The Avengers gather as Ms. Marvel gives birth to a baby boy, but when Wasp tries to congratulate her, Carol rejects the sentiment, pointing out that she feels used by whoever impregnated her. By the end of his first hour the rapidly growing child begins speaking, soon informing the stunned Avengers that his name is Marcus, and begins building a high-tech device, his actions carefully monitored by the wary Avengers. In other parts of the USA timeslips take place, unleashing 19th century humans and dinosaurs; unaware of this, Vision scans Marcus and detects an unknown radiation emanating from him, which he speculates might account for the boy’s rapid growth. Having built up her resolve, a costumed Ms. Marvel returns to check on the infant she gave birth to only a couple of hours earlier, and is shocked to find him a full grown man. Returning to work on his machine, he promises to explain things once the flux has been dealt with; before he can clarify this comment, the mansion comes under attack from a bizarre mix of creatures and craft native to myriad times. The Avengers fight back, tackling Tyrannosaurs, armored knights, musketeers, native warriors and more, until Hawkeye, convinced Marcus is behind things, destroys the machine. An enraged Marcus turns on the Avengers, but backs down when Ms. Marvel explains he will need to fight her too. Revealing himself to be Immortus’ son, he explains his origins and how Ms. Marvel came to give birth to him. With his machine destroyed he must now either die or return to Limbo, condemned to eternal loneliness, if he wants to spare Earth from destruction, but surprisingly Ms. Marvel volunteers to go with him, saying that some of what she felt for him in Limbo still lingers. Using Mjolnir, Thor transports the couple out of time; the moment Marcus vanishes, so too do the time-displaced beings, leaving Iron Man and Hawkeye unsure if they could have done things differently, and hoping Ms. Marvel will be happy.
Growing lonely, Limbo’s ruler, Immortus, rescues a drowning woman and with her conceives a child, Marcus. He raises the boy in a pocket of change, so that he will age in otherwise timeless Limbo, but eventually Marcus’ mother vanishes, pulled back to her own time. Later Immortus also vanishes, leaving Marcus alone. Marcus realizes he cannot even go to Earth as his Limbo-origins will trigger a massive temporal flux; then he hits on the idea of being “born” on Earth, which should give him time to negate the flux before it becomes irreversible. Needing a strong female to survive the accelerated pregnancy, he chooses Ms. Marvel, snatching her from a Quinjet between seconds. He conjures historical romantic figures to help him woo her “with a subtle boost” from his father’s mind-influencing technology, and finally implants his essence within her, in a manner resembling pregnancy, before his pre-set mechanisms wipe her memories and return her to the moment he took her from.
decidedly unhappy Ms. Marvel turns up in Av Ann #10, ’81,where she reveals that Marcus used mind-control to make her “volunteer” to accompany him. D’Artagnan is identified in OMIAv #4, ’95; the same issue also identifies Marcus’ mother as Kang’s wife, Ravonna, but none of her later appearances corroborate this.
