Friday, September 27, 2024

The Return of...NIGHT NURSE...BOTH of Her!

In 2004, after 31 years of not even being mentioned anywhere in the Marvel Multiverseshe suddenly turned up in Marvel's Daredevil #58 (2004) as Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich tried to find a wounded Daredevil/Matt Murdock, whose dual identity is now known to the public...
Urich, who discovered DD's secret identity (but kept it secret) feels that the medico who aids injured superheroes would make a good story, but that her identity and location of her clinic be kept secret!

Not having super-strength or invulnerability, Daredevil tended to be her steadiest patient...
Besides DD, numerous other injured heroes and heroines have shown up on the Night Nurse's doorstep (including Captain America, Spider-ManLuke Cage, Iron Fist, Spider-Woman [Jessica Drew], Elektra, FireStarAriana) and, particularly, a certain surgeon-turned sorcerer...
For the record, I haven't seen the incident Stephen Strange describes where Linda Carter was rescued by a super-hero/heroine!
Linda plays a major role in the Doctor Strange mini-series The Oath, and has a brief affair with Stephen.
She reunites with him, joining Marvel's other practicing physicians/superbeings...
...in Marvel's Jane Foster: Valkyrie #6 & #7 (2019-2020) to make an interdimensional house call to keep Death itself from dying...
...as we showed HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE during a previous October Halloween Hospital Horrors blogathon!
Note: Jane Foster is now an MD as well as a Valkyrie!
Night Nurse is still around, and continues to appear in Marvel comics to this day!
But that's not all!
"Night Nurse" has also appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...but she's not Linda Carter!
In the MCU, the Night Nurse title is used by Claire Temple, RN, another Marvel Multiverse medico, performed by Rosario Dawson!
The character has appeared on Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and The Defenders!

In Marvel Comics, Dr (not Nurse) Claire Temple was involved with both current beau Luke Cage (Hero for Hire/Power Man/Cage) and ex-husband Dr Bill Foster (Black Goliath/Giant-Man II/Goliath IV) who was not an MD like her, but a PhD-holding biochemist who worked with Dr Henry Pym (Ant-Man I/Giant-Man I/Goliath I/Yellowjacket I)!

As you might have guessed, Luke and Bill ended up fighting it out for her affections, as super-heroes tend to do in such situations!
Trivia: Both Claire Temple and Linda Carter were appearing simultaneously in Marvel Comics in the 1970s, but their paths never overlapped!
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) is an RN instead of an MD, she and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) are, as they say, "involved"!
Dr Bill Foster/Goliath (Laurence Fishburne) is Dr Henry Pym/Ant-Man 1's (Michael Douglas) former business and research partner.
There is no mention of any connection between Temple and Foster in the Marvel movies or TV series...so far!

To wind this month-long feature up, we return to All of the Marvels author Douglas Wolk to explain his theory of Linda Carter being the lynchpin of the Marvel Multiverse.
(Bet you thought we forgot about that, didn't you?)
The third reason I like to think of Linda Carter, Student Nurse #1 as the real starting point of what I read for this book is that the big Marvel narrative becomes strangely beautiful if it’s Linda’s story.
It’s ridiculous to think of any one character as the protagonist of this half-million-page epic, of course, but—what if that were true?
What would it mean if the Marvel story is really about her, as comparatively little time as she’s spent on panel?

The Marvel story is understood, too often, as a story for boys; with Linda at its center, it also belongs to a specific tradition of stories for girls.
It’s a story in which science and knowledge are defining forces; as Linda’s story, it’s about a woman who begins the most important part of her education on its first page and continues to learn even when she steps away from our view.
 
Linda Carter lives in a world more dangerous and overwhelming than anything she could have imagined when she first arrived at Metropolitan Hospital.
If Marvel’s body of comics is her story, it’s about how that world has changed around a woman who has a perspective like that of the story’s readers—someone with no special powers or more-than-human gifts.
Linda’s life has given her just what the old con man Stan Lee promised when she first appeared: thrills, but also humor and glamorous romance.
What she’s learned from the marvels that saved her is how to be brave and kind—and also that it can be fun for her to give herself another name, and sometimes wear a little cape.
Now who can argue with that?
Not me!
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Friday, September 20, 2024

The Departure of LINDA CARTER and the Coming of...NIGHT NURSE!

We Have Already Seen the Coming of Linda Carter: Student Nurse...

