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    Midnight Sun

    Character » Midnight Sun appears in 47 issues.

    Once enemies, after their last battle Silver Surfer and Midnight Sun left each other on amicable terms.

    Short summary describing this character.

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    Origin

    M'Nai was born in a village somewhere in Africa - a place that was in the thrall of the dreaded Fu Manchu. Special mushrooms were being grown there to further the plans of the devil doctor, but his opponents in Britain's MI-6 service learned about the village and raided it, killing many of Fu Manchu's servants and setting the cultures on fire. Fu Manchu himself happened to be nearby and came to examine the damage ; during his inspection of the burning village he spotted a crying orphan, who had been hideously disfigured by the fires. The village's chief, Fu Manchu's servant, was about to execute the infant for disturbing them when the devil doctor stopped his hand -- he had noticed M'Nai was not shedding tears, but crying out of hatred for whoever had deprived him of his parents.

    Seeing much potential in such hate, Fu Manchu brought M'Nai back to China to be raised with the same class as his own son, Shang Chi. M'Nai perpetually wore a full mask to hide his disfigurement, but despite his handicap soon proved to be one of the very best pupils along with Shang Chi. Both boys grew close after they fought a duel at age seven, and came to consider themselves as best friends and eventually brothers.

    At one point of their secluded life of constant training and education, some wine was stolen from the reserves of the monastery and Fu Manchu accused M'Nai of the deed, sending his brother Shang Chi to "arrest" him. They fought, as M'Nai rebelled at injustice and Shang Chi sought conciliation but obeyed their father. After beating each other up for a considerable amount of time, M'Nai persuaded Shang Chi to ally with him to catch the real thief, which they did.

    Later, as an adult now wearing his full costume as Midnight, M'Nai was sent to enlist the brilliant Vietnamese scientist Half-Face in the service of Fu Manchu. After successfully negotiating Half-Face's automated defenses, M'Nai made the scientist an offer one should not refuse. The embittered Half-Face rejected him, though, telling him he would serve no one. He then explained his defiance by telling him about the loss of his family in war, his disfigurement and his fate as a man who had lost everything. Empathizing for a man whose life tragically matched his own, Midnight left.

    When the now adult Shang Chi defected from his father's service as he finally realized how evil Fu Manchu was, M'Nai had little choice but to follow his adoptive father's orders and go to Manhattan for a duel to the death. Brother clashed against brother -- the two greatest living masters of kung fu on Earth. Eventually, the fight brought them on top of a nearby crane ; through reflex action, Shang Chi swept Midnight's foot, and he fell from the crane. Before the man in black could control his fall, the hook of the crane caught his cape and broke his neck.

    Midnight's body was procured by Kree spies, apparently before an autopsy could take place -- the corpse would decades later become Midnight Sun.

    Midnight Sun

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    Shortly before his death, and likely before an autopsy could take place, the corpse of the master martial artist M'Nai, also known as Midnight, was stolen by a Kree cadre of spies. Those spies apparently were used by Kree scientist Kar-Sagg as part of a special program to study what he called the Earth's "marvels" -- superhuman or highly gifted costumed adventurers. The corpses were stored in some place called Bodoni-20 in unknown numbers. Since Kar-Sagg seemed to be a bit of a flake, this small program may have been motivated by fascination for humanity's genetic potential, as opposed to the Kree's stagnant DNA.

    When Kar-Sagg was requested by Imperial Minister Nenora to kill the Silver Surfer, he destocked the corpse of Midnight to reanimate it ; his reasoning was that Midnight was not only a great fighter but also a master of darkness, which could be used in a plan to counteract the Silver Surfer's Power Cosmic, which he theorized came from the stars. Midnight's dead brain was reanimated with hypertronics programmed with a simple and convenient personality, and it and a body seed, carefully tailored to conserve his motor skills, were the base of a specially enhanced clone possessing superhuman might.

