Appearing in "Dark Destiny!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
Antagonists:
- Hydra (Main story and flashback)
- Alpha Flight Team
- Alpha Leader
- Numerous unnamed members (Main story and flashback)
- Count Otto Vermis (First and only known appearance; dies) (Main story and flashback)
- Jared (First and only known appearance; dies) (Main story and flashback)
- Alpha Flight Team
Other Characters:
- Numerous unnamed villagers
- Satan (Mentioned) (Main story and flashback)
- God (Yahweh) (Invoked)
- Fury's mother (Mentioned)
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker) (Referenced)
- High Evolutionary (Only in flashback)
- Knights of Wundagore (Only in flashback)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Earth (Main story and flashback)
- Europe (Main story and flashback)
- France
- The Riviera
- Mediterranean branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. complex
- Paris, Île-de-France (Referenced)
- The Riviera
- Unnamed Alpine village (Only in flashback)
- Italy (Main story and flashback)
- Carnic Alps (Main story and flashback)
- Abandoned monastery (Main story and flashback)
- Carnic Alps (Main story and flashback)
- Transia (Only in flashback)
- Wundagore Mountain (Only in flashback)
- Citadel of Science (Only in flashback)
- Wundagore Mountain (Only in flashback)
- France
- S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ (Mentioned)
- Europe (Main story and flashback)
- Camelot (Referenced)
Items:
- Spider-Woman's Suit (First appearance) (Main story and flashback)
- Genetic Accelerator (Only in flashback)
Vehicles:
- Rocket Plane (Destruction)
Synopsis for "Dark Destiny!"
With Nick Fury stationed at a S.H.I.E.L.D. base on the Riviera, Hydra (led by Otto Vermis) sends a squad to attack, with their newest super-agent, their "spider-woman" whom they have code-named Arachne. Sent to assassinate Fury, Arachne thinks back to the events that led her to become a member of Hydra: how she was a girl in a small European village and was considered a witch because of her fantastic powers. However, she was found and taken in by Otto Vermis and made a member of Hydra. There she and fellow Hydra agent Jared became lovers. However, Jared would soon be captured by S.H.I.E.L.D., and Vermis would send Arachne to assassinate Fury in revenge.
When Arachne accidentally kills Jared trying to get at him, Fury realizes that Arachne is unaware that Hydra is a terrorist organization and shows her video footage of Jared threatening innocent lives. Convinced that Hydra has played her for a fool, the angry Arachne goes back to get revenge against Vermis and his Hydra unit. Confronted before he can escape, Vermis reveals the truth about her origins: that she is really one of the High Evolutionary's New Men, a highly evolved spider, who did not fit in with her fellow New Men and fled to a nearby town where she was recruited by Hydra.
Vermis breaks free from Arachne and tries to make his escape in a Hydra shuttle. Arachne follows his ship, damaging it enough to make it crash and killing Vermis. As S.H.I.E.L.D. secures the Hydra base, Arachne flees and wanders off into the wildness to wonder what she will do with herself now.
Notes
- Despite the Spider-Woman logo on the cover, Arachne does not adopt the name "Spider-Woman" in this issue. (However, she is referred to several times as a "spider-woman".)
- Arachne appears next (as Spider-Woman) in Marvel Two-In-One #29.