(you were expecting Lynda Carter aka Wonder Woman?
We already did that visual joke twice!)
As of #9 in 1962 (above), Linda disappeared...and I mean totally-vanished!
That run's never been reprinted!
But it wasn't the end of Linda Carter in the Marvel Multiverse, folks!
A decade later, Marvel launched a trio of female lead characters in their own titles as superheroine The Cat, jungle girl Shanna the She-Devil, and Night Nurse all made their debuts within a month of each other!
The other two were totally-new characters, but Night Nurse was a sequel/semi-reboot of Linda Carter with a whole new supporting cast and an emphasis on "relevant" storylines within a hospital/soap-opera format similar to those on prime-time TV!
While not exactly an ensemble book (Linda was clearly the star), we got to see a lot more of her roommates' family and friends whose tales wove through the fabric of hospital life than the previous version!
Since the Comics Code had been loosened the previous year...
...storylines that had previously been forbidden...
...showing authority figures like doctors becoming drunk and endangering patients' lives could now be shown...
...along with the pickled physician facing relatively-real life consequences!
No "happy ending" here!
The third issue was an "urban crime" story popular in movies and TV of the early '70s.
But the sales on the first two issues were poor and the decision was made to cancel the book as of #4 in 1973.
So the creatives decided to try something really different...
...doing a contemporary gothic romance tale starring one of the supporting characters!
There was no interaction/crossover with any of the other Marvel characters in any of those issues, not did Linda or any of the cast appear (even as cameos) in any other Marvel title...until Marvel's Daredevil #80 (2006)...
Here's the intro...
Be Here Next Friday for...well...
Just Be HERE!

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Friday, September 13, 2024

The CrossOver That Shaped the Marvel Multiverse...

When Last We Left Linda Carter...
No, not that Lynda (with a "y") Carter!
This Linda (with an "i") Carter!
...we had learned she has an important place in the Marvel Multiverse!

As Douglas Wolk, author of the monumental work All of the Marvels put it...
"Still, I think of (Linda Carter: Student Nurse), rather than Fantastic Four, as being where the collective Marvel story really begins, for three reasons.
The first is that it was part of Marvel’s first shared-universe, multiple-series crossover, which was published immediately after Fantastic Four #1—and didn’t involve any superheroes."
I'd add that this was the first crossover between non-superhero characters who would also later appear within the Marvel Multiverse
!
Without further adieu, here's the never-reprinted milestone from Atlas/Marvel's Patsy Walker #99 (1962)...
Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Al Hartley (who, conveniently, happened to do those jobs on both the Patsy Walker and Linda Carter: Student Nurse comics!)
Both Patsy and Linda would later reappear in Bronze Age Marvel titles!,
Patsy would play a supporting role in ex-X-Man The Beast's short-lived strip in Amazing Adventures before following him over to The Avengers and finding a technologically-advanced costume which enabled her to become HellCat, then joining the team!
She's been a part of the Marvel Multiverse (including the Marvel Cinematic Universe) ever since!
(Fanboy/Girl Note: the costume previously-belonged to a heroine named The Cat...
...who had metamorphed into a were-cat using the name 
Tigra, and didn't need the outfit any longer!)
(I know, I know...TMI...but it's my blog, so bear with me!)
Linda, whose comic was cancelled after nine issues, would reappear in 1972...

...ironically, the same year as The Cat debuted!
(Amazing how all this stuff overlaps, eh?)
But. before Linda disappeared for a decade, she crossed-over with another character who would also become part of the Marvel Multiverse!
Her final issue, #9 in 1963 featured someone visiting her comic...in the last Linda Carter story published!
Don't let the title deceive you...
Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Al Hartley.
Millie the Model was, until its' cancellation, Timely/Atlas/Marvel's longest-running, continuously-published title, (207 issues from 1945 to 1973)!
Millie, along with Patsy (and Hedy) made their Marvel Universe debut in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965) as onlookers at the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm.
Unlike Patsy, she never gained superpowers (except in a dream, as shown HERE), but has hung out with the Defenders, Dazzler, She-Hulk and The Sentry in their respective series as well as starred in a mini-series called Models, Inc about fashion models involved with superheroes!
But this mini-series is about Linda Carter.
Sadly, we've run our of room for this week.
So, be here next Friday, as we explore the 1970s incarnation of our favorite RN as she becomes...
Night Nurse!
(And we'll tell you the other two things Wolk said!)
It's worth the wait!

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