Marx

"I got the sun and moon to fight. I got you to go into space... it was all according to my perfect little plan!"

Marx is the main antagonist and final boss of the Milky Way Wishes in Kirby Super Star and its remake, Kirby Super Star Ultra. He had originally appeared as a small jester, somewhat resembling Mirror Kirby, bouncing on a multicolored beach ball. He asks Kirby to help him end a war between the Sun and Moon. Kirby listens to his plea and does what he suggests, completely unaware of Marx's ulterior motives. The jester then turns up just in time to send the final part of his devious plan into motion and simultaneously reveals that he used Kirby the whole time in order to gain control over Planet Popstar.

Upon gaining power, Marx becomes a strong, bat-like entity with flashing, multicolored "scales" on his recently-acquired wings, as well as endless power. Upon Marx's defeat, he flies out of control and crashes into the broken head of the Galactic Nova, causing the great machine to blow up in the process. Despite being seemingly destroyed in his first appearances, he manages to make frequent cameos later in the series.

Physical Appearance
In his first form, Marx appears to be a small jester with no legs, arms or hands. He wears brown shoes with small light brown dashes going across them that look like shoelaces. His skin is a light purple/pink color with two big expressive eyes that lie under his hat. His hat is divided into two colors with different shapes on each side. Marx has red with white triangles on the right side and blue with white circles on the left. Marx wears a red bow tie under his mouth, which has a fixed smile. His beach ball is striped with the colors of his hat: red, white, and blue, although artwork shows a yellow stripe on it.

After Marx makes his wish to take control of Popstar, he transforms himself into a fearsome bat-like monstrosity with golden yellow-colored wings with two sharp fang-like claws jutting out from each one. The wings also have flashing mirror-like, multicolored, hexagon-shaped scales under them. Each wing has a red heart on it. His skin retains that purple hue but his eyes are big and black. Marx has a bigger mouth with two small fangs in it. Marx's bow tie is noticeably larger, but it appears to be coming undone. Lastly, his shoe color remains the same, but the shoes themselves are longer and are rounded at the ends. His eyes' pupils are also apart from each other as opposed to being placed central (being somewhat inverse-cross-eyed) which shows signs of slipping sanity, unless he performs certain actions (such as certain attacks).

Kirby Super Star
Marx makes his first appearance in the Milky Way Wishes sub-game in Kirby Super Star. When the sun and moon of Planet Popstar start fighting each other and knocking each other out of the skies, a small jester-like being who goes by the name of Marx tells Kirby that the only way to stop the fight between the two is to gather the power of the surrounding stars and use them to summon Nova, a planet-sized, mechanical "comet" that can grant wishes. Before Kirby hops on the Warp Star, Marx wishes him good luck.

After gathering the power from the seven planets' Fountains and summoning Nova, Kirby goes on to make his wish to save Popstar. Just then, however, Marx knocks Kirby off-screen and makes his own selfish wish -- to take complete control of Popstar. When this happens, he transforms into his monster form and gains new superpowers. It turns out that he actually tricked the Sun and Moon into fighting each other, tricked Kirby into doing his dirty work for him, and revealed that this was all part of a master plan to conquer Popstar. Afterwards, Nova begins looming towards Popstar, leaving Kirby alone in space. The power Kirby had gathered comes together, however, and creates a Starship for him to stop Nova with. Nova's journey to Popstar is suddenly hampered by the sun and moon, giving Kirby the chance to enter him. When Kirby destroys his heart, Nova is injured, making Marx extremely irate, so he then attempts to attack Kirby himself. In spite of Marx's fearsome and deadly new superpowers, Kirby manages to win, and send Marx flying away and into Nova's broken head, seemingly destroying them both in a massive explosion.

Kirby Super Star Ultra
Marx's role in the Nintendo DS remake, Kirby Super Star Ultra, is essentially the same as the original game, but there is a slight twist concerning his fate. A clip shown towards the end of The True Arena reveals that he was destroyed after the events of Milky Way Wishes, but his body had began to absorb dark energy and Nova's power, not only reviving him but also transforming him into the even stronger Marx Soul, granting him even more power than ever before. After a series of battles against Kirby's toughest enemies, Marx Soul appears in a colorful but dark and distorted dimension as the final foe. Denied his revenge and overthrown once more, Marx Soul lets out a bloodcurdling scream as he slowly splits in half, turning a deep shade of purple, and blowing up the whole arena in the process.

Marx appears in the Special-Edition Blooper Reel movie in Kirby Super Star Ultra. He is seen in the second-to-last last clip. When he tries to tell Kirby and friends how to stop the Sun and Moon from fighting, he slips and falls off his ball and on the ground before he even gets a chance to talk. Marx even appears in the Kirby Master cut scene when Kirby completes a file with 100%, having a front row seat in the audience for Kirby's performance. Strangely, despite his harsh feelings towards him seen in the past sub-games, and the fact that he was defeated three times by him in this version (once in Milky Way Wishes, again in The Arena, and for the last time in The True Arena), he cheers for Kirby after he does his Victory Dance.

Kirby: Squeak Squad
While Marx does not appear in the game, he appears on a portrait depicting several other final bosses that Kirby can assemble by opening Treasure Chests.

Kirby Mass Attack
Marx makes a surprise appearance as the final boss of the Kirby Brawlball sub-game on a board resembling that of the battlefield's landscape. He is much bigger than he originally appeared, and he uses revamped versions of his original attacks. Illusions of his normal form also occasionally litter the ground, walking on their beach balls. If the player manages to get Kirby to bounce on their heads, the player acquires two additional Kirbys.

