I said I would put up a synopsis of
The Black Widow from Misty, for people to judge how strong it is for honourable mention. Here it is:
The Black Widow
Publication: Misty 17/6/1978 - 16/9/1978
Sequel: Spider-Woman, Tammy & Misty, 19/1/80 - 22/3/80
Writer: Unknown
Artist: Jaume Romeu
Plot: In “her silken lair, hidden from the eyes of the world” is Mrs Webb, who is to become known to the world as The Black Widow. She calls out to her spiders, “Tonight is the time…the time of the spiders!”
Not far away is Corey End School, where we meet our two protagonists. The first is Sadie Lincoln, who wants to be a scientist. But Sadie has phobia about creepy crawlies, especially (you guessed it) spiders. The science teacher, Miss Dexter, tells Sadie she must overcome this if she is to handle biological specimens and make her way as a scientist. The second is Freda Lawrence, a rather unlikeable girl who thinks Sadie is always sucking up to teachers.
Sadie prefers astronomy as a science, and is spending the night with her telescope. She is surprised to find a type of meteor approach, which bursts into fragments. She goes out to investigate and finds a capsule containing a spider. She takes it to Miss Dexter, who cannot identify the species, but puts it in an aquarium for study. They are astonished to find it has doubled in size 24 hours later. And it continues to grow. They don’t realise they have captured the spider that should be at the centre of Webb’s new web. Webb goes in search of the spider and says there will be “no mercy for anyone keeping him!”
Webb turns up at the school, suspecting it is the place to start looking. Telling everyone she is on a mission to save spiders from the cruelty of man, she promises a £5 reward for anyone who brings a spider to her. Figuring she will get more than that if she brings Webb the super-growing spider, Freda steals it from the science lab. Sadie catches Freda and suspects what she is doing. She tags along with Freda to Webb’s house in the hope of grabbing it back.
They are both surprised to find the house is derelict. Inside, they are caught in a mechanical web manned by a giant mechanical spider. But this is actually the mechanism that brings them to Webb’s lair. Webb scares them into handing over the spider.
Webb explains that she and her husband were biological chemists. Mr Webb was forced to participate in a military biological experiment that killed him when it went wrong. Now she is out for revenge on Britain with the aid of her specially engineered spiders – and with Sadie and Freda, who are going to be her instruments. Freda is happy to do it for money. This disgusts Sadie, who also expresses her fear of spiders. At this, Webb hypnotises Sadie into liking spiders. She then gives Freda a hypnotic prompt “you creep!” This will have Sadie doing whatever Freda commands when she says it. She also imprisons the girls in slave pendants that give them electric shocks whenever they try to remove them. The pendants label Freda as Tara and Sadie as Tula. Finally, Webb gives Freda a bag of spiders for their first test. She then sends them out, with Sadie having no recollection of what happened.
What Webb does not realise is that Freda is not loyal to her because the hypnotism of Sadie gave her a shock. Freda is only playing along with Webb because she does not want to be hypnotised.
Using the “you creep!” prompt, Freda has Sadie unleash the spiders at school, which causes a panic. Afterwards, Webb says the spiders have been installed with transmitters, so she can track them on her electronic map. Meanwhile, as Sadie has no memory of what happens when the hypnotic power wears off, that she cannot explain her action to her headmistress – or her absenteeism the next day. This is, of course, because of their next target – one Major-General Oliver Bullivant. Webb blames Bullivant for her husband’s death. This may be in fact be true because Bullivant is such a pompous, overbearing, unlikeable git who forces his unfortunate batman to do jobs that are not supposed to be part of a batman’s job. The girls plant Webb’s spider on Bullivant’s dog. When the spider bites Bullivant, he falls into a paralysis that leaves him incapable of speaking and doctors baffled. However, the investigation, led by Inspector Bird, is soon drawing the right conclusions. Bird is now searching for the spider and the two girls.
Freda wants to call it quits, but when she tries to tell Webb, Webb demands to know the fate of the Bullivant spider. She realises the spider is still with Sadie and uses the pendant to summon her – only to find that Sadie has let the spider go. Later, the spider turns up in the papers that a despatch rider is taking to Bullivant’s. The spider bites and paralyses the dispatch rider, causing him to have a crash. Bird realises what happened and is now searching the scene of the accident for the spider. Then Carfax of SI9 turns up and tells Bird that someone stole a batch of spiders that the Ministry had been testing in the stratosphere. The purpose had been to create super-spiders, but the results are unknown because of the theft. Carfax has a pretty good idea who the thief is (guess who?), but is having trouble locating her. This may also explain the "meteor" that Sadie observed earlier.
Meanwhile, the next target is Professor Lawton, who devised the experiment that killed the husband. This time the girls are to plant the spider on Lawton’s baby. But as they leave, they are attacked by rough girls. Freda tells the leader, “Go an’ jump in the lake, you creep!”
Oops – Freda unwittingly used the hypnotic prompt, which has Sadie jumping in the lake and losing the spider. When Webb finds out the spider’s fate, she is hysterical and furious as she regards her spiders as her children. She decides to go out and do the job herself. However, Mrs Lawton intercepts the spider and crushes it, which means another upset for Webb. Also, Lawton compares notes with Bird and they see the connection.
When Webb returns to her base, she has yet another upset – Freda had used the hypnotic prompt to have Sadie smash her tank of beloved spiders. Webb uses her spider powers to turn the spiders on them. Freda feigns that they have learned their lesson and Webb calls the spiders off. Sadie now understands what is going on and she quietly teams up with Freda. But Sadie is hypnotised again to deliver a spider to the Prime Minister. Webb plans to use this attack to blackmail Britain into capitulating to her. However, Freda uses the “you creep!” command to bring Sadie back to Webb’s lair to do a more thorough job of smashing the place.
The police arrive. The girls try to explain, and the police are forced to take them seriously when they find millions of spiders crawling all over their car! Soon, the girls are explaining everything to Bird himself.
Meanwhile, there has been a series of blocked drains in London. Investigation reveals an enormous web and spider in the drains. It is the spider Sadie captured earlier. It was engineered to be a super-growing spider. It has now grown to giant proportions, feeding on sewer rats – and is still growing! What’s more, it is moving on from rats to people as prey and causing panic in the underground railway station. The giant spider and its web emerge in Trafalgar Square, which causes even more panic and makes the news. Webb sees the broadcast and gloats, “The day of the spiders is here at last!”
Back at her lair, Webb has less to gloat about when she discovers what the girls have done. But when the authorities arrive, there is no sign of Webb. Then they hear her over a loudspeaker, where she finally delivers her ultimatum: if they want the spider (now moving on from Trafalgar Square and travelling across the country via the power lines), they must do what she says. The first of her demands is to bring the girls to a rendezvous point, where the spider is waiting to devour them.
The authorities bring the girls, and Webb orders them to climb up to the spider. But the authorities have prepared a trap. The national grid is down, but the power station is waiting for their signal to turn on the power. Ironically, it is accidentally turned on when an employee is scared by a spider. As planned, the giant spider gets fried. Webb falls to the ground, though not to her death. At the same time, the slave pendants fall off Freda and Sadie. Webb is being taken to hospital, but mysteriously disappears from the ambulance. A spider falls to the ground unnoticed. It leaves a question mark as to whether the world is really free from the menace of the Black Widow.
