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Better at listening than talking, Mark is a born outdoorsman who feels most at home amongst the wildlife, stemming from a strong fascination with the animal kingdom in early childhood. He's also academically gifted in fields of animal behavior and communication. He and the equally gifted Emma met over their shared love of nature, as well as the Massachusetts band "The Pixies". During his time as a Monarch operative, Mark preferred working out in the field. He sought to avoid Monarch's political machinations but continued to follow Emma's dream of mankind communicating with nature at its greatest potential, even though he believes there are some things in the world that humans aren't meant to understand.
Mark and Emma became estranged after suffering a loss in the Battle of San Francisco. Their opposing views on the Titans added to their personal conflict. Emma wants to protect them and figure out how mankind and the Titans can co-exist peacefully as she believes they can. However, Mark believes the Titans are destructive beasts that should be destroyed, especially Godzilla, as they have brought havoc to his family.
Mark loves Madison and though they have a distant relationship since he separated from Emma, Madison's safety is his top priority when she and Emma are taken hostage by Alan Jonah.
Mark Russell's had a lifelong interest in animal sounds ever since growing up in Warren Valley, Ohio, and talking with the family's German Shepherd. Mark went on to become a respected expert in multiple disciplines consisting of animal behavior, zoomusicology, biocommunication, and apex predation. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Masters of Science in Ethology, and got a Ph.D. in Bioacoustics from MIT. After meeting and marrying fellow bioacoustics expert, Emma Williams, the two of them became the co-leads of Project ORCA and leaders in the field of bioacoustics. Even though it was initially developed to deter whales and dolphins from shorelines, Mark and Emma developed a prototype of the ORCA, a device representing a possible evolutionary leap in interspecies communication as it utilizes an ultrasonic wave map capable of detecting, transmitting, and translating audio at any frequency with great speed and accuracy.
In 2005, Mark and Emma caught Monarch attention when they first activated the ORCA prototype, transmitting a signal similar to a previously recorded Titan song. Believing the signal to be a new Titan emerging, Monarch sent a field unit alongside Dr. Serizawa and Dr. Graham to investigate and found Mark and Emma in an MIT lab. Together, Mark and Emma continued to make groundbreaking breakthroughs with their research and revolutionized interspecies communication. Two years later on May 4, 2007, they were activated by Monarch.
As a member of Monarch, Mark preferred field work and opted to stay out of the agency's politics and its ambition to find a way for humans and giant monsters to coexist. In 2014, shortly after Godzilla's return and subsequent defeat of the MUTOs in San Francisco, Mark left Monarch and became estranged from Emma because of the loss the battle had caused them, and their disagreements on how the ORCA device could potentially affect the world.[1]
Months later at MIT, Mark is contacted via computer by Miles Atherton, a representative of the United Nations' San Francisco Commission tasked with accompanying Emma on assignment in Guam. Mark tells Miles to tell him if Emma is in any danger as he worries that she's in a bad place to be working for Monarch after they lost their son Andrew in San Francisco. Miles assures Mark that Emma is safe at the moment and ends their conversation.
Novels: Arthur Adams • Eric Battle • Jimmy Betancourt • Greg Borenstein • Yvel Guichet • Drew Edward Johnson • Jann Jones • Lee Loughridge • Robert Napton • Arvid Nelson • Allen Passalaqua • Alan Quah • Richard Starkings
