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| Stained Glass Scarlet | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Moon Knight #14 (December 1981) |
| Created by | Doug Moench,Bill Sienkiewicz,Jim Shooter |
| In-story information | |
| Full name | Scarlet Fasinera |
| Species | Human |
| Place of origin | New York City |
| Abilities | Mysteriouspsychic bond withMoon Knight Expert in martial art and weapons |
Stained Glass Scarlet (real nameScarlet Fasinera) is a fictional character appearing inAmerican comic books published byMarvel Comics. The character was created byDoug Moench,Bill Sienkiewicz, andJim Shooter.
Scarlet made her debut in December 1981 inMoon Knight #14. She re-appeared several times in the series thereafter.
She returned inMarc Spector: Moon Knight #26 (May 1991), for a 5-part story titledScarlet Redemption which ran untilMarc Spector: Moon Knight #30 (September 1991).
She featured in the 1998Moon Knight miniseries which was written by her co-creator Doug Moench.
She also appeared in theAll-NewOfficial Handbook of the Marvel Universe #10 (October 2006),Civil War Battle Damage Report #1 (March 2007). and theOfficial Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z #11 (January 2010).
Stained Glass Scarlet is an ex-nun who became a vigilante after being forced to kill her criminal son. Scarlet was trained in combat when she became a prison guard in a women's prison.
Abused by her father, Scarlet had an unhappy childhood. One evening when she had had enough of it, she killed her father, by lighting his bed with a cigarette. His death was considered an accident and she was sent to live with her uncle and aunt, where her living conditions were improved.
Later in life, she met and married Vince Fasinera, a small-time criminal, believing that she could save him from himself. She was wrong, and he simply mistreated her, much like her father had. Despite this, they had a child together, Joseph, though Vince wanted nothing to do with him. Vince later died, gunned down on the steps of a church, and their son turned to a life of crime himself. He was later called Joseph "Mad Dog" Fasinera.
When he escaped prison, Scarlet took it upon herself to save her son from his life of crime, but in the end she was forced to kill him. Scarlet turned into a vigilante and started hunting down all the criminals who had ever had a hand to play in her son's turning to crime.Moon Knight tried to stop her, but ended up letting her escape.[1]
Scarlet returns and haunts the streets ofBrooklyn armed with her crossbow. She findsBertrand Crawley and, recognizing him as a friend of Marc Spector (or Jake Lockley), fires a crossbow bolt into his shoulder. Crawley runs off and falls through the glass front door of Gena's Diner. Scarlet follows after him, firing several more shots into the diner. She pitches Gena Landers through a window then fires a shot into the oven's gas lines, causing the entire building to explode. Scarlet returns to the church where she lives, confident that her "sweet angel" will come for her.
That evening, Marc stands before the Statue ofKhonshu. He suddenly sees an image of Scarlet flash before his eyes. He knows that Scarlet is destined to come back into his life. He soon learns about the incident at Gena's Diner. He visits Gena and Crawley in the hospital and promises Gena that he will rebuild the diner. When he leaves the hospital and goes to the Bronx Memorial Cemetery, a group of nuns, all answering to Scarlet, emerge from the shadows and attack him. Scarlet appears and fires a crossbow bolt that tears a hole through Moon Knight's mask. As quickly as she came, she disappears again.[2]
Scarlet later returned, having somehow formed apsychic link to Moon Knight. She was fighting inner demons, and began fire-bombing New York. Moon Knight caught up with her atop a bridge, but she jumped, and he was unable to find her in the waters below. At the time it was unknown whether she survived or not.[3]
Scarlet aids the apparently-resurrected Moon Knight in fighting an alliance of some of his oldest foes:Raoul Bushman,Black Spectre andMorpheus, although her willingness to kill continues to put her at odds with Moon Knight. After preventing her from killing a defeated Black Spectre and before his final showdown with Bushman and Morpheus, Moon Knight urges her to flee the scene before the police arrive and she is last seen returning to her church, her escape aided by Ray and Ricky Landers: Gena's children and allies of Moon Knight.[4]
In the aftermath of thesuperhero Civil War, Scarlet is among the names listed as a potential recruit for the50-States Initiative in the appendix ofTony Stark's battle damage report.[5]
Years later, it is revealed that Scarlet died during a confrontation with the police in an old church in south Bronx. But her death made her somewhat of an urban legend, making people pray to her for vengeance, which in turn birthed a living story. An entity not unlike Khonshu himself (as he and Hunter's Moon, the second fist of Khonshu, remarked). This entity took on the form of a faceless, four-armed, lady made of yellow broken shards of glass, wielding a crossbow, a hunting knife (a Buck 120 to be exact), with an halo hovering above her red long hair, and wrapped in a red dress and hood.[6]
While Scarlet does not have any apparent powers, she possesses a mysterious psychic bond with Moon Knight. This psychic bond is not systematic. It appears when Stained Glass Scarlet concentrates on Moon Knight, and can manifest in the form of dreams during which their thoughts intermingle and allow them to briefly communicate. This bond between Stained Glass Scarlet and Moon Knight could be due to an entity close to the Egyptian god of the moon,Khonshu, and reincarnated as Stained Glass Scarlet.
Scarlet is an expert inmartial arts. She is able to wieldbayonets, guns, andcrossbows with precision.