the Fantastic Four, the team only won due to help from Dragon Man, Professor Gregson Gilbert's creation, and Aron, a renegade Watcher; in the rematch, the Fantastic Four prevailed, only to have both Fours imprisoned by Aron in suspended animation, using clones of the Fantastic Four to act out adventures he wished to witness. When both teams were freed, Aron chose to witness the dreams of his clones instead, transporting the Frightful Four back to the Vault as a service to the Fantastic Four.^[22]

Acts of Vengeance[]

However, this stay in The Vault was as permanent as earlier ones - a conspiracy between Loki and the Wizard, among other villains, saw Titania free once more, as part of Loki's Acts of Vengeance plan. Teaming supervillains to fight enemies not usually their own, Titania was dismayed when Doctor Doom, her partner, told her she would face not She-Hulk, but Spider-Man. Doom managed to stoke Titania's pride and anger, allowing her to overcome her fear and engage Spider-Man; unfortunately, Spider-Man had temporarily bonded with the Uni-Power, making him Captain Universe. This granted him the power to render Titania unconscious in one massive energy discharge; the only benefit of the situation was that Titania had lost her fear of Spider-Man.^[23]

This time, Titania did not even make it back to the Vault; she was freed by Graviton, who also collected the Trapster and the Brothers Grimm, all of whom had been humiliated by Spider-Man in his Captain Universe guise. Along with Chameleon and Goliath, they attempted to take revenge, only to fail; Titania was humiliatingly defeated by a collision with a speeding bus.^[24]

Reunion With the Absorbing Man[]

Escaping the Vault once again, Titania, ever the team player, joined Superia's all-female army the Femizons, as foes of Captain America and Paladin.^[25] This did not work out, however, and so Titania resolved to track down her old flame - the Absorbing Man. She interfered with a battle between him and Eric Masterson, who was Thor at the time, and, when she appeared injured by a blow from Thor's hammer Mjolnir, Creel admitted his love for her, which she gladly reciprocated. Seeing this, Thor allowed them to leave.^[26]

While Creel made an attempt to live a normal life, Titania was more concerned with getting payback from She-Hulk and robbing jewelry stores; concerned, Creel attempted to "scare her straight", collaborating with Thor in a ploy involving a Guggenheim exhibit. While the appearance of Spider-Man and special police unit Code: Blue complicated matters, Titania ultimately remembered her love for Creel.^[27][28]

Drawn to an A.I.M. convention in Boca Caliente, Titania joined with the Abomination and Gargantua to battle the Town Called Hulk;^[29] once this was done, Titania came to her senses somewhat, asking Creel to marry her. The wedding was attended by many supervillains; while the Avengers interrupted the ceremony, they left the couple alone.^[30] In their new life, the pair seemed not to be able to stay under the radar, assuming the guises of Thunder Girl and Lightning Bolt in order to hunt Spider-Man for the reward offered by Norman Osborn. Despite contracting severe skin burns as a result of this escapade, this was not the end of the pair's villainy; committing more robberies, Titania also clashed repeatedly with She-Hulk again.^[3]

Illness & Recuperation[]

However, this was not a permanent state of affairs; despite her enhanced durability, Titania contracted a terminal illness: cancer. Without health insurance and no money, she was quickly forced to move from the hospital to an abandoned building.^[31] Slowly weakening, but still massively strong, she fought through the illness with the help of doctors provided by Thor; as a result, the Absorbing Man repented to Thor, bowing to the new Lord of Asgard.^[32]

Power Gem[]

Still, Titania proved unable to stay away from She-Hulk, and underwent an intense physical regimen to boost her abilities. Unbeknownst to her, She-Hulk's strength levels were also higher than ever before. Battered and inadvertently humiliated by her, Titania was offered the chance at revenge after obtaining the Power Gem, one of the legendary Infinity Gems, from its former owner, the former Champion of the Universe.^[4]

He had agreed to cease using the Power Gem as a condition of his defeat at the hand of She-Hulk, but was free to gain his own revenge by proxy through Titania. After an initial defeat by the newly-empowered Titania, She-Hulk tricked her into believing that she had killed her in a second battle; Titania's initial rush of triumph suddenly melted into uncertainty, as she realized that her life now had no meaning or focus without the object of her obsessive hatred.With Titania no longer having a profound desire for more power, She-Hulk was able to claim the gem for herself and use its power to knock Titania out with a single punch.^[33]

Titania was later incarcerated in the Lang Memorial Penitentiary, a.k.a. the Pym Experimental Prison #2, a prison in which superhuman inmates were shrunk with Pym particles to less than an inch in height.^[34]

Civil War[]

Still shrunken to her diminutive form, she was reunited with her husband Creel, clashing again with She-Hulk. While shrunk, she was grabbed by Jazinda (a female Skrull) and thrown to a shark, who ate her.^[35] Titania survived this somehow, as she encountered X-Factor Investigations^[36] and was later at the Raft, commenting along with other female inmates on the prowess of the new warden Luke Cage.^[37]

Fear Itself[]

When the Serpent was freed by Skadi (Sin), he called seven hammers to Earth. Titania was transformed by one of these hammers, becoming one of the Worthy: Skirn, Breaker of Men. She then set off with the Absorbing Man to find the Hammer destined for him.^[38]

Following the final battle with the Serpent, the hammer of Titania is taken from her as well as the other hammers of the other Worthy. She was then returned to the Raft where she suffered a nervous breakdown, and claimed `they` were going to take her hammer, moments before Sin's forces attacked.^[39]

