Spider-Man: Breakout #3
At Trimark Investments, Courtland Whitehead has beefed up security following the super-villain breakout at the Raft prison.[1] Unfortunately, despite his efforts, the U-Foes easily take out his guards. He is confronted by Vector who is furious at Whiteland for mismanaging his investments and losing all his money. Whitehead insists that it wasn’t his fault, saying that Vector’s bank accounts were hacked while he was in prison. Vector believes him but wants Courtland to use his hacking skills to track down who did steal all of his money. Vector knows that his accounts were siphoned by Rozalyn Backus the former administrator at the Vault and he wants to know where the money went.
At that same moment, Spider-Man has managed to track down Backus himself and discovers that she — under the assumed alias of Angela Mercy — somehow funded Haven House, a Brooklyn apartment complex for single mothers. Searching her apartment, Spider-Man is interested in a photo of Rozalyn with a man with the words “never forget” written on it in red ink. As “Angela” returns to her home after unclogging a tenant’s toilet, Spider-Man finds a large cache of weapons in her bedroom. When Rozalyn enters the apartment, Spider-Man lowers the photo of her and the mystery man in front of her face and asks why she keeps so many weapons in her home. Pushing past the wall-crawler, Roz gets a gun hidden in her fridge and points it at him. When she tells him to get out of the house, Spider-Man suggests that she call the cops, but wagers she won’t because then they’ll find out who she really is. Putting her gun down, Rozalyn knew it would come to this after she heard about the breakout. Since Spider-Man has found her, she figures its only a matter of time before the U-Foes and Crossfire's Crew find her as well and begins to panic. Spider-Man tries to calm her down, but she reminds him that there are killers gunning for her and she is in an apartment building full of single mothers and their young children. When she sits down and asks how Spider-Man found her, he admits that it wasn’t easy. He learned about her fake identity from the Owl, a low-level crime boss who wants the two criminal gangs off the street because they have increased police presence on the street. However, this only led him to her condo apartment on Park Avenue, which he quickly realized was another dead end when he discovered that it hadn’t been lived in for months. When she asks if there was some clue there, he assures her that there wasn’t and said he had to find her the hard way.
Meanwhile, Courland Whitehead discovers how Backus managed to rip Vector off. She hacked into his accounts and invested his money in internet start-up companies that were all owned by her so when she eventually shut them down it made it look like Vector made a bad investment and lost all of his money. Vector demands to know where the Backus woman is because she holds the key to the U-Foes regaining their humanity again.[2] Luckily, Whitehead was able to figure out what Rozalyn did with the money as there is a paper trail he can follow. As the U-Foes continue to learn what happened to the money, they are unaware that the Mandrill has pulled up in the loading area of the Trimark building and used his pheromone power to enthrall the female security guard. With her under his control, he opens the back of the truck so his partners — Crossfire, Controller, and the Corruptor — were hiding. The Controller is glad to see that Crossfire is getting involved since he had the other gang members doing all his grunt work until now. Crossfire points out that the previous attacks were all at hideouts while this time they have tracked the U-Foes to a high rise in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district, requiring something a little more delicate than brute force. He points out that before Simon Utrecht became Vector he was a wealthy businessman and his connections could help them from Rosalyn Backus. The Controller questions why they are still going after the woman because they are free and have their equipment back and can be doing literally anything else right now. Crossfire tells him that nobody crosses him and lives and says there is more to Rozalyn Backus that he hasn’t told any of them about before.
Back in Brooklyn, Spider-Man is concluding his explanation on how he managed to find Rozalyn. He explains how he looked into the city’s tax records and followed the paper trail to learn that she bought Haven House. He then came to look for her and recognized her from the photo from her Vault file. He wonders why she didn’t take the money and run, and Rozalyn explains that she enjoyed the good she was doing with Haven House and even when she heard about the breakout she couldn’t just abandon the people that rely on her. When the web-slinger asks, she tells him how she managed to rip off Vector.
She tells him that her job at the Vault was a dream job after a career as a corrections officer. She was particularly interested in the psychology of the supervillains that were locked up there, hoping she could find out what made them tick. She discovers that the Vault wasn’t much different than any other prison she worked at, criminals formed specific gangs and feuded with one and other. While normal prisons had gangs that were based on race or religious identity, supervillains usually formed gangs based on power type: The were gangs of mutants, mad scientists, mobsters, and so on. Case in point, Crossfire’s Crew consisted of villains who all had some kind of mind control ability. She reminds Spider-Man of Crossfire’s skills,[3] saying that he was a CIA operative that developed a sonic brainwashing technique.[4] She then goes over the various other members of his crew: the Mandrill (recruited from the mutant gangs) was part of the gang because of his ability to control women with his pheromones, the Corruptor because he could enslave people by skin-to-skin contact, the Controller for his use of mind control discs, and lastly Mister Fear — the weakest link in the group — who was only brought in so Crossfire could learn the secrets of his fear gas.[5] Even though he didn’t have any real powers of his own, Rozalyn considered Crossfire the most deadly of them all, particularly after he convinced two of his previous cellmates to kill themselves, prompting the prison to stop pairing him up with other inmates. She then explains that, when Crossfire was on kitchen duty, tossed a roll of plastic wrap in an oven to melt it down. After it hardened he took it back to his cell and carved it into a shiv. This was to defend himself from Armadillo who wanted revenge because one of the cellmates that Crossfire killed was a friend of his. When Armadillo charged him in the lunchroom, Crossfire tossed his makeshift shiv at the inhibitor collar he wore causing electrical feedback that incapacitated Armadillo before he could cause harm. Nobody challenged Crossfire until the U-Foes showed up in prison. As she concludes her tale, Spider-Man asks how someone like Crosshair could become a lifelong enemy, she tells him it took a lot of planning.
At that moment, at Trimark Investments, Courtland Whitehead has finally figured out what happened to Vector’s money by looking into Rozalyn Backus’ past. He learned that her mother was a heroin addict who lived in a housing project in Brooklyn. With that he looked for female philanthropists around her age who might have funded anything in that area and made a hit and points them to Angela Mercy. Pleased with these results Vector and his U-Foes leave, telling Whitehead that they won’t ever be back again unless this lead is a dead end. No sooner are the U-Foes gone does Crossfire and his men arrive and confront Courtland. Crossfire knows that he sent the U-Foes on a wild goose chase as he knows how Rozalyn works and tells Whitehead to get back to work to get him the information he needs to find the real location of Rozalyn Backus.
Recurring Characters
Spider-Man, U-Foes (Vector, X-Ray, Vapor. Ironclad), Crossfire’s Crew (Crossfire, Controller, Corruptor, Mandrill), Rozalyn Backus, (in flashback) Mister Fear, Rhino, Armadillo
Continuity Notes
This story takes place shortly after New Avengers #1-5.
Vector mentions how the U-Foes got their powers trying t replicate the space flight at that gave the Fantastic Four their own powers, as seen in Incredible Hulk #254.
Rozalyn mentions how Spider-Man has encountered Crossfire before. That was during Secret War #1-5.
Crossfire’s origins are recounted here as they were originally told in Marvel Two-In-One #52.
For more on the origins of each member of Crossfire’s gang members check out Shanna the She-Devil #4, Nova #4, Iron Man #12, and Marvel Team-Up #92 respectively.
