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145--White Rabbit — Description

It's time for the 145th Spider-Man character entry, the White Rabbit. This takes place a few months after Aunt May's death.

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Now Spider-Man was not fully retired. Just semi-retired. Peter was still capable of mixing it up with the badguys as the wall-crawler, just not to the same extent and duration as before thanks to his leg injury. And while his full time teaching job did make it more difficult, Peter would still don the webs when the situation got personal or serious enough.

This situation would be one of them. It began with a student at Midtown High being caught smuggling illegal drugs. Peter at first did not think much of it, there were always troublemakers in every generation. But over time he started hearing rumors from the students when they thought he was not listening--a lot of other kids in Midtown, including in Peter's classes, were worried about being exposed if they did not make their payments in time. This was not a case of kids up to no good. Someone was blackmailing teenagers.

As Spider-Man, Peter secretly tailed one of his students he had heard needed to make a payment to this mysterious debtor. The teen eventually ended up in an ally on the wrong side of town meeting with some seriously shady characters. The shady people demanded to know where the next payment was, but the kid said they could not make it--their hours at their after school job had dried up. In tears, the teen pleaded to not have the evidence released. When the crooks started pushing the kid around, Spidey jumped in to save the day. With the criminals out for the count, the teen told Spider-Man what was going on--someone calling themselves the "White Rabbit" had been conning kids at Midtown by hiring them to deliver a package for a big payday, unaware the package contained drugs. The package deliveries were secretly filmed, and the actual reason for their delivery was blackmail on the kids in order to squeeze money out of them. And they needed to make their payments on time--the White Rabbit hated lateness.

Realizing the kind of monsters he was dealing with, Spidey promised the teen that he would shut the White Rabbit down. But the White Rabbit retaliated very quickly. Two days after Peter had saved the student, a bomb threat was called into Midtown. While the students and staff evacuated, Peter switched to Spider-Man once again and used his spider sense to track down the very real device inside the cafeteria. After disabling it, he found a note attached to it from the same student he had rescued from the White Rabbit's men earlier. The note said that the White Rabbit had forced them to plant the device as punishment for getting followed by Spider-Man. It also said that the same student was the one who had called in the threat in order to save everyone.

Now realizing that the student was in danger, Peter realized too late that the student had been kidnapped in the evacuation chaos. But Peter had an ace up his sleeve--fearing for the student, he had placed a spider tracer on their backpack the day before in case this kind of thing happened. The tracer ended up leading Peter to the abandoned auto shop formerly owned by Silvermane that Peter had his last encounter with Wilson Fisk in--the White Rabbit had moved in on Fisk's old property it seemed.

There he saw the student tied to a chair being beaten by the White Rabbit herself. If the situation had not been so dire and disturbing she probably would have been laughable looking. With white tights, a blue blazer, and a white rabbit mask, she looked like she was dressed for an Alice in Wonderland stage production or something--Peter did not expect her to be so... literal looking.

Unfortunately, the White Rabbit was not alone, and her men covered for her vehicular escape when Spidey made his entrance and Peter found himself in a good old fashioned Spider-Man car chase after quickly webbing up the White Rabbit's remaining men and freeing the battered student. The level of violence the White Rabbit was willing to inflict on the city as she made her escape surprised Peter, to the point that he cooled off his chase of her to let her think she had escaped him and she pulled into a nearby warehouse.

Peter secretly sneaked his way into the warehouse after she entered and realized it was a miniature armory, lined with weaponry Fisk's men must have used in the past. The White Rabbit was prepared for his sneak attack, however, and she expended several rounds of ammunition in her attempt to kill her follower before resorting to attempting to club Spider-Man to death with a crowbar. She was a talented fighter for sure, but Peter ended up getting the upper hand fairly quickly and used his webs to take her out of commission.

Frustrated with the White Rabbit's schemes and wanton destruction and violence, Peter tore off her mask, and realized he recognized her--she was Lorina Dodson, a wealthy socialite who made frequent headlines in the city. She had inherited a ton of money when her dad died, and was known for throwing crazy parties at her penthouse. She did not need to resort to crime for a little extra side action--the money she could have possibly been pulling in in her schemes could not have possibly even come close to matching her existing wealth. Why did she do it then?

Lorina shrugged her shoulders and laughed. She said she was bored one day and thought playing supervillain would be fun.

Our hero just about lost his temper completely when she gave her flippant remark. Lorina said she realized that a lot of Fisk's old stuff was actually pretty much unclaimed and thought it would be neat to try to be the next Kingpin, and playing a goofy supervillain was fun! She said she had a blast and hoped to do this with Spider-Man again sometime. Besides, most of the money she was making as the White Rabbit was going to some dude named the Black Tarantula off shore, so it was not like she was doing it for the money. Peter stopped himself from doing something he would regret and webbed her mouth shut and called the authorities.

Going back home, Peter was despondent for two reasons--that someone like Lorina could sink so low for basically no reason at all, and that monsters like the Black Tarantula were still out there while he had committed himself to his family. But coming home to a pregnant, now showing wife, Peter realized maybe it was for the best that he had realized that the world did not begin and end on his shoulders--this was his world now.

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So I just wanted to sneak in a little fun story of Peter operating as Spider-Man while still working as a teacher without it being some grand conspiracy, but of course there's still that hidden thread of the Black Tarantula...

But yeah, like the Gibbon, White Rabbit is basically a joke villain in the Spider-Man universe. But like the Gibbon I wanted to try taking her *somewhat* seriously. So she's more competent here, and is basically a wannabe crime boss instead of a random costumed nut who isn't even good enough to hire actual goons. But despite her status as a more credible threat, she is still a costume wearing nut. She's like a darker shade of her comics self.

Which is basically what her design is here. A darker shade of her normal self. She still dresses in white tights and coat, vaguely Playboy Bunny-esque but considerably more modest. And then I opted to change her white makeup and rabbit ears to a creepier looking rabbit mask. So she almost looks like an uncomfortably sexual children's show host, but then she's got a crowbar (instead of her umbrella) and blood spattered on her to show just how unhinged and dangerous she actually is.

We're closing in on the end of the Spider-Man project now!