Illuminati[]

After one too many times of getting caught by the Avengers and imprisoned, Titania decided to go legit and stop her criminal career. She was released from prison on parole, and managed to convince the Absorbing Man to reluctantly promise to follow her footsteps once he got out as well. However, her past didn't help in trying to live a normal life, having trouble finding a job, and a decent lifestyle.^[11]

She-Hulk managed to get her a job at a pawnshop, which was shortly thereafter assaulted by a band of robbers. While Titania used her powers to stop the robbers, the pawnshop owner blamed her for the attack, and Titania ultimately came to blows with Luke Cage and Iron Fist, displaying new levels of powers. She was rescued by the Hood, the person who had secretly set up the robbery in the first place, and managed to convince her to return to her life of crime, and become a member of his Illuminati.^[11]

Following a failed attempt at stealing Asgardian weapons,^[40] the Hood helped Titania rescue Absorbing Man from a prison known as Pleasant Hill, but she remained hesitant to trust the Hood, after discovering he had secretly upgraded her powers. When Robbins tried to amass an army with the villains that had been imprisoned at Pleasant Hill, he proposed to target the families of their enemies. Titania confronted Robbins, believing that to be a line that shouldn't be crossed. During an ensuing discussion, the Hood revealed to Titania that he had set her up to lose her job. Mary forced the Hood to teleport them away from their pase, and during a fight, she defeated him and destroyed his cloak, losing reverting to her previous level of power. When the police arrived to the scene, Titania realized that it was impossible for her to live a normal life, and decided to embrace her criminal career together with the Absorbing Man.^[41]

Black Bolt[]

Sometime later Titania was told of her husband's heroic sacrifice by the Inhuman Black Bolt and alien telepath Blinky. She mourned his death and arranged his funeral, which was attended by Captain America, Thor, and the Wrecking Crew. After the funeral, Black Bolt was attacked by Lash. Titania helped fought off the Inhuman villains, but was unable to prevent them from kidnapping Blinky.^[42] Soon the Jailer possessed Blinky's mind in order to kill Black Bolt, so Lockjaw took Titania to Parkwood Cemetery where Absorbing Man suddenly emerged from his grave. Absorbing Man and Titania helped Black Bolt fight a Jailer-possessed Blinky until they managed to drive Jailer out of her.^[43]

Gamma Flight[]

After Creel was invited into Gamma Flight, he requested Titania to be offered a spot in the task force as well.^[44] As part of Gamma Flight, Titania and Creel became tangled in the ongoing battle between the Hulk and Shadow Base, a conflict that ended in the green goliath taking control of it.^[45] When the Hulk waged war against Roxxon, the company deployed a group of giant monsters to wreak havoc in Phoenix, Arizona. Gamma Flight assisted the Hulk and his allies, and Titania single-handedly took down one of the monsters.^[46]

Gamma Flight came at odds with the Hulk after the Leader set him up to cause the destruction of a small town by overloading him with gamma, causing him to detonate.^[47] The Hulk was ultimately taken down and held prisoner at the Alpha Flight Space Station, but he managed to escape in his human form, slipping past Gamma Flight in the process. After Alpha Flight's acting commander Henry Gyrich threatened to take action against Gamma Flight for their failure, the team walked out on him.^[48] Titania and the Absorbing Man would later rejoin the rogue team to intercept a fight between the Hulk and the Avengers, and Gamma Flight helped the Hulk escape since they had come to discover the Leader was pulling the strings.^[49] Once they parted ways with the Hulk and his allies, Gamma Flight went into hiding at a safe house of Titania and Creel. They resurfaced after a new gamma mutate codenamed Stockpile went on a rampage. Later, Gamma Flight discovered a rogue government agency called Project Green Spring was experimenting with gamma on the townsfolk of Thomasville, and shut down their operations.^[50]

Artificially Enhanced Physiology: Due to undergoing Doctor Doom's mutagenic alteration process, Titania possesses various superhuman physical attributes.^[51]

• Superhuman Strength: Titania possesses vast superhuman strength that has increased over the years due to intensive weight training. Titania was originally strong enough to lift about 85 tons and she can now lift about 100 tons.^[51]
• Superhuman Stamina: Titania's highly advanced musculature generates considerably less fatigue toxins than ordinary humans. She can physically exert herself at peak capacity for about 24 hours, before the build up of fatigue toxins in her bloodstream begins to impair her.^[51]
• Superhuman Durability: Titania's body is highly resistant to physical injury. She is capable of withstanding high caliber bullets, falls from great heights, tremendous impact force, and temperatures as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius and as low as -120 degrees Celsius without sustaining injury.^[51] She is also immune to most terrestrial diseases.^[1]
• Accelerated Healing Factor: Mary heals twice as fast as a normal human.^[1]

Experienced Fighter: Titania is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having undergone training from the Champion of the Universe. She is particularly experienced in using street fighting techniques that allow her to make full use of her great strength.^[53]

• Manbreaker (formerly)

• Gamma Flight ship, jetpack

• She has no connection with Titania (Davida DeVito).
• Once, Titania was impersonated by the mutant shape-shifter Copycat.^[54]
• Titania showed her evil nature in a major way in Fantastic Four #548, where the Frightful Four were discussing what to do with one of their hostages, Susan Storm. It is Titania that urged that they kill her, but the Wizard refused and insisted that they keep her alive.