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    Fabian Stankowicz

    Character » Fabian Stankowicz appears in 141 issues.

    Fabian Stankowicz is a technical whiz who tried to make a name for himself by attacking the Avengers as the Mechano-Marauder. He would eventually reform as Mechanaut and use his talents to assist the Avengers and Captain America.

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    History

    Origin

    Fabian Stankowicz was born to a lower-class family in the Bronx, but had a knack for engineering. Although it seemed his passion for mechanics would amount to nothing, Stankowicz won a large lottery prize and used the money to move his family to a better neighborhood. As he furthered his personal studies, Fabian aspired to use his genius to grow even wealthier by becoming world-famous. He decided that the best path to notoriety was to become a super-villain and defeat Earth's greatest heroes, the Avengers

    Fabian: the Novice Super-Villain

    Mechano-Marauder vs. the Avengers 
    Mechano-Marauder vs. the Avengers 
    Using his fortune to construct his first suit of Mechano-Marauder armor, Fabian stormed his way to the Avengers Mansion, demanding that the heroes face him in battle. Recognizing that Fabian was a novice, Iron Man engaged the Mechano-Marauder solo. No match for the superior Iron Man armor, the Mechano-Marauder armor was wrecked and Fabian was sent to prison.

    Now determined to have revenge upon the Avengers, Fabian designed a powerful tank-like suit of armor with a second escape suit worn on the inside. Attacking the Avengers Mansion while the Wasp was holding an all-female membership drive, Fabian fought with guests Black Widow, Dazzler, Invisible Girl, She-Hulk and Spider-Woman. Most of the women realized Fabian posed little danger, and each of them departed after taking shots at him, until She-Hulk and the Wasp finally defeated him.

    Hearing the veteran superhero the Thing was lying wounded in hospital following his battle with the Champion of the Universe, Fabian was one of many villains who believed they stood a chance at destroying the Thing, but Spider-Man confronted Fabian outside the building and webbed up his Mecho-Marauder armor's energy blaster, causing it to overload and destroy the armor.

    When the Avengers Beast, Black Panther, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Mockingbird and Wonder Man appeared on David Letterman's television talk show, Fabian devised what he thought was an unbeatable series of death-traps in the studio, and engaged in banter with Letterman as he boasted of his devices' powers. When Fabian revealed he was holding the device controlling his weaponry, Letterman knocked him over the head with a giant doorknob and used Fabian's controller to turn off the weapons. Fabian was humiliated yet again. 
     

    Fabian: The Mighty Avenger

    Having finally realized the error of his ways, Fabian created a new identity as the Mechanaut and petitioned to join the Avengers. Captain America invited him and fellow applicants Blue Shield, Gladiatrix and Speedball to demonstrate their abilities in a tryout session at the team's then-base Avengers Island, but ultimately none of them were chosen for membership.

    However, Captain America was assembling an expanded staff to maintain the island, and he invited Fabian to join the Avengers support crew. Fabian eagerly accepted, and on his first assignment helped the Captain transfer the Red Skull's fourth Sleeper robot into custody on the island. 

    Employed as the team's inventor, Fabian set about improving many of the Avengers' standard devices, vehicles and security equipment, but was most often requested to aid Captain America himself. When Dr. Doom's Killer Robots attacked Avengers Island, the support crew and Quasar were the only personnel on hand to battle them. Fabian donned an old Mechano-Marauder armor to help in the fight, but was still barely effective. In the end, the robots sunk the island.

    The Avengers relocated to the sub-basement of Avengers Mansion while a new headquarters was built over their heads. Fabian set to work improving the security devices, but he and the other support crew members fell under the thrall of Mother Night and Machinesmith, who used hypnosis to make the crew plant spy devices in the new Avengers base as the duo's birthday present for the Red Skull. When this plot failed, Mother Night and her brother Minister Blood attempted to make the support crew assassinate the Avengers. This plan also failed, and Fabian and the others were released from their hypnotic spell. 
     

    Streets of Poison and Fabian's Drug Addiction

    One night at a friend's party, Fabian was given a sample of new designed drug called "Ice." Fabian became an addict, quickly shed most his weight and fell into paranoia. When Captain America finally confronted him, Fabian confessed what he had done and the Captain placed him into drug rehab. This event inspired Captain America to bring down the Ice trade. During the mission, the Captain was forced to give up his Super-Soldier Serum after it became tainted by "Ice," and he encouragingly told Fabian that they would both be drug-free from then on. 

