In 2004, after 31 years of not even being mentioned anywhere in the Marvel Multiverse, she 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-Man, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Spider-Woman [Jessica Drew], Elektra, FireStar, Ariana) 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...
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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