    When a new major battle in the Kree/Skrull war, engineered by Nenora, erupted, the Silver Surfer tried to stop the Kree fleet -- which then launched Midnight Sun against him. The reanimated master of kung fu proved to be able to outfight the Surfer, though despite his monstrous strength he did not have the raw power necessary to truly batter his opponent. This was not the plan, though -- he mostly occupied the Surfer as a starlight-deadening dust cloud was spread around them, theoretically cutting the Surfer off from his source of power. In the darkness that ensued, Midnight Sun was invisible even to cosmic senses and resumed beating the Surfer up, but his opponent focused on the electronic emissions of his disk and finally managed to nail him with a cosmic blast, then used his superior strength to hold him while he was flying outside of the dust cloud.

    Without support from the Surfer, the Skrull forces started losing the battle, though -- and fell into a rout after their brilliant commander, the pirate Reptyl, was backstabbed with an energy blade by the traitor Clumsy Foulup, manipulated by an astral entity that seemed to be the Contemplator. Hit by Kree batteries, the Surfer dropped Midnight Sun, who was caught by a tractor beam and repatriated aboard Kree vessels while the Surfer was forced to fight alone, eventually defeating the Kree offensive. It was too late, though -- the Skrulls had lost far more military assets than they could afford, and even the Empress S'Byll barely survived the battle, masquerading as a space debris to save her life. The delaying action fought by Midnight Sun had been decisive.

    He was then redeployed with the defenses of the Kree capital world, Hala, in case the Silver Surfer would come and attack. This proved a wise move, since this is exactly what occurred within days of the previous battle. The Surfer taunted Midnight Sun to fight him, which his opponent thought was ridiculous - but his programmed compulsion to fight and destroy the Surfer overrode his tactical wisdom and forced him to fly out of the Hala defensive array to engage the silvery stalwart. This time the Surfer, who was familiar with Kree science and understood his nature, was ready and defeated him ; while the Kree defenders were watching the fight, the sneaky and superskrullianly powerful S'Byll sabotaged their guns, causing their destruction when they opened fire. The daring raid by the Surfer and S'Byll managed to take them to Nenora, whom S'Byll exposed as a renegade Skrull impostor. This devastating revelation ended this phase of the war.

    Midnight Sun was recovered by Kar-Sagg and his staff, disappointed in his performance and perplexed that he was recovering his pre-mortem memories. They decided to "reboot" him and erase his current mentality ; however, M'Mai's contemplative train of thought had led him to the conclusion that, while the Surfer was a good man who fought with honour, his masters were not and did not. He also wanted to recover his full memories beyond scattered flashbacks. Determined to learn about who he actually was, Midnight Sun impossibly rose from the cybernetic operating table he was tied on before his mind could be erased, and easily defeated the guards that poured in. As they were facing each other, Kar-Sagg realized that the "automaton" he had built was now an actual, sentient being and that "shutting him down" would be murder - he told him to leave. The mute Midnight Sun flew into space ; Kar-Sagg's destiny is unknown.

    Midnight Sun established himself on an asteroid near Earth, hoping to remember about who he was but keenly aware that he had no way to communicate, lacking vocal cords and being unable to move his fingers. After months, he spotted the Surfer flying off Earth and impulsively engaged him, perhaps as an aftereffect of his previous programming. He tried to stop the Surfer from flying away, but could not get around the fact it was impossible for him to communicate his desire to learn about himself. Fighting a delaying action in the hope he would find some way to express his intent, Midnight Sun brought the Surfer to the surface of the Moon, but was accidentally unmasked and reacted violently to this. The fight was broken up at this point by the powerful Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans.

    Sensing a kinship with the mute warrior, Black Bolt, through Karnak, invited Midnight Sun to become a resident of the nearby Inhuman hidden city of Attilan, in the hope they could find a way to communicate with him and perhaps heal his disfigurement. Midnight Sun immediately accepted and "shook hands" with the Surfer. The reanimated kung-fu fighter later returned to earth and again battled Shang-Chi before making peace with him. The two left together to see if they could heal Midnight Sun's body and mind.

