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 Kavanagh, Ron Lim, Jerry Bingham, and Mark Bagley and first
appeared in Spider-Man Unlimited Volume 1, #1.
Fictional character biography Shriek is a dangerous and criminally
insane villainess with the ability to manipulate sound. During the events of
Maximum Carnage, she allied herself with Carnage and several other supervillains
who went about New York on a killing spree.
Shriek's origins and real name were, at first, 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.
= Maximum Carnage = During her childhood, Frances 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, which gave Shriek her abilities.
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, and formed a "family," with Carnage and
Shriek as the "parents" and the others as their "sons". 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.
In the aftermath, Shriek is returned to Ravencroft, but escapes her cell by
short-circuiting her power dampening unit. Shriek frees fellow inmates Gale,
Webber, Pyromania, and Mayhem, and together they try to break out of the
facility, opposed by Spider-Man and John Jameson. While distracted by Spider-Man,
Shriek is knocked out with a tranquilizer gun by Jameson.
= Shrieking = When Doctor Ashley Kafka brings Malcolm
McBride near Shriek's cell, Shriek recognizes Malcolm as her "son" Carrion,
breaks out of her room, and escapes from Ravencroft with Malcolm. Agitated by
Malcolm's refusal to acknowledge her as his mother, Shriek becomes violent
towards him, and uses her powers to turn him back into Carrion after an encounter
with Spider-Man, who Shriek plans on making her new "husband" after sensing a
growing darkness within him. In an attempt to make Carrion fully embrace
her as his mother, Shriek takes him to Beatrice McBride, the biological mother
of Malcolm, with the intent of having Carrion murder the woman. The duo are
tracked by Spider-Man, and in the ensuing brawl, Shriek abandons her plans
to convert Spider-Man to her side, and forces Carrion to choose between her and
Beatrice. The distraught Carrion instead begins to commit suicide with his own
powers, which Beatrice tries to stop, stating, "Do you think my life matters?
Do you think I wouldn't sacrifice myself a thousand times over to save my child?"
when Shriek tells her that she will be killed by contact with Carrion. Touched,
Shriek absorbs the Carrion virus, incapacitating herself, and turning
Carrion back into Malcolm. Shriek is readmitted to Ravencroft,
where the dormant Carrion virus is extracted from her by the Jackal.
Later, Shriek is brought on as a juror in Judas Traveller's mock trial of
Spider-Man in the basement of Ravencroft. Shriek and the other members
of the jury deem Spider-Man guilty of ruining lives and creating
supervillains, but before they can execute their sentence of death they are
returned to their cells and have their memories altered by Traveller.
= Reuniting with Carnage = She appears in Brand New Day as one of
the villains in the Bar With No Name. After Carnage is returned to Earth by
Hall Industries, the