Quick, name a female Spider-Man villain from his early days! Trick question, maybe. There aren't a whole lot. If you can remember my Sister Six post, I had to really stretch some ideas to make the femme Spider-fatales work. But there IS one, even if it is a retcon. Her name... COMMANDA!
Kurt Busiek's Untold Tales of Spider-Man was a neat little series tucked away under the shadow of its brash and bold 90s comics-cousins. But it, ultimately, told the tales of Spidey during his high school days. Case in point: a French jewel thief who took it upon herself to find some New York action and wound up defeated by Spider-Man. Her gimmick was a malleable suit of armor and a bunch of interchangeable mechanical "drones" that would fly around to create new contraptions, controlled by way of her tiara. (More here.)
But being a bored jewel thief looking for some excitement? How very Black Cat. Or Joystick. Or (from the Other Company) very Catwoman. In other words, if Commanda is to return, there should be some role or niche for her to fill. As of right now, she's just too generic to be remembered.
Basically, I re-villain her as if the Green Lantern used Legos.
Make the drones powerful electro-magnetic manipulators that are even more powerful when configured together. She can make flying platforms, sheilds, hammers, cages, drills, signs-- or even more complex machines and weapons-- electro-blast guns, cameras, EMP disrupters. Let the artist go wild with new fanciful constructions with bits of drones flying around. We can even re-design her costume with prongs so she can outfit herself with drones as necessary-- jet boots, armor, sensors or communications array. Imagine all the models of Iron Man being able to reconfigure into each other in the space of the same comic book...
And that bit about being a disaffected jewel theif? All of it a lie. Commanda was playing a part in a story she constructed just like she would with her mechanical toys. Piece by piece, it all fit together just the way she wanted it to. Even her defeat? Yes. Because that's what villains do-- they get defeated. And yes. She is quite, quite mad.
Commanda (real name unknown) was a brilliant engineer driven slightly insane by her work with the drones. She began to see how people's "stories" fit together like the drone-pieces, and that it was as inevitable as it was cliché that her story was driving her to a life of villainy. So she took it upon herself to try to make it the most exciting one possible-- exotic locations, fancy costumes, foreign accents, love and lust.
She's been planning her next story to be even bigger-- perhaps even the DEATH of Spider-Man, for REVENGE! And if it shouldn't go as planned, if her true story gets revealed, it will simply driver her deeper into her delusion, as she tries to "fix" the broken story by any means possible...
Very "meta."
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