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MADAME MASQUE
First
appeared in IRON MAN #17, a sexy, golden-masked femme fatale, the
right-hand gal of Midas In
truth, she was Whitney Frost, the Maggia's former Big M. After
fleeing a blundered attack on Stark International, her face was scarred by
chemicals in a crash. She emerged with a golden mask to hide her scarred
visage at the side of Midas--Her first assignment: help Midas obtain Tony
Stark's fortune. But she fell in love with Stark when he treated her
kindly, despite her deformity, and helped hhim escape. She
rekindled her romance with Tony in #104 (after trying to protect him by
disguising herself as his secretary, Krissy Longfellow). Madame Masque
learned that Tony was Iron Man and helped him defeat Midas and regain
control of Stark International. After
an up-and-down romance with Tony, her father--Count Nefaria--sought her
help and Masque was forced to choose between her father and her heart.
Reluctantly, she chose to help her father, turning on Tony Stark. When
Count Nefaria was killed while fighting Iron Man, she committed to a life
of crime (as head of the Maggia) and became consumed with avenging
dear old daddy. She
turned up later as Obadiah Stane’s right hand gal, gunning for revenge
on Tony. Double-crossed by Stane, she provided him one last chess gambit
from his grave. Masque and Bethany Cabe had their consciousnesses
exchanged, allowing Masque to get very close to Stark, close enough to try
and kill him. After
her escape, Madame Masque became increasingly paranoid and went
underground--although she still controlled a vast criminal empire from a
desert lair. There, she retreated from the outside world. Feeling betrayed
by almost everyone she ever knew or loved, she protected herself from her
enemies and friends with bio-duplicates. She sent these clones out to deal
with the world. But even these betrayed her. Some
of the duplicates broke free and developed wills of there own, some even
thought they were the original M.M. She was forced to kill them. Oddly,
she chose to eliminate some of them publicly, apparently to throw her
enemies and the authorities of her trail. In
#245, Tony Stark found out that Masque had been killed, her body dumped
gangland style. But this was only the beginning of a long line of dead
"Masque’s" that showed up from time to time, sending former
friends and law enforcement agencies into a swirl of confusion as dead
Madame Masque's kept turning up.
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