Flint Marko

Flint Marko is a hard-edged enforcer in Depression Era New York, the muscle who answers to the nightclub singer Cat Hardy and moves through the city's underworld with quiet menace. When the down-and-out private investigator Ben Reilly photographs Cat in a compromising meeting, it is Marko who comes to collect the evidence, trailing Ben to an empty building and demanding the negatives.

What begins as a simple shakedown turns when Ben refuses and the two come to blows. Beaten down at first, Marko rises again as his body shifts and hardens into living sand. The fight ends only when Cat arrives and pleads with Ben to stop, and Marko lives. By the following day he has vanished without a trace, the missing man at the center of the case Cat brings to Ben's door.

Flint Marko has gone to ground of his own accord, hiding away in a rundown theatre as the affliction turning his body to sand tightens its hold. His skin no longer returns fully to flesh, locked now in the texture of sand, and the change that once came and went has become something closer to permanent.

He is not entirely alone in his suffering. A fellow veteran from his days in the war meets him in his hiding place and brings word that their old comrade Jimmy Addison is dead, the two men speaking quietly of the sicknesses they share and the way both are slowly worsening. From an adjacent rooftop, his face half turned to sand, Flint watches Ben Reilly leave The Alcove, then lingers on the sight of Cat Hardy alone in her apartment, the woman whose protection he once served.

Flint Marko steps out of hiding when the police descend on the Hooverville, joining the his long time friend, Lonnie, to stand between the officers and the residents being beaten in the raid. His body turns to sand as he wades into the fight, making short work of the police and shielding the poor of the camp from the clubs swinging against them.

He returns afterward to Cat Hardy's apartment, where the two embrace and the truth of their bond comes clear, that singer and bodyguard love one another. For a moment he agrees to run away with her and leave Silvermane behind, but the sickness will not let him go. As Cat insists a cure must exist somewhere, his body shifts toward sand once more, and unable to face the grim shape of their future, he tears himself away and storms out.

Flint Marko watches from the shadows as the woman he loves grows closer to Ben. He overhears her admittance to being the 'rat' in Silvermane's circle. Consumed by jealousy, he turns back to the one path that promises him purpose, returning to work for the crime lord Silvermane.

His renewed loyalty is put to use as muscle. When Silvermane confronts Mayor Morris at the gala dinner and the mayor refuses to back down, Flint steps forward at his boss's call and smashes the table apart with his sand-hardened strength, a public show of force meant to remind the mayor exactly what he is up against.

Flint Marko takes his place among Silvermane's powered muscle, arriving at The Alcove with Lonnie to stand at the crime lord's side. Cat Hardy congratulates him on his promotion, though the reunion is cold, and Flint makes plain to Silvermane that he will not let anyone bring harm to the boss. Running low on time as his condition worsens, he has thrown in fully with the man who offers him purpose.

Alongside Lonnie, Flint storms the police precinct. Taking bullets and hurling officers aside to clear a path to the imprisoned Dirk Leyden, allowing Silvermane can recruit him. Later, after Silvermane's warning to Ben to keep The Spider out of it, Flint reveals he knows the truth about Cat being the rat in Silvermane's circle, and tells the detective he is granting him a single pass only because Ben once saved her life.

Flint Marko arrives with Silvermane's crew to raid Dr. Faber's hidden laboratory, part of the muscle brought in to plunder the doctor's work. In the chaos, he knocks Ogden down, then recognizes the man from the prison camp where they were held together, a flicker of the bond he shares with the other survivors.

That recognition stays his hand against his own. When Leyden moves to attack Ogden, Flint tries to stop him, unwilling to see a fellow former prisoner cut down for no good reason. Lonnie has to pull him away from the confrontation. He is among Silvermane's men as the lab erupts into flame and the crew pulls away, the raid leaving Faber and Ogden dead behind them.

Flint Marko carries out Silvermane's war on Mayor Morris, storming one of the mayor's campaign offices alongside Dirk Leyden. The two force the staff to reveal where Morris keeps his cash, then load up their bags and leave, gutting the mayor's finances as a show of the crime lord's reach.

His heart pulls him elsewhere before the night is done. He goes to Cat Hardy's home and lays himself bare, delivering a long, aching monologue about how he fell in love with her, reaching back to the old theater where he first saw her. When Cat insists she is right there and that she loves him, Flint cannot get past how quickly she moved on with Ben Reilly in his absence, the wound of it overriding everything she offers him.