History[]
Elliot Yang was orphaned at a young age when his parents were both killed by enforcers of the Kingpin because of a botched deal his father made with Fisk. Elliot, around 11 years old at the time, had one last conversation with his father, who asked his son to ‘remember him as better than he was’ and that Elliot should always strive to not be like how he turned out.
After that, Elliot had to escape out his bedroom window and ran to the Shelleys, family friends to the Yangs. After the police finally arrived, it was too late, and Elliot’s parents were dead. As his godparents, Brian and Michelle Shelley legally adopted Elliot and he stayed with them until he moved out during his college years.
Deeply affected by the deaths of his parents, Elliot made his father’s last message about always trying to be a better person as a personal ethos. He took up mixed martial-arts in his spare time and eventually began studying criminology in college. There, he met his boyfriend, Morgan Hopper.
Elliot Yang; without his costume
During his studies, several disappearances were occurring with worrying frequency in New York City. Elliot was one of those that became missing, kidnapped by masked thugs late one night on his way to meet Morgan. Elliot was placed in a secured cell in a mysterious facility and subsequently injected with a mysterious serum that contained Spider-Man’s genetic material by the head scientist at the facility, Dr Matthew Kessler – who was hired by an unknown benefactor to develop soldiers to match Spider-Man’s abilities to kill and replace him.
All other subjects died from their exposure to the mutagen, but Elliot did not and did indeed develop several innate abilities of Spider-Man, apart from his Spider-Sense. To further ‘enhance’ Elliot to combat Spider-Man, he was further experimented on to develop organic webbing glands in his wrists and retractable claws that secreted a toxin that caused temporary paralysis.
With Elliot now fully transformed, Kessler revealed himself to be a mutant with the ability to control people’s minds and have them under his will for a period of time through physical contact, explaining his codename ‘MKUltra’. Using his mutant power, MKUltra ordered Elliot – who was given the moniker, Funnelweb – to kill and replace Spider-Man.
As Funnelweb, he was sent out into the city where one of MKUltra’s lackeys (the very one who managed to acquire Peter’s DNA for the serum), Strychnine, was attacking Spider-Man. Funnelweb’s conditioning was to battle Strychnine but have Spider-Man die in the process and have it look like an accident. With Spider-Man dead, Strychnine would be defeated and flee while Funnelweb would appear to mourn Spider-Man’s death and take his place, apparently to honour him.
However, MKUltra was unaware of Spider-Man’s Spider-Sense and when Funnelweb attempted to aid Strychnine, Peter discovered this new Spider-Man was trying to get him killed and rebutted him. Both Funnelweb and Strychnine were ordered to abort but Spider-Man managed to follow them back to the facility where it was revealed that Kingpin was funding the operation as a means of getting rid of Spider-Man and having his ‘replacement’ on his payroll. This was when Spider-Man discovered Funnelweb was being mind controlled as Elliot was beginning to regain control before being kept under MKUltra’s influence.
However, with the public seeing Funnelweb trying to attack Spider-Man, Kingpin saw that even with a costume change, the idea of another spider-based vigilante suddenly appearing would arouse suspicion and decreed it simpler to just start from scratch and ordered Funnelweb to be disposed of. Spider-Man intervened and battled the Kingpin’s men, Strychnine and MKUltra.
MKUltra attempted to order Funnelweb but was silenced by Spider-Man. With MKUltra distracted and unable to give him commands, Elliot is able to shake off the scientist’s influence and joins Spider-Man in battle. Funnelweb and Spider-Man defeat Strychnine and later MKUltra.
Kingpin tries to escape but is pursued by Funnelweb, who wants revenge for ordering the deaths of his parents. He catches up to Kingpin and near kills him before Spider-Man pleads with him to stop. Elliot remembers his father’s last message to him and stops himself. Spider-Man apologises to Elliot for what was done to him and offers to guide Elliot through what has happened to him and maybe even find a way to reverse his mutation.
Elliot is grateful to Peter but feels that maybe he should keep these powers. Elliot saw using them the same way Spider-Man uses his as apt payback for what the Kingpin had done to him.
Powers and abilities[]
Powers[]
Spider Physiology: Elliot gained the proportionate abilities of a spider after being injected with an experimental serum created by Matthew Kessler that contained Peter Parker's mutated genetic material.
