Who Is Malice in Marvel Rivals?

The Fantastic Four have made their sensational debut in NetEase’s team-based multiplayer hero action game. It’s sure to be a great year for Marvel’s First Family, with Marvel Studios’ The Fantastic Four: First Steps movie set to arrive this summer. That said, while Marvel Rivals likes to pay homage to the cinematic side of Marvel, it also enjoys its deeper digs into comic book lore. Enter Malice, a skin for Invisible Woman. It’s a wild look for a typically wholesome hero, so what’s the deal? Who is Malice in Marvel Rivals?

Which Malice is the right one?

Marvel sometimes recycles character names for one reason or another. On occasion it’s a direct line between different mantle-bearers. Other times, the character in question might not have taken off. Why leave a good name buried? In Marvel’s comics, Malice has been both. There are no less than six characters who have carried the moniker in the funny books. The Malice in Marvel Rivals is only connected to one of them, and as you might expect it’s the one most connected to the Fantastic Four.

Who is Malice in Marvel Rivals?

John Byrne’s run on the Fantastic Four comic as both writer and penciler ran for five years from 1981 to 1986. While it’s generally a celebrated era for the team that helped bring the Fantastic Four back into the spotlight after a long slump, it’s not without its controversial stories. Malice is certainly one of them. In July 1986’s Fantastic Four #280, we see the team trying to deal with the loss of their home and headquarters, the Baxter Building. It was lost in a Doctor Doom-related space incident, and the loss of all the memories and their possessions have clearly taken a toll.

But this is comics, so we need to get to the next evil plot. Our villain this time is Psycho-Man. To make a long story short, he’s a megalomaniac from the Microverse who uses what amounts to an emotion-controlling iPad to mess with people. This time he’s stoking riots all across New York City, and the Fantastic Four have gotten caught up in it. She-Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot are taken into custody by the police, but someone breaks them out and begins to attack them. Done up in a garish black leather-and-spikes ensemble topped off with a torn red cape, she identifies herself as Malice, Mistress of Hate. She-Hulk jobs to Malice, as she is wont to do, and we soon find out Malice is none other than Susan Richards, the Invisible Woman!

Things seem dire as her hatred even extends to her husband, Reed Richards. Fortunately, Reed is the most intelligent man in the Marvel Universe and quickly determines that the best course of action is to… belittle her and slap her? After a full page of pure meme fuel that would come back to bite Reed in the decades to follow, Susan comes back to her senses and Malice is extinguished for good. Well, until the next appearance, anyway. I’m not sure where Sue found the costume to begin with, but I assume she and Reed stowed it away somewhere in the new headquarters for research and further study.

Marvel Rivals does a good job of making the costume look somewhat less silly, and the idea of the Invisible Woman using her powers with all the safeties off is a fascinating one at least. Malice has rarely reappeared in the comics, and it seems like even references to that storyline are few and far between. That makes this skin a rather unexpected pull for Marvel Rivals, but it appears to be going over well so far. If even Malice can be redeemed, there might be no limits for what this game can do.

Marvel Rivals is currently available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.