—King Chasm (Ben Reilly)Move up! March on your new city! It's all ours!
Appearing in "In The Bleak Midwinter"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- ⏴ Goblin Queen (Madelyne Pryor)
- ⏴ X-Men ⏵
- Rek-Rap
- ⏴ Bedlam (Eddie Brock) ⏵
- ⏴ Gold Goblin (Norman Osborn) ⏵
- ⏴ Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan)
Antagonists:
- ⏴ King Chasm / Chasm (Ben Reilly)
- ⏴ Hallows' Eve (Janine Godbe)
- Insidious Six
- Gorepion
- Lizzaro
- Kraken the Hunter
- Rhiceratops
- Doctor Octoball
- Grave Goblin
- Shocker Demon (First appearance; dies)
- Mysterio Demon (First appearance; dies)
- Jack O'Lantern Demon (First appearance; dies)
- Vulture Demon (First appearance; dies)
Other Characters:
- Robbie Robertson
- Ben Urich
- J. Jonah Jameson
- God (Invoked)
- Frankenstein's Monster (Mask)
- Avengers (Mentioned)
Races and Species:
- Demons
- Humans
- Mutants
- Symbiotes
- Werewolves (Mask)
- Dogs (Mentioned)
- Human-Inhuman Hybrids
- Vampires (Mask)
Locations:
- Earth
- United States of America
- New York
- New York City
- Limbo Embassy (First appearance)
- New York
- Krakoa (Mentioned)
- United States of America
- Hell (Invoked)
- Limbo
Items:
- Scythe of Sorrows
- Kraken the Hunter's Vest
- Mysterio Suit
- Jack O'Lantern's Suit
- Spider-Men's Suits and Web-Shooters
- X-Uniforms
- Cyclops' Visor
- Rek-Rap's Symbiote
- Fruit of the Tree of Exquisite Liberation (Mentioned)
- Soulsword
- Hallows' Eve's Masks
- Goblin Armor
- Ms. Marvel's Suit
- Pumpkin Bombs (Mentioned)
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "In The Bleak Midwinter"
In the Limbo-annexed New York City, King Chasm and Hallows' Eve reminisce about their faulty memories about sharing Christmas together. But they wish each other happy holidays and go to lead their new demon army toward New York. As the heroes return to New York, Spider-Man aims to fight Chasm while Madelyne Pryor desires vengeance, but Spider-Man makes a great argument about how Chasm is an idiot regarding him, citing his feeble plan to make him eat a cursed fruit to take his soul, and Madelyne agrees. So Spider-Man will battle Chasm with Rek-Rap while Robbie and Jonah head home, as Madelyne aids the X-Men against the demon forces, with Cyclops happy to lead the X-Men in a fight. As the X-Men battle King Chasm's Insidious Six, Madelyne's arrival indicates to the usurper king that she wants her scythe back. But as she notes the mistakes of her misadventure with Chasm, her favorite one was bringing Bedlam (Eddie Brock) into the mix, having taken away Eddie's memories to morph him into Bedlam, letting him have fun killing the demons which betrayed Madelyne.
After King Chasm orders the demons to concentrate on attacking Madelyne, Spider-Man and Rek-Rap move against him and Hallows' Eve, who puts on her Werewolf Mask to fight Rek-Rap while King Chasm deals with his progenitor. After Cyclops has Magik portal away the Insidious Six, Havok arrives and the X-Men move to protect Madelyne, taken aback by them treating her like "family" all of a sudden. As King Chasm overpowers Spider-Man and Hallows' Eve uses the Frankenstein Monster mask to overpower Rek-Rap, Gold Goblin and Ms. Marvel make a timely arrival to back them up, and King Chasm derides them as useless. As the demons break through their defensive lines, Madelyne asserts her dominance and dons her original garb as the Goblin Queen as red flames light the area, and the demons cease their assault against her. Gold Goblin fights King Chasm with his not-really Pumpkin Bombs, while Ms. Marvel and Rek-Rap fight a vampire-masked Hallows' Eve and take her down. When Chasm attempts to summon his demonic legions, Cyclops reveals they're no longer his, and Forge uses his Plant Gun to immobilize Chasm before Cyclops, Jean, and Synch give him three flavors of hurt.
When Hallows' Eve races to Chasm's side, the saddened Ben apologizes to Janine having wanted only to protect her, and she encourages him to stand up again to keep fighting. Despite their impending loss and Janine's want to never abandon Ben, he uses the Scythe of Sorrows to teleport her elsewhere before fighting the hordes. After teleporting Bedlam away, Madelyne takes the Scythe and regains her powers while leaving Ben to revert to his default state as Chasm. But while Cyclops calls in a team to take in Chasm, Madelyne stops him wishing to deal with Ben as he is now a citizen of Limbo. As Ben needs to be punished and Spider-Man wants to keep him somewhere in his sights, Madelyne finds a compromise. Come Spring time, Ben is in an idyllic paradise cell as Spider-Man once more fails to reach Ben Reilly. Exiting Ben's "cell," Spider-Man bids farewell to Madelyne, as she goes to see the visiting X-Men. Despite their reticence, Madelyne assures the X-Men that she convinced the United States to allow her embassy to Limbo so as to prevent a possible escalation of demonic activity. She'll ensure no more souls drift to Limbo lost in the darkness. Aiming to lead souls back to the light, Madelyne plans to use the Limbo Embassy to prevent further tragedies like Chasm from reoccurring.
Solicit Synopsis
• The dawn rises after the demonic invasion of New York City, but what will that light reveal?
• It will reveal Chasm’s final gambit and the new denizens of Hell he helped create and unleash on Spider-Man and the X-Men!
• See how Dark Web changed this city’s landscape forever!