O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!
My tables-meet it is I set it down
That one may smile and smile, and be a villain;
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.
-Hamlet, I. v. 111-114
If rape and poison, dagger and burning,
Have still not embroidered their pleasant designs
On the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies,
It's because our souls, alas, are not bold enough!
-Beaudelaire, Les Fleurs Du Mal
Just a few seconds ago, Gwen Stacy, alias the spectacular Spider-Woman, was fighting with fire in her eyes and rage in her heart. Spider-Woman's old enemy Jack O'Lantern had taken her Aunt Nancy and dozens of other people hostage at the Stark Enterprises office building where they worked, and the arachnid heroine had come to their rescue. In fighting the pumpkin-headed psychopath, she had shattered the ghoulish flaming pumpkin mask Jack wore.
Now, as she stared at the face that had been hiding under Jack O'Lantern's pumpkin, all she could feel was shock and horror.
She stared back at the handsome, chiseled features of Steven Mark Levins, uncle to her close friends Kitty Pryde and Ben Reilly. Thick dark hair framed his face, and his dark eyes glowed alternately with perverted amusement at her distress and smoldering anger that reflected the poisonous hatred he felt for her. Spider-Woman had seen Steve Levins's face before, but now she felt as if she was seeing its true form for the first time.
"W...why...?" Spider-Woman managed to gasp, her mind still reeling from what she was seeing. "All the suffering...all the death...you...I...can't..."
"Isn't it obvious?" Levins hissed. "Because it fills me with joy, because it gives my life meaning, because I feel a sense of accomplishment, because I'm doing something worthwhile! Finally, I can let everything out, be the monster I've always wanted to be, live my deepest, darkest fantasies..."
"I've done this to make you suffer!" the man who called himself Jack O'Lantern shouted, his voice rising several octaves as he tossed another explosive shrapnel pumpkin bomb at Spider-Woman. "You, and everyone like you, who've been ruining my fun and holding me back!"
Reflexively, Spider-Woman leaped back and caught the grenade with a webline before hurling it off to the side where it exploded harmlessly. All the shock and horror she felt was gone. It was replaced by her rage, the anger she felt at the monster that had endangered her family, murdered dozens of innocents, and left a path of destruction across New York City.
Jack O'Lantern stared back at Spider-Woman with a look of pure, poisonous hate, his gaze fixed on the young woman who in his mind had come to represent everything he hated about the world.
He unleashed a flock of razor-edge boomerang bats from his hands, sending them hurtling at Spider-Woman. The arachnid heroine sprayed her webbing in a wide arc, entangling the bats and grounding them before blasting Jack O'Lantern head-on with a double blast from her sting bolts. Jack O'Lantern recoiled from the blast, grunting in pain, but then he fired back with his own wrist lasers, knocking Spider-Woman off her feet. As she leapt to her feet, Jack O'Lantern came flying in, his razor-sharp talons bared.
The storm continued to rage outside as they battled, the lightning flashing as the thunder roared more loudly than ever.
SPIDER-WOMAN #32
BEHIND THE MASK, PART FOUR
"DEVIL IN PLAIN SIGHT"
Perhaps you're wondering how all this began.
YOU ARE READING
Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light
FanfictionAs Gwen Stacy, Empire State University Drama major, finds herself developing strange superhuman powers, she is faced with her own inner demons. As she copes with the stresses and difficulties of her home life, a strange idea comes into her mind...
