shriek

Shriek
Cover to Amazing Spider-Man 391 Art by Mark Bagley
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Spider-Man Unlimited Vol. 1 #1 (May 1993)
Created by	Tom Defalco, Mike W. Barr, Terry Kavanaugh, Ron Lim, Jerry Bingham, and Mark Bagley
In-story information
Alter ego	Frances Louise Barrison
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	Sandra Deel, Carnage "family", Ravencroft inmates
Abilities	-Ability to tap into people's minds and bring out their inner darkness (fear, anger, hate), making them act in violent manners -Ability to shoot sonic energy blasts from her hands -Ability to shield herself with a sonic buffer field -Flight

Shriek is a fictional character, a supervillainess in the Marvel Comics universe. She is an enemy of Spider-Man. She was created by Tom DeFalco, Mike W. Barr, Terry Kavanaugh, Ron Lim, Jerry Bingham, and Mark Bagley in Spider-Man Unlimited volume 1 #1 (May 1993).

Character biography

Shriek is a dangerous and criminally insane villainess with the ability to manipulate sound. She once allied herself with Carnage and several other supervillains who went about New York on a killing spree.

Shriek's origins and real name are uncertain. She was named Sandra Deel in her earliest appearances, but named Frances Louise Barrison in later appearances. According to the Spider-Man Encyclopedia she was born Frances Louise Barrison, but used Sandra Deel as an alias.

During her childhood, she was abused by her mother for being overweight, driving her to drugs and leading to her later fixation on becoming a mother herself. She became a drug dealer, which exposed her to situations that ultimately damaged her sanity; namely, being shot in the head by a police officer, and being put in Cloak's dark dimension. The origin of Shriek's powers is unknown.

Shriek debuted at the start of the "Maximum Carnage" crossover. During Carnage's violent escape from the Ravencroft mental institution, he came across Shriek, who was also incarcerated and wished to join him. He freed her, and the pair embarked on a killing spree. They attracted the company of several other homicidal supervillains (Demogoblin, Doppelganger, and Carrion), and formed a "family," with Carnage and Shriek as the "parents" and the others as their "sons" (although it is clearly obvious that Shriek had a crush on Carnage, it is uncertain whether he felt the same for her). Shriek also used her mental powers to increase the chaos by causing a number of New Yorkers to violently turn on one another, although the heroes were able to calm the people down before they did anything too serious, such as killing their own children. The killers fought a number of heroes, led by Spider-Man, but succumbed to in-fighting. Carnage slew the Doppelganger and left the others to their defeat and capture, although he was subsequently contained by the Avengers after a clash with Spider-Man, Venom and Black Cat.

Shriek was returned to Ravencroft and attempted to escape twice. Once, alongside the vigilante Mayhem and a handful of other inmates, she was defeated by Spider-Man and John Jameson before they managed to escape. The second time, she and Carrion escaped and tried to become a family. In the end, she absorbed the Carrion virus into herself to release her "son" from his suffering. She was returned to Ravencroft, where the virus was taken from her by the Jackal. She has not been seen since then and no one knows what became of her, however it is mentioned in the Spider-Man Encyclopedia that she is slowly beginning to respond to psychotherapy. She recently appeared in Brand New Day as one of the villains in the bar.

Powers and abilities

Shriek has the ability to manipulate sound in a number of elaborate ways. She can harness it for destructive concussive force or use it to disorient and agitate her enemies. She can apparently hypersonically induce intense emotion in those around her (generating fear, hate, or despair). She also has moderate powers of levitation that she can use to make herself fly and possibly some low level of psionic ability.

She is able to sense the darkest side to a person's psyche so that she can use her powers to specifically manipulate that person's emotions. Her scarred left eye is also prone to glow whenever she uses her powers. Why only that eye glows is uncertain.

Other media

Video games

• Shriek was among the boss characters that appeared in Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, which was based on the story-arc that she was a part of.

• Shriek makes an appearance as one of the minor villains, for the Wii, PS2, and PSP versions of the Spider-Man 3 video game voiced by Courtenay Taylor. In the game she is married to Morbius. Her powers were given to her by a symbiote similar to that which gave Spider-Man his black suit. She is first mentioned by Morbius as the one who caused him to need to feed on blood, but mentions that when she did it to him she was "not herself" and that she had been "changed." She uses her psychic powers to influence the citizens of New York to do multiple things (like being her "children" or alternatively making them walk into toxic gas and stay in the gas). She puts a large pillar structure on top of a building and attaches multiple meteorites to it, out of which she could draw power. Spider-Man succeeds in pulling all the meteorites off of the pillar and Shriek in turn flees. Later Spider-Man brings Morbius to Shriek's hideout, and Morbius demands to know what Shriek did to him; Shriek says she released a special blood in his lab that infected Morbius (although she had not meant to hurt him). She uses her psychic powers to force Morbius to fight Spider-Man, and to shut the windows so the sunlight could not hurt Morbius. Spider-Man defeats Morbius and Shriek flees deeper into her hideout. Shriek employs psychological warfare on Spider-Man, urging him to just use his powers to have fun and bring himself enjoyment. She also creates duplicates of Mary Jane, J. Jonah Jameson, Curt Conners, and Harry Osborn to combat Spider-Man. Spider-Man realizes that both Shriek's powers and his black suit come from the same source, uses his black suit to make Shriek appear, and in turn defeats her. Spider-Man brings Shriek to Dr. Conners and Morbius to discover if she can be cured of her condition.

External links

• Shriek at Marvel.com
• Shriek profile at Spiderfan.org