    Powers and Abilities

    As an agent of Fu Manchu, Midnight was a highly trained martial artist and espionage agent, as well as a master of stealth. He was a highly trained with unarmed combat and many martial arts weapons, particularly daggers, nunchaku, and shuriken. His specialty was vanishing into shadows and ambushing his opponents.

    When Kar-Sagg transformed him into a Kree agent, he transferred Midnight's brain into a powerful cloned body. The Midnight Sun clone magnifies Midnight Sun's strength, speed, coordination, martial skill, etc. to a tremendous degree. Even in the depths of space, he's capable of overtaking the Silver Surfer himself with unbelievable skill, speed and precision. His affinity for darkness has likewise been magnified, and he basically turns invisible (even to the Surfer's formidable senses) in the dark.

    His mentally activated disks (grafted to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, disallowing him the use of his fingers and toes) can each propel him at formidable speed in the direction opposite that which it is facing (He often used these discs to strike his enemies using his martial arts skills); Midnight Sun uses them with great coordination, as if space was an infinite series of vantage points he can bounce off of, pivot on or stand on. This agility would likely prove extremely disconcerting to somebody who is not highly experienced in sophisticated space combat.

    Personality:

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    Midnight Sun seems to have the full memories of M'Nai ; in particular he remembers his death, then nothing, then resurrection. In time, his memory started coming back, including his childhood with Fu Manchu and his brotherly ties with Shang Chi. The whole hypertronics reprogramming thing did not work very well, really -- his personality is still that of a calm, extremely proficient martial artist who knows exactly what he is doing and counts pitch darkness as his best ally. While he cannot talk, he definitely can think - and his train of thought is usually contemplative and taoist in nature, in a warrior-monk way.

    Midnight Sun was usually programmed with an overriding compulsion to fight and destroy the Silver Surfer -- this overtook his maturity and tactical acumen. He's now rid of that, and his main goal is now to find about who he is, what he is about and what he should do with his new chance at life. It is likely his Seeking Justice Motivation has reasserted itself, especially since Midnight Sun sees himself as a just and honorable warrior. Perhaps he now roams space, silent and cloaked in darkness, as a Chinese-style knight errand equipped with an Inhuman computer able to translate fragments of some alien languages

    As an agent of Fu Manchu, Midnight was a highly trained martial artist and espionage agent, as well as a master of stealth. He was a highly trained with unarmed combat and many martial arts weapons, particularly daggers, nunchaku, and shuriken. His specialty was vanishing into shadows and ambushing his opponents.

    When Kar-Sagg transformed him into a Kree agent, he transferred Midnight's brain into a powerful cloned body. The Midnight Sun clone magnifies Midnight Sun's strength, speed, coordination, martial skill, etc. to a tremendous degree. Even in the depths of space, he's capable of overtaking the Silver Surfer himself with unbelievable skill, speed and precision. His affinity for darkness has likewise been magnified, and he basically turns invisible (even to the Surfer's formidable senses) in the dark.

    His mentally activated disks (grafted to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, disallowing him the use of his fingers and toes) can each propel him at formidable speed in the direction opposite that which it is facing (He often used these discs to strike his enemies using his martial arts skills); Midnight Sun uses them with great coordination, as if space was an infinite series of vantage points he can bounce off of, pivot on or stand on. This agility would likely prove extremely disconcerting to somebody who is not highly experienced in sophisticated space combat.

    Alternate Realities

    Earth-20051 (Marvel Adventures)

    Under his original codename of Midnight, he appears as an enemy of Shang-Chi, and attack him with some of his ninja team during the martial arts show in Midtown High School. Spider-Man appears and helps Shang-Chi defeat Midnight.

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