"Dats your weakness Cage, you got ideals. Only fools die for ideals and fools do it all the time"
Black Mariah
In New York, there's a paddy wagon nicknamed "Black Mariah," and that is where Mariah got her nickname. After she gathered enough gang members she would instruct them to steal paddy wagons and ambulances. They would then use the paddy wagons to pick people up from the streets and rob them. This wasn't suspicious because at the time, police really would roll into a neighborhood and arrest large amounts of people at once. When they picked up dead people they would rob them of valuables. Then they would take the IDs and keys so they could enter the residence and rob their homes as well.One of these dead rich people was Frank Jenks who had been murdered while gambling at the Gem Theater. One of the people at the scene of this murder was Luke Cage. He saw what happened to Frank's body but he wasn't on a case and he was a felon so he kept a low profile. When Frank's wife found out what happened she hired Luke Cage to handle Black Mariah and her gang. Luke took the job for free because he felt guilty about not helping.
When Mariah found out Luke had found her hideout she set up an ambush. Luke managed to defeat Mariah's henchmen with some trouble. At that point she stepped up and attempted to face Luke. Where she easily handled normal men, she didn't realize at the time that Luke Cage was no normal man. She attempted to get away in a speed boat. I'm not making this is, she was so fat the boat flipped over and she was stuck floating until the police came because she was too fat to swim. That's not even right.
When Black Mariah is released from jail she relocates to Chinatown. While in Chinatown she starts selling a drug called Acid Z. She hired a man named Scimitar to help protect her business. However, things go south when she received a bad shipment of Acid Z. This causes people who take the drug to have horrifying hallucinations, that caused to behave erratically and die several hours later if they don't receive treatment. Considering this was an underground operation she lost a large portion of her customers within a few days.
The mass deaths and seemingly crazy people led to bad news for Mariah. Iron Fist began searching for her hideout because Chinatown was his turf. Additionally Luke Cage's friend D.W. Griffith who almost died. Mariah sent some of her gang members, now featuring Chinese Karate Masters.
When Ironfist finally tracked her down he defeated Scimitar. Mariah then stabbed Ironfist with a poison sewing needle, because she enjoys poison and sewing. This only happened because Ironfist was surprised she could move so fast. Mariah then caries Ironfist to the roof and throws him off hoping to kill him. She and Scimitar then leave in a van. Unknown to them Luke Cage had shown up and caught Ironfist during the fall. Luke then threw a light post through the van to prevent them from escaping.
Abilities and Equipment
- Surprisingly fast
- Strong as a professional weight lifter
- Knowledge of drug and poison production
- Poisoned sewing needles
- Exceptional hand to hand combatant - mostly boxing
- Various weapons - Mostly guns, knives and umbrellas
Off topic, comic books were racist as fuck back in the day. Mariah talked like a mammy, 80% of what Luke said rhymed and Mariah had a gang of random Chinese people that all knew karate and cut out hearts regularly because that's what Chinese people do? This is why when people talk about the "good old days," of comics you have to tell them to shut the fuck up. It's full of racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other ism and phobia you can think of it.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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Black Mariah a grandma plug lol
ReplyDeleteKnit you a sweater and sell you a brick in the same day.
DeleteGood article! Glad this is now a regular thing you do for February.
ReplyDelete