- Superhuman Strength: Elliot possesses superhuman strength, capable of lifting at least 10 tons. His physical strength also extends into his legs, enabling him to be able to jump to a height of several stories in a single bound. He must pull his punches and kicks, otherwise his blows would prove fatal to a normal human.
- Superhuman Speed: Elliot possesses the proportionate speed of a spider; therefore, he can run and move at speeds that are beyond the physical limits of the finest human athlete.
- Superhuman Stamina: Funnelweb’s advanced musculature produces less fatigue toxins during physical activity than an ordinary human. This allows him to exert himself physically for much longer periods of time before fatigue begins to impair him. At his peak, he can physically exert himself for several hours before the build-up of fatigue toxins in his blood begins to impair him.
- Superhuman Durability: Elliot’s body is physically tougher and more resistant to some types of injury than the body of a normal human. His body is also more resistant to impact forces than most humans. He can withstand great impacts, such as being thrown through a plate-glass window, that would severely injure or kill a normal human.
- Superhuman Agility: Elliot’s agility, balance, flexibility and bodily coordination are all enhanced to levels that are far beyond the natural physical limits of an Olympic-level gymnast.
- Superhuman Equilibrium: Elliot possesses the ability to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium in any position imaginable. He seems able to adjust his position by instinct, which enables him to balance himself on virtually any object, no matter how small or narrow.
- Superhuman Reflexes: Elliot’s reflexes are similarly enhanced and are currently about 20 times greater than those of an ordinary human. In combination with his spider-sense, the speed of his reflexes allows him to dodge almost any attack.
- Wall-Crawling: Elliot can cling to any surface using just his fingertips and feet. The extent to how much pressure he can stick to walls is thus far unknown, except that he can handle lifting his own weight.
Organic Webbing Generation: One of the further experimentations on Elliot was granting him glands in his forearms that produced their own organic webbing that had the same properties of Peter Parker’s artificial webbing but with a halved dissolve period but a stronger density.
Night Vision: Elliot can see much better than normal humans in low light and even complete darkness.
Regenerative Healing Factor: Funnelweb is able to rapidly heal and regenerate from harm rapidly faster and more extensively than normal humans are capable of and can rapidly heal and regenerate from harm that normal humans cannot heal from.
Retractable Talons: Along with his organic webbing, Elliot was experimented on further to grant him small retractable talons in his fingers that could produce a non-fatal toxin that caused paralysis for up to an hour (for most non-powered humans) with one scratch.
Abilities[]
Basic hand-to-hand combat skills and some training in mixed martial-arts with a so-far partial understanding of criminology.
Weaknesses[]
Elliot’s biggest weaknesses are his inexperience of his own powers, his anger and his trauma from being experimented on. This has given him a very volatile mindset when out on the streets, not knowing his own strength and providing a violent temper that has resulted in him beating criminals severely and even crippling them at times.
Paraphernalia[]
Spider-Suit: Funnelweb discards his initial ‘battle suit’ that he was forced to wear by MKUltra after the villain’s defeat and given a new one by Spider-Man, altering a previously unused suit he had on hand. The suit is similar to Peter’s suit but with brown colouring, orange accents and gloves. The suit also came with a brown hooded, sleeveless cropped jacket with orange interior. The web pattern was orange and only went over the mask and upper torso part of the overall suit.
Notes[]
- It is unknown whether Elliot didn’t inherit a Spider-Sense, or it still hasn’t developed yet.
- His colour scheme of his later costume is based on the colours of the Sydney funnel-web spider.
- Funnelweb’s character borrows from several previous variants of spider-based Marvel characters: Spider-Gwen’s hood, Miguel O’Hara’s claws and has a temperament not unlike Kaine Parker when in battle.
Trivia[]
- Elliot needed to overcome his intense fear of heights before he started web-slinging.
- His favourite movie is The Thing.
- After a while, he came to enjoy sitting on one of the eagle gargoyles on the Chrysler Building to just sit and think.
- He has only told three people his secret identity since Spider-Man saved him: Morgan Hopper, Alexa Shelley and Jacob Moreau.
- Elliot’s favourite tactic is lightly scratching a mugger as they’re running and just watch as the paralysis toxin sets in and they fall on their faces, thinking Funnelweb missed them.