For the uninitiated: Marcy was the head of Public Relations and later made VP of Stark Enterprises. All of her appearances are primarily rooted in the late 80s and early 90s Iron Man books between issues #217 and 306. In IM 284 she was fired by Jim Rhodes. Between that issue and her final appearance in that book, IM 306, Marcy was trying to get revenge against SE for firing her. She ended up getting manipulated by an artificial intelligence named VORTEX who assisted her in failed attempt to frame Jim Rhodes for Tony Stark's death (Tony faked his death at the time, long story) and later helped her hire a hacker to break into Stark's computer and leak damaging information to the media. When Tony found out that she was responsible for the hack, he tricked her into making a confession and got her arrested by the FBI.
I would argue that she was never seen again. However, it was decided that she appeared in FI:HF 1 and that doesn't make any sense to me. Hear me out:
The first story in that issue focuses on Speedball trying to redeem himself for the Stamford disaster/Civil War thing. At the beginning of the story, there is a news program called Two-in-One where Trish Tilby and a woman named Marcy Pearson are debating on if Speedball has redeemed himself or not.
What's made clear in this back and forth is that Tilby is everyone's favorite Beast-loving reporter that, as there a viewer comments that make reference to that. However, there is no such confirmation that Pearson is the same woman from the Iron Man comics. In fact, there is only one panel where you actually see her. However, if you actually took a look at the character you'll see one glaring problem:
Pearson circa IM 306
Pearson circa FI:HF 1 (She's on the woman on the right)
Marcy is a Black woman yet in the FI:HF 1 the woman is white. While characters have been incorrectly coloured in the past, I don't think that's the case here since, again, there is nothing else in this story that draw a connection from this Pearson woman and the one from the old Iron Man stories.
Any resources material about Pearson (The Official Index for Iron Man and a profile for her in the Iron Manual Mark 3) were all published before Fear Itself and given that she is not a prominent character anymore I doubt we'll ever get an official say on the matter any time soon.
However, when you take a look at it from a real world context it also doesn't make much sense:
When you consider federal hacking laws if convicted an individual could face up to 10 years in prison. The way the Marcy Pearson hacking plot is portrayed is that they FBI had her dead to rights and she is never heard from again. They never mention what happened to her after the fact, but my presumption is that she went to jail. Assuming she got the maximum sentence only five years in universe has passed between publications from 1993 and 2011.
Even if you were to assume that she got a reduced sentence afterwards, it's also kind of outlandish that Marcy would be able to land a job as a newscaster next to Trish Tilby given her criminal background. It seems unlikely to me that a television station would give an anchor job to someone guilty of a federal crime. I mean, it's not impossible, but it seems really unlikely to me.
Then there's the geography: Pearson was always situated in the Los Angeles area. While it's not impossible for her to move across country, I'd argue that adding prison time, being able to get a job in the media, and moving across the country (probably while on probation) would all be very difficult to accomplish in such a short period of time.
The other thing to bring up is how common the name Marcy Pearson is. While it's not quit as common, I did a quick internet search for women that have a variation of that name online (https://www.411.com/name/Marcy-Pearson? ... %20Pearson) and I found 26 matches and those were only people that are publicly listed. What I'm getting at is that while its somewhat unique there are many people who have that name. So the idea that two completely different people having the same exact name is a distinct probability.
No offense to the people who slotted the FI: HF1 to her appearances, but it looks to me that someone saw the familiar name and just assumed without really looking that deeply into it. It's kind of like assuming every guy appearance by a guy named Joe with no last name is the same guy.
