Hiding in the shadows of New York City, an old nightmare is stalking the streets again. A young girl named Christine sits in her bedroom drawing pictures of a creepy hooded figure with glowing eyes. Meanwhile, a man in a pink cap is horrified to find the corpses of two men hanging below him.
Jessica Drew, also known as Spider-Woman, glides through the night sky. But she’s not looking like her usual self. Her face carries a nasty scar around one eye. The old ways of violence never really left New York. They just hid in the dark, waiting for a chance to crawl back out.
Hunting for Clues
Jessica meets her veteran reporter Ben Urich on top of the giant, glowing Daily Bugle sign. Two more bodies turned up, both working for a crime boss named the Owl. Jessica tells him she already knows the killer is Harlan Krueger, a notorious vigilante assassin known as the Hangman.
Jessica heard rumors that Krueger died years ago in Los Angeles. Some people thought he gave up his old code to become a high-priced hitman. But a police friend gave Jessica a piece of the rope used to kill some of the mobsters. Krueger always braids his own special rope, so there’s no doubt it’s him.
Ben thinks they have enough information to write up a story while the police handle the rest. But Jessica explains that eight hanged gangsters means a mob war is brewing. “Sixteen feet tap-dancing in the wind, heh,” Jessica quips, which makes Ben suspicious. Making dark jokes like that isn’t her thing. Jess gets serious as she reminds Ben there’s only one major crime boss in the city that hasn’t been hit yet.
Jessica vows to track down the Hangman herself, then swings away into the night.
Breaking Jaws at Tombstone’s Hideout
Jessica targets the only crime boss left untouched: Tombstone. His real name is Lonnie Lincoln, and he runs a heavily guarded hideout in the outer boroughs.
Instead of sneaking in, Jessica walks right through the front door. She figures his guards wouldn’t expect such a direct attack. The thugs never fought her before, so they don’t know how to counter her attacks. She easily knocks them out, even using her bio-electric “venom blasts” to zap a few. But as she pushes toward the main office, more and more armed men keep pouring into the hallways.
Inside the main office, Tombstone is sitting at his desk, enjoying a glass of wine. Jessica asks if he hired the Hangman to eliminate his rivals. The Hangman hit every single gang in the city except Tombstone’s. On top of that, Tombstone is locking down his base and keeping his men close, as if he’s waiting for an attack. Jessica demands to know who hired the killer, threatening to beat the truth out of him.
Tombstone claims he has no idea. He notes the Hangman has long been a killer-for-hire skilled enough to evade S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, but something has changed. Perhaps he’s gone back to his sadistic judge-jury-executioner ways, which is troubling “on every side of the law.”
Suddenly, a thug with purple hair and a mohawk draws a gun on Jessica. “Isaac, I wouldn’t…” Tombstone warns but he fires anyway. She dodges and beats him viciously, ending with a brutal blow to his face. Tombstone remarks he didn’t know she had something so cruel inside, taking such pleasure in pain. Jessica stares at Tombstone for a moment then leaves through the window.
The Monster Inside
Back at her private investigator office, Tombstone was right about one thing: Jessica can feel a cruel urge growing inside her mind. Jessica sits alone in her office as she lights a candle. She stares into a small mirror, looking at the Carnage symbiote who’s visible in the mirror’s reflection.
She reminds it that she bonded with it back in Amazing Spider-Man: Spider-Versity #5 because she saw no other option. She had hoped to teach it “a better way of being.” But the symbiosis hasn’t been smooth, and both of them feel it. Jessica’s body is already unique because her father experimented on her blood with spider serum and the High Evolutionary’s meddling. Because of this strange biology, the two are affecting each other in ways neither anticipated. Still, she tells it that its delight in violence is wrong.
She lights a candle every time she talks to Carnage, “keeping the fire between us,” because fire keeps symbiotes at bay. When she feels Carnage influencing her, she holds her palm over the flame and demands to know if it understands. Though Carnage has been stripped of its intellect and reduced to raw instinct, it grasps the threat of pain. For now it relents. The cracked, scarred eye is a reminder that Carnage can only be held back for so long.
Soon, Ben calls her. She says she has nothing concrete yet, but he says he does. He hadn’t been investigating Harlan Krueger before tonight, but after digging into city records and the Bugle’s digital archives, he didn’t have to dig far. He found a major link to Krueger that could help make sense of what’s going on.
A Late Night Massacre
Meanwhile, Tombstone’s beaten-up thugs are sitting in a hospital waiting room. The thug with the purple mohawk complains about Jessica, muttering that Tombstone set them up. Another henchman warns him to keep his mouth shut, saying that kind of talk will get him killed.
Suddenly, the lights go out. When they flick back on, a hooded figure holding a giant scythe stands in the doorway. It’s the Hangman.
The Hangman slaughters the thugs in the hospital with his scythe while terrified nurses flee the scene. The only survivor is the mohawked thug, but that doesn’t last long. The Hangman looms over him, hoists the rope, and hangs him.
The Missing Puzzle Piece
At the same time, Jessica pays a visit to someone in the middle of the night. A woman named Alison Sante answers the door after her young daughter, Christine, tells her someone is knocking. Alison sends the girl to her room, assuming Jessica is a police officer. Jessica explains that she wants to ask about Harlan Krueger so she can stop him from hurting anyone else.
Alison lets her inside and admits Harlan Krueger is actually Christine’s father, though she thinks the little girl doesn’t know it. Alison met Harlan years ago before he became a killer. Back then, he was a sweet, old-fashioned man who had just left the army. They broke up on good terms when he moved to Los Angeles, and Alison only realized she was pregnant after he left.
She wrote to tell him about the baby, but soon learned about his violent crimes on the West Coast. Alison was terrified he would come back for Christine. When papers later reported that the Hangman died, she felt relieved.
Except he wasn’t dead.
Alison reveals that money started showing up at her apartment every few months for years. She opens a closet packed with thick stacks of cash. Alison knew the money was dirty, but she’s a single mother struggling to pay rent so she kept it. Jessica realizes the cash is blood money from Krueger’s assassination jobs, sent to support his daughter.
Jessica asks Alison if she knows why Krueger suddenly came back to New York. She shows Alison a newspaper clipping from the previous month. The headline reads: Tragedy Avoided as School Bus Caught in Gang Crossfire. Alison confirms that Christine was on that same school bus. Jessica realizes the Hangman learned his daughter almost died in a mob shootout, so he returned to New York to wipe out every single gang in the city to keep her safe.
Before she leaves, Alison shows Jessica a drawing made by her daughter. The drawing shows a scary hooded man who Christine says stands outside her bedroom window at night, looking just like the Hangman. Alison looks at Jessica with tears in her eyes and begs for help. The Hangman isn’t just hunting mobsters anymore, he’s stalking his own daughter, and Alison is terrified she’s his next target.
Two Carnages in One City
A creepy hooded man walks down a dark alleyway. He lists famous New York serial killers from the past, like the Brooklyn Vampire and the Son of Sam. Ghostly, glowing figures of old murder victims seem to follow behind him.
He says you can still hear “the murdered, screaming dead of New York.” It’s a comfort to him, which is why he’s returned. He can feel another dark presence in the city, pulled by the sounds of violence just like him. He pulls down his hood, revealing a red-haired man with a wild grin.
It’s Cletus Kasady, the original host of Carnage. He smiles and says some things just belong together, like “New York and crime.”
