Morgan Stark
Morgan Stark is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics and a relative of Tony Stark.
Lexi Rabe portrayed Morgan Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film .
Publication history
Morgan Stark first appeared in Tales of Suspense vol. 1 #68 and was created by Don Heck and Al Hartley.Fictional character biography
Morgan Stark is the cousin of Tony Stark, the nephew of Howard Stark and Maria Stark, and the son of Edward Stark and a relative of Arno Stark.Morgan believed growing up that his uncle cheated his father out of the Stark company fortune; Edward actually asked Howard to be bought out because Edward didn’t want a part in the Stark family business. Because of that, Morgan has always tried to take Stark Industries from Tony. Having returned from Ireland, Happy Hogan resumes work at Stark Industries, and Tony gets a letter from his cousin asking for help. Tony doesn't realize is that Morgan is under Count Nefaria's employ hoping to use Morgan in a plot to destroy Tony, although Morgan would do this "for free". First traveling to the United States to pretend to seek Tony's help, Morgan is introduced to Stark Industries' staff and shown around the building while Tony is on the way to a party that night and happens to spy a rocket and decides to investigate as Iron Man and finds a bomb inside. Iron Man rushed back to Stark Industries and Tony calls a bomb squad but the field is found empty. Morgan uses a visio-projector to make his cousin hallucinate and think of seeing aliens. Morgan begins to make everyone doubt Tony's sanity, and causes Senator Hamilton Byrd to accuse Tony deliberately of being a spy for Communist and to demand that Stark Industries be stripped of the US Army's defense contracts for fear of a threat to national security. Iron Man returns to the original location of seeing aliens and scans the area, unaware that Morgan has followed there as well. Just before Morgan can blast Iron Man with the visio-projector, real aliens from the planet Froma arrive to investigate Earth and spot Iron Man and attack, discovering Morgan during the battle as well. Iron Man fights off the aliens and saves Morgan's life. Afterwards, Morgan is forced to tell everyone that Tony is sane, and Senator Byrd's demands are retracted as well. After everything is sorted out, Morgan is taken back to Europe for Count Nefaria's punishment for failing.
After this failure, Morgan was a pawn in Midas and Madame Masque's attempt to seize Stark Industries. Following attempts to obtain the Stark family industry for himself, Morgan seemingly died in a staged car accident as would-be allies felt that he overstepped his boundaries.
Now physically decrepit, Morgan hires a mercenary team consisting of Stockpile, Unicorn, Calico and Sunstreak ) to seize control of Iron Man's armory of suits while Morgan himself uses the construct Brass under his control. Iron Man and War Machine succeed in defeating Stockpile but not before destroying Brass, causing Morgan to suffer traumatic sensory feedback. Fearing death, Morgan links with every suit currently stored in Iron Man's armory which he uses to attempt to destroy Iron Man, as War Machine was occupied getting Joust and Sunstreak to a safe location for medical treatment, and Unicorn has escaped on his own. As he was about to achieve his goal of killing Iron Man, Morgan chooses to unmask first, revealing the face of a younger version of his cousin that the Avengers had only recently retrieved from an earlier alternate timeline. The pause gave Iron Man enough time to override Morgan's link, cutting his control and activating self-destruct. Morgan apparently dies on the floor of his Helicon facility.
During the "Dark Reign" storyline, Morgan somehow turns up alive where he was posing as Stark Solutions' CEO. Morgan merged with Ultimo which gets converted into a virus capable of bestowing enhanced strength, speed, regeneration, and optic blast abilities to its victims. It is revealed that Ultimo's virus was engineered by the Human Engineering Life Laboratories, which was acting on the commission of the Stark Solutions corporation, which had been contracted by H.A.M.M.E.R. to study Ultimo's potential as a weapon. Having destroyed Ultimo's body, War Machine sets out to destroy the brain, which had been split up into three discrete units, stored at separate locations. Two of Ultimo's units are destroyed by War Machine's allies, but Ultimo's third unit turns out to be Morgan. Now transformed into a giant, humanoid robot as a quicksilver-like attempt at being Ultimo, Morgan possessed of the doomsday machine's programming to destroy all life and fights War Machine. However, the third component is destroyed when War Machine uses Ultimo's own weapons technology - which is obtained when the robot's body is destroyed - against itself. Morgan then self-destructs which scatters Ultimo's liquid body all over the landscape, soon merging with the plant life. Morgan/Ultimo planned to convert all vegetation on Earth into metal which would suffocate all life within two weeks. However, War Machine renders Ultimo docile by forcing Norman Osborn into showing memories of respective happiest moments but Osborn then took advantage of this to take Ultimo for himself. Ultimo's core programming gets erased and turned into a giant, floating ball of liquid metal that essentially awaited instructions; Morgan gets ejected from Ultimo's sphere during all this.
Other versions
The Ultimate Universe version of Morgan Stark is not as villainous as his Mainstream Marvel version. In Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, he and Tony Stark are taken hostage along with other civilians by Guatemalan guerrilla terrorists run by the "Red Devil" who demand his cousin's technology in exchange for the hostages' freedom. The terrorists kill Morgan when Tony refuses to cooperate, much to Tony's shock and Iron Man's makeshift armor is built to defeat the terrorists and free the hostages.In other media
Television
Morgan Stark appeared in the Iron Man segment of The Marvel Super Heroes. He was seen in the episode "Dream Master".Film
- The relative that inspired the name Morgan for her character is alluded to in ' as the uncle of Pepper Potts,.
- A different adaptation of Morgan Stark appears in ', played by Alexandra Rachael Rabe and Katherine Langford. She is the daughter of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts. Rabe's portrayal is a four-year-old born after Thanos's universal genocide. Langford was cast as an older version who appears in an otherworldly plane, but her appearance was removed as the change in actors led to a lack of emotional connection with test audiences; this deleted scene appears in the bonus features included with Disney+.
Video games