Mark Spires

"Anvil"

First Appearance: Forte #170 (original), Forte 2000 #3 (latter)

A brilliant scientist who formed a company that looked like it was about to really take off, Mark Spires found his life changed forever when an explosion at his company gave him the ability to transform into a body of solid, and incredibly strong, metal, and put him on the run and hiding out from a shadowy government agency. With an assumed identity, he wound up in Seattle trying to look up an old associate for a job, and ended up using his powers to stop a group of racist thugs. This action led to him meeting Vanguard, and in turn, Forte, and he found himself, somehow, on the team, taking the hero name Anvil. And just in time for the Saoshyant invasion, which found him off in space for a time with the team. Helping to save the world very early in his career catapulted Anvil to quick fame and popularity, and he soon became a staple of the team and an icon in Seattle. He became best friends with another new Forte member, Twostep, and began a slowly-building relationship with local P.I. Erin O’Day, who he wasn’t certain he could trust. He eventually discovered the truth behind the explosion at his company, and the fact that he’d been framed for treason and murder, and was finally able to resume his true identity as Mark Spires. When old members began leaving Forte and new ones came in, the reluctant hero Anvil somehow became the leader of a new breed of heroes, and was part of many world-saving adventures that took him to space, through time, to Hell, and to the center of eternity itself. A common sense thinker and courageous hero, he became one of the best-known and most-loved members of the famed Seattle defenders.

He left Forte when tragedy struck, when his ex-wife, Kelly, was in a head-on car collision that put her in a coma, leaving him to take care of his teenage daughter, Bree, whom he had only just begun getting to know again. Kelly died soon after, and Mark relocated to Minneapolis to be a full-time father, eventually joined there by Erin, whom he married. He left them for a time to help his friend Twostep, who had gone on the run after the process that gave him his powers had led to him killing a couple of gang members, determined to finally face his past and take down his Texas crime family before turning himself in for his crimes. Anvil helped him put an end to the Bane family, but on the way out the courtroom door from his trial, Twostep was struck down by an assassin’s bullet, and died in Anvil’s arms.

Mark Spires settled into his life after this, and moved to Ohio with his family after Bree graduated and was accepted at Xavier. There he took a job with S.T.A.R. labs and lived happily with his wife and daughter, leaving the super-hero life of Anvil behind him (with the exception of brief returns to aid Forte in times of need, or getting caught up helping Ohio’s hero team, the Paragons, on occasion). In 2005, Mark was approached by his old friend, Sydney Todd-Strange (the Forte founding member known as Mist), and was asked to join her in starting a new hero team called Forge in San Francisco to rescue the city from its influx of crime and terror. Mark eventually agreed, relocated there with his family, and Anvil’s exploits began anew.