Kirby's Return to Dream Land
Marx makes a few cameos in this game:
 * One of Stone Kirby's transformations is a statue of Marx in his normal form on his beach ball.
 * Marx appears in the "Kirby Master" video, similar to Kirby Super Star Ultra.

Kirby: Triple Deluxe
Marx makes several cameo appearances in this game:
 * One of Stone Kirby's transformations is a statue of him next to Magolor.
 * Marx appears as one of the rare keychains using his Kirby Super Star sprite, along with his soul form from Kirby Super Star Ultra.
 * Marx appears in the "Kirby Master!" cutscene, sitting next to Magolor and Galacta Knight.

Kirby: Planet Robobot
Marx makes some cameo appearances in this game:
 * Marx makes a cameo appearance as a rare sticker, while in his original form.
 * Marx is also one of the stone forms next to Magolor, much like in Kirby: Triple Deluxe.

Attacks
Marx's attacks are generally very predictable but very powerful. Marx has five attacks that follow a simple, but very distinct, pattern. He starts out by shooting out four crescent blades at Kirby as soon as he appears. He then flies up, going off the screen, and drops four small seeds that grow into four large, thorny vines that appear in the same spots the seeds fell in. After the vines grow and disappear, an electrified shadow appears and begins to follow Kirby around the floor. After a few seconds, Marx springs up from the ground and flies into the air, but comes back down. Marx teleports off-screen and reappears at the side of the screen, glowing blue at this time, and shoots out a stream of arrows at Kirby. Marx flies off and then reappears above Kirby and soon his cheeks puff out. Marx soon spits out a black ball at the ground, which turns into two ice balls that slide across the screen according to Kirby's height level. Finally, Marx's cheeks puff out again while he's glowing, and spits out a giant white beam. Marx soon teleports himself all over the place multiple times in a row. This pattern starts again, but after taking enough damage, his attack patterns will become more random and unpredictable. His newest attack is that he can split himself in two symmetrical halves and reveal his iconic attack - the black hole. Kirby will take extremely heavy damage if he gets sucked into it. Fortunately, this is his slowest and most predictable attack, although it should be kept in mind that the black hole has a considerable range and guarding is ineffective against it. An interesting fact about the battle is that, in the remake, after Marx has taken sufficient damage, the screen will occasionally start changing between blue, green, and red, possibly an effect of him straining his powers to the max in an effort to finish Kirby off for good.

Trivia

 * Despite Marx's Japanese name translating closer to "Mark", the Japanese version of The Arena and Kirby Mass Attack renders it Marx.
 * Marx wears a hat near identical to the hat worn by Mirror Kirby, which also debuted in Kirby Super Star. The two colors on the hat are reversed on Marx's hat and the blue part on Mirror Kirby's hat is more of a teal color. This coincides with the colorful mirror-like panels that stream down Marx's wings, or him splitting in half like Mirror Kirby to perform the Black Hole move.
 * Marx's laugh was changed in the remake; it was a warped sound effect in the original, but he was given a demented high-pitched laughter in the remake. In Kirby Mass Attack, his laugh is similar to the remake, but the actual board design is closer to the original version.
 * A remix of the theme that plays during the battle against Marx appears as a track in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
 * A portrait of Marx alongside some other final bosses is shown in Kirby: Squeak Squad in one of the collectible pieces of artwork obtainable from Treasure Chests.
 * A split second before Marx is powered up by Nova, he looks similar to Marx Soul. This is true even in the original SNES game.
 * In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, it is possible that Marx had a hand behind the scenes. When Kirby acquires all 120 Energy Spheres in Extra Mode, Magolor tells Kirby that he knows someone who knew Kirby quite well, and implies that this person may have been a former enemy. Magolor also mentions that the ancients of Halcandra who crafted the Lor Starcutter also was "the same power that gave rise to clockwork stars that soar the cosmos," and "mysterious items that can bring dreams to life." These signs most strongly point to Marx, as these are prominent elements of Milky Way Wishes.
 * Coincidentally, both were villains who deceived Kirby, and their use of elemental attacks is similar. The black hole attacks used by both villains have the same visual effect: if Kirby is sucked in, he is transported briefly to an alternate dimension where he takes severe damage. Both Marx and Magolor shoot out giant beams that cause heavy damage, and they both teleport themselves all over the place and launch projectiles at Kirby.
 * In Kirby Super Star, Marx has pointed arrows at the tips of each wing. In Kirby Super Star Ultra, the tips are more rounded like hearts.
 * Strangely, the surface of the arena that Kirby fights Marx and Marx Soul on appears to scroll rapidly from the right, even though Kirby may appear to be standing completely still. The same effect was seen in Nightmare's battle in Kirby's Adventure and Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land.
 * In Kirby Fighters Deluxe, Kirby wears Marx's hat as Beam's alternate costume.
 * Marx appears in Kirby: Triple Deluxe during the "Kirby Master" video, along with Magolor and Galacta Knight.
 * In the manga, Marx is depicted to have hands, unlike his game counterpart.

Quotes
"Hey, hey, hey. Can you make peace between the Sun and Moon? You need to ask the giant comet Nova for help! But first, there's something we must do. To ask Nova, we must gather power from all the stars around us. It will be difficult, Kirby, but you can do it! We are counting on you. Good luck!"

- Marx to Kirby

"Well, I want to control Pop Star!"

- Marx to Nova

"I did it! It all went according to plan!"

- Marx

"Now I can cause all the mischief I want! Haha! See you later!"

- Marx to Kirby

"Marx has shown his true form! Fly in and protect Pop Star! Do it, Kirby, our Super Star!"

- Marx's pause screen description

Sprites
Max Marx Max Mark マルク Маркс