    Fighting Chance

    After one of Fabian's robots upset Marilla, the nanny who tended Avengers member Crystal's daughter Luna, Marilla vowed to have Fabian fired. In despair, Fabian wrote a suicide note and climbed the Brooklyn Bridge to kill himself. He found he could not go through with the action, but the vigilante Blistik appeared and tried to goad him into jumping. Blistik was finally driven off by Captain America, and Fabian apologized to him for his actions. Captain America was taking a leave of absence from the Avengers at the time and encouraged Fabian to leave with him and become his personal inventor.

    Fabian moved his workshop into the site of Captain America's Stars and Stripes headquarters where he worked alongside the Captain's pilot Zach Moonhunter and storefront operator Arnie Roth. They were later joined by Captain America's friends and sidekicks Falcon, D-Man, Diamondback, Free Spirit and Jack Flag.  
      
    Fabian stood alongside Captain America as the hero found that his Super-Soldier Serum had returned but was now playing haboc with his health, slowly killing him. Fabian supplied the Captain with a battle-vest arsenal so that he wouldn't have to strain himself as much in physical activity. Arnie Roth eventually died from heart failure, and when Captain America believed that he would soon die as well, he placed the Stars and Stripes group into the hands of Fabian, Moonhunter, Free Spirit and Jack Flag. 

    Onslaught

    Feeling purposeless without Captain America, Fabian returned to the Avengers to serve as their inventor, but shortly afterward many of the Avengers seemingly died at the hands of the creature Onslaught, and the remaining team members disbanded the group. Fabian was infuriated with their decision, and vowed that he would find a means of protecting New York from its dangers. 

    Fabian discovered a number of parts from the Mark VI Sentinels that had served Onslaught, among them a working CPU. He set up shop in a warehouse and began building robots in the images of the Avengers; however, when he brought the Sentinel CPU online by linking his own brain to it cybernetically, the Sentinel programming took over Fabian's mind.

    Unaware that the Avengers had since returned, Fabian sent out his robots, dubbed "the Protectorate," to defend New York. When the Avengers investigated, the Protectorate recognized team members Firestar, Justice and the Scarlet Witch as mutants, and their Sentinel programming made them launch an attack. The Avengers butler, Edwin Jarvis, realized that Fabian was the creator of the Protectorate and tracked him down to his warehouse, where he found him plugged into the computers, a deranged shell of his former self. Jarvis made Fabian realize that the Avengers were still alive. Horrified that he had become a true super-villain, Fabian directed Jarvis to destroy the CPU and set him free. With the CPU gone, the Protectorate were deactivated. Fabian was sent to a hospital for recovery from months of atrophy. He apologized profusely to Captain America and the other Avengers for trying to harm them. 
     

    Powers and Abilities

    Fabian Stankowicz is an inventive genius, specializing in the fields of robotics and cybernetics. His first Mechano-Marauder armor granted him superhuman strength and protection from injury. His second suit of Mechano-Marauder armor was actually two armors in one; the exterior armor had tank tread feet that enable it to charge opponents; the interior armor had powerful clamp-like appendages on its gauntlets. As the Mechanaut, his armor could fire energy blasts, had elongating arms and legs, and could release its exhaust as a smoke-based attack.

    When he attacked the Avengers on television, Stankowicz's arsenal included a spike-studded steamroller made from omnium steel powered by a gravimetric generator; the steamroller also contained heat-seeking missiles, and was booby-trapped to electrocute anyone who tried to tamper with it. The steamroller increased its gravimetric pressure when it encountered resistance. Fabian also used video cameras which were modified into laser-based weaponry, and he wore a personal force field to protect himself. He controlled all of his weapons from a power-pack on his belt.

    Fabian's inventions for Captain America and the Avengers included: redesigning the security systems for the Avengers' various bases; building a variety of robots, mainly designed to assist Fabian in his workshop; several redesigns of the Avengers skycycle, modifying them to include compartments to hold survival equipment; maintaining Captai America's personal Quinjet; retrofitting the elongating limbs from his Mechanaut armor into a backpack to assist him in lifting heavy objects; using the skull of Ulysses Bloodstone to design a device that could sense the presence of Bloodgem fragments; and Captain America's battlevest, which housed a massive supply of field equipment including motion-sensors, smoke bombs, handcuffs, a cable gun, exploding grapple balls, grenades, garrote wire, an airbag containing gas, and grappling metal foil.

    Fabian's Protectorate were four giant robots built from Sentinel technology, and were controlled by Fabian by tapping into a single Sentinel CPU, but the Sentinel programming made Fabian a slave to the machines. The Protectorate were modelled after Ant-Man, Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, and had weaponry based on each of their inspirations.
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