Screwball (Earth-616)

History

Screwball was self-styled as a performance artist and the world's first live-blogging super-villain. She was an Internet personality and social-media attention monger to such an extent that she commited crimes on camera. Her real name and identity remain as of yet unknown. Her first crimes were filmed by an amateur camera crew, and uploaded on a website.^[2]

One of her earliest crimes consisted of robbing an off-track betting parlor for the sake of it, but she was sighted by Spider-Man . He tried to give chase, but eventually fell behind due to Screwball's proficiency in parkour. During this time, corrupt NYPD officers were employing Spider-Tracers to incriminate Spider-Man in numerous deaths; so when Spider-Man tagged Screwball with a Spider-Tracer, she believed she had been marked for death, and turned herself over to the nearest police officers to find protection from the alleged killer.^[2]

The superhero fight bookmaker Bookie paid for Screwball's bail in exchange for her to dress up as Spider-Man and arrange a fight with the Basher so that he could swindle his supervillain clients at the Bar with No Name, who had bet Spider-Man wasn't going to accept Basher's challenge. After Screwball took down the Basher, the real Spider-Man appeared in the scene and chased after Screwball. He webbed her up and unmasked her.^[1]

Later on, Screwball started using a camera embedded into her helmet to record her exploits. She was taken down by Spider-Man after stealing ten million dollars from an investment firm. However, she managed to evade him after hurling the stolen property into the air, forcing him to go after it.^[4] Since the traffic to Screwball's site went up eighty-five percent any time she and Spider-Man tussled, she hacked into the screens of New York's cab fleet to display a message to challenge Spider-Man to a fight.^[5] Spider-Man's took advantage of Screwball's challenge, and lured her to a confrontation between him and Raptor to use her as a distraction. After Screwball served her purpose, Spider-Man knocked her out.^[6]

Following the birth of Lily Hollister and Norman Osborn's baby, Doctor Octopus rallied numerous villains to go after the infant. As the child of two people powered by the Goblin Serum, Octavius believed its blood carried the key to cure him of his crippling illness.^[7] Screwball was one of the villains that tried to track down the baby. After the Chameleon took off with the child and tricked Spider-Man into thinking it had died, the wall-crawling hero went on a rampage to take down every villain involved in Doctor Octopus' scheme. Screwball was approached in Midtown Manhattan by the Looter to warn her of Spider-Man's actions. Before she could finish brushing him off, Screwball was taken down by Spider-Man from behind.^[8]

Screwball was briefly seen being chased by Spider-Girl who had informed Screwball that she was no longer broadcasting her show due to the heroine taking out her cameraman. She was last scene being arrested by the police after Spider-Girl left.^[9]

Screwball later joined forces with Jester into pranking Mayor J. Jonah Jameson. Upon uploading the prank on the Internet, both villains were defeated by Spider-Man, whose mind at the time had been taken over by Doctor Octopus.^[10]

She was later seen in Las Vegas^[11] having formed a partnership with Arcade in which she did his bidding and he gave her training, equipment and exclusive streaming rights.^[12]

Powers and Abilities

Abilities

Parkour Expert: Screwball is extremely skilled in urban gymnastics. She can rely on her ability to move swiftly through the city and its rooftops to successfully evade Spider-Man, who possesses superhuman speed.^[2]

Notes

• At the time of Amazing Spider-Man #608, Screwball's website (followscrewball.com) had 18 million subscribers.

Links and References

• 38 Appearances of Screwball (Earth-616)
• 4 Minor Appearances of Screwball (Earth-616)
• Media Screwball (Earth-616) was Mentioned in
• 20 Images featuring Screwball (Earth-616)
• 4 Quotations by or about Screwball (Earth-616)
• Character Gallery: Screwball (Earth-616)

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Footnotes