Lights Out on Broadway!

This story takes place during the events of Infinity #3…

The newly empowered Fulmia is using her powers to blackout Manhattan one block at a time. Spider-Man, who has been helping defend the city from alien invaders, now has to stop this girl before she plunges the world into a new dark age. Spider-Man points out the folly of her mission, but she believes that the advances in human technology is what brought these invaders to Earth and believes that by shutting it all down the aliens will lose interest in planet Earth. Having had first-hand experience with this level of mania Spider-Man tries to convince her to stop, but his warnings fall on deaf ears because at least in Fulmia’s mind, she is doing something that future generations will benefit from.

Spider-Man decides to check in on Luke Cage before heading to his lab on Spider-Island to deal with Fulmia. With the alien invaders mostly dealt with Luke tells him that Spectrum can now help deal with Fulmia. However, Spider-Man has decided that he can handle this problem on her own. This leads to a brief argument between him and Cage. This is interrupted by Fulmia who tells him that she will be able to handle anyone that Spider-Man sends against her.

Spider-Man then speeds off to Horizon Labs to deal with her himself. Along the way he comes across a hospital where the emergency generator has failed. This forces the wall-crawler to stop and get it working again before continuing. He has to stop a second time to stop more alien invaders. The longer this takes the more Fulmia begins to disassociate due to the enormity of her task. He continues to talk to her in order to maintain her focus until he arrives at Horizon Labs.

There he has his robot assistant, the Living Brain, to hook him into his neurolytic scanner. With it he transfers Fulmia’s entire essence into his mind where he confronts her in his memory of a local cafe. Here he forces her to confront the madness of her scheme to try and send the world to a new dark age. He reminds her that the dark ages weren’t as perfect as she makes them out to be as it was a world of plague, poverty, primitive medicine, rampant superstition, brutal class divisions, and constant warfare. She accuses him of trying to twist the truth and when she grabs him she almost sees that Spider-Man is actually Otto Octavius. This does make her realize that he can alter the basic reality around them and that she can also. She changes back to her electrical form and threatens to fry his brain. However, Otto points out that if she did that, it would kill her as well. He is also more than prepared to deal with another presence in his mind as he is no stranger to that situation.[1] He then tries to point her lack of reason, telling her that she threatened to kill him when she challenged her worldview.

Their discussion is interrupted when the spider-bots warn of another coming invasion force. Racing outside, Spider-Man is horrified to see that it is a massive alien ship. As it begins laying waste to the city, Spider-Man shows this to Fulmia and makes one last appeal to her to do the right thing before freeing her from his mind. At first, it appears that Fulmia is going to continue on her insane quest when, suddenly, she has a change of heart. Bidding Spider-Man farewell, Fulmia uses her power to attack the alien ship. It takes all of her power to rip the ship in half, destroying it. the resulting explosion also shatters Fulmia. As he watches the last embers of her being fall to the city below, Spider-Man watches and sends out a prayer to wherever Fulmia has ended up to tell her that he is proud of her.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Fulmia, Luke Cage, Living Brain

Continuity Notes

1. When Otto Octavius took over Peter Parker’s body circa Amazing Spider-Man #698-700, a portion of Peter Parker’s mind still remained and was attempting to retake his body. Otto found out and seemingly succeeded in silencing this entity in Superior Spider-Man #9.