Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With the Light

Chapter 44: Puppet Dance Part 2: Dancing On A String

Her homework had helped her stay distracted, as had continuing to read through the latest Twilight novel, but now Gwen Stacy had finished them both. Unfortunately, now she didn't have anything to do, and Gwen found her thoughts drifting back to the grisly things costumed supervillains could do to their victims. In her mind, she saw her Aunt Nancy bound at her wrists, ankles and throat with wire, Rick Sheridan lying in a coma in the hospital and her father George with a hole blown in his chest, lying dead with a look of pure terror on his face.

As the spectacular Spider-Woman, Gwen had seen the massacres committed by her supervillain enemies, monsters like Supercharger and Firebrand. She'd been horrified and saddened by the tragedies, of course, but the reality of what supervillain victims had to face had become all the more apparent to Gwen when the victims were people she knew, or were friends of people she knew. She was also connected to them as Spider-Woman, given that her enemies Moonstone and Jack O' Lantern were the ones who had hurt them before she could finally stop them. Supercharger's rampage at Macy's Department Store was another example, given that the electrically-powered maniac had done it to force Spider-Woman to fight him.

Seeing Rick Sheridan in the hospital had reminded Gwen of all this. Try as she might, she couldn't keep herself from wondering if all this suffering was somehow her fault. After all, she was the one who had failed to stop Moonstone, and she was the one who Supercharger was so obsessed with.

Once again, Gwen found herself hugging her teddy bear Theodore, which always cheered her up whenever she was feeling stressed out.

She was doing a lot of that these days.

SPIDER-WOMAN #44

PUPPET DANCE, PART TWO

"DANCING ON A STRING"

Randy Robertson had a lot on his mind as well, wondering about how to handle the issues he was having with his girlfriend Gwen. After Gwen had mysteriously disappeared during a crime spree caused by the bizarre supervillain showman called the Brothers Grimm, and then reappeared with strange wounds, Randy had begun to wonder if she might have been a costumed superheroine. Gwen had been evasive about where she was when she'd disappeared, and Randy could instinctively tell she was lying to him. However, Randy couldn't be sure his instincts were right, and Gwen might just have been terrified enough to run away.

Randy had always been suspicious of costumed superheroes, particularly given the way that they hid their identities behind masks and costumes. There was no way of keeping any of them accountable, or of knowing whether they might just decide to go bad and commit the same kind of crimes as the supervillains they fought. Randy also wasn't fond of the way their supervillain enemies kept trying to get revenge on them, as the innocent bystanders of New York were typically the ones to get hurt by it.

Now, the question of where Gwen had gone on New Year's Eve was hanging in the air, as was the feeling that Gwen was lying. Neither Randy or Gwen was directly dealing with the issue, something that grated on Randy's nerves. He hated leaving these kinds of things hanging without knowing where he stood on them one way or another.

I can't let things go like this, Randy thought to himself. I should ask Gwen what's really going on. If there's really nothing going on, then we can just drop the issue. But if Gwen's really Spider-Woman, then I can get an idea of why she never told me about it...and why she's doing it.

That was the reason Randy hadn't already confronted Gwen. Her friend Liz Allan had told Randy about Gwen's difficult childhood, which made him wonder if that had affected her decision to become a superhero...if in fact she was Spider-Woman in the first place.

In that case, maybe we can talk it out, Randy realized. Maybe there's some way I can help her...

Anger at being lied to was being replaced more and more with confusion, as Randy tried to imagine what Gwen must be going through.