Araña - Heart of the Spider #10
Gil Gorazon is furious to learn that his tip to the authorities didn’t lead to the capture of Felix Jade, the leader of a South American drug cartel who was responsible for the murder of his wife. When he gets off the phone, he wakes up his daughter — Anya — who fell asleep on the couch the night before and tells her that she will be late for work. Anya almost tells him about her own encounter with Felix Jade but decides against it.
At school, Anya plays a rather aggressive game of field hockey. When the game is over, she can’t find her back until it is brought to her by Jon Kasiya, the Sisterhood of the Wasp’s hired assassin. Even though they are enemies, he asks to know about her need for revenge against Felix Jade suspecting that it is over the death of her mother. He wants to know, because he can relate because his father is also dead. Realizing that they have more in common than she thought, she decides to sit down and tell him what happened. When she was six years old, Anya and her family were living in Mexico City. At the time, the city was ruled by Felix Jade and his drug cartel, making the place a very dangerous place to life. Her father, an investigative journalist, decided to work on taking Jade down after his drug war led to a group of children getting caught in the crossfire. When Jade and his men came to threaten Gil Corazon to stop writing about them, he refused. Tragically, while Gil was picking Anya up from school only to discover that Jade’s men lit their house on fire. Her mother was trapped inside and died in the inferno. Unable to prove that Felix was responsible for the death of his wife, Gil decided to pack up his daughter and immigrate to the United States. Once she was old enough to understand what happened she vowed to one day avenge her mother’s death and now that she has her powers and Webcorps at her disposal she can finally live up to that promise. That’s when she gets a call from Miguel, who tells her that they are closing in on Vincent and Felix’s new safe house but she’ll need to convince her father to go on another “retreat” so they can go to the Hudson River Valley.[1]
At that moment, Miguel, Nina, and Ted are at the spot where Vincent teleported to escape them the night before. Unfortunately, Miguel can’t detect where he and Felix went, but Ted figures he can track the signal from their headsets since they are a brand that can be easily hacked. By this time, Anya had returned home and overhears her father on the phone with the authorities. When she tells him about the Webcorps “retreat” she wants to go on, Gil Corazon doesn’t offer any protests. After packing some things, Anya asks her father what he would do if he found her mother’s killer today, telling her that she has to write an assignment about her family history and is debating on including this aspect of her life. Gil admits that when his wife was murdered he wanted nothing short of the utter destruction of Felix Jade. Now he believes that the proper course of action would be finding proof of Jade’s crimes so he could face justice. He wants this not only because it is the right thing to do, but it would be what Anya’s mother would have wanted.
Meanwhile, Vincent has gotten Felix Jade to the safehouse and he contacts his boss, Sam, at the Sisterhood of Wasps to tell her that he has succeeded. However, he knows that Webcorps will find them somehow and is planning a decoy to cover their escape back to the city. Unfortunately, Jade doesn’t want to run. Vincent tries to convince Jade that this is not a wise course of action, but the cartel leader is unafraid. When Vincent says he has to stay upon penalty of death from the Wasps, it insults Felix. But when Vincent refuses to leave, Felix Jade’s eyes begin to glow and he orders the mage to leave. Surprisingly, Vincent — now in a hypnotic trance — complies and exits the safehouse without further protest. As Vincent leaves, Felix thinks how his stubborn refusal to leave is a matter of pride and he looks forward to utterly destroying whoever Webcorps sends their way.
By this time, Ted has managed to pinpoint the GPS location of Vincent and Felix and soon they drive to the safehouse. Once they arrive, Araña, Miguel and Nina attack the guards outside. Nina takes point and tells Miguel and Anya to press ahead. Inside, they find more resistance but fight their way through them just as Nina and Ted arrive inside. While Ted is setting up a scrambler device that will hopefully prevent Jade from using any surprises, Miguel and Araña confront the cartel leader. Face to face with the man who killed her mother, Anya tells him that she was sent by Sofia Corazon.
Recurring Characters
Araña, Miguel Legar, Nina Smith, Ted Mankowski, Vincent, Felix Jade, Amun, Gil Corazon
Continuity Notes
The last time Anya went on a “retreat” with Webcorps was back in Amazing Fantasy (vol. 2) #5
Topical References
Ted Mankowski has to explain to his friends that every cell phone made after the year 2000 has a GPS system built into them. This wasn’t very well known when this comic was published in 2005, but would be considered topical now since smartphones have become a lot more commonplace and their GPS functionality is generally well known among people.
