Maria Stark

Maria Collins Stark (née Carbonell) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She is Howard Stark's wife/Tony Stark's mother. Fictional character biography Maria Stark was born into a wealthy family in Southampton, New York. In her adulthood, she became a socialite and philanthropist. She dated Obadiah Stane. While staying in Monaco during a flight scale, Maria escaped from her bodyguards at a casino, where she deliberately lost large sums of money at baccarat and was escorted from the premises. Howard Stark (who owned the casino) noticed herself being forcefully escorted by her bodyguards and they followed her back to her hotel room. Maria and Howard formed an unlikely duo as they successfully took down the guards and escaped in a car. Their sudden camaraderie left Maria feeling captivated by this unforeseen adventure. Maria married Howard sometime later, and together they adopted their son Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark. Maria was unsuccessful in preventing Tony from seeing Howard's alcoholism, something Tony would later face. Howard secretly programmed the Mistress AI that controlled the Arsenal robots with Maria's brain patterns. On the Ides of March, Maria and Howard were killed in a car accident arranged by the Roxxon Oil Company. Afterwards, Tony ran his father's company and started a charity in his mother's name (which donated funds to finance various charities and renovation projects as well as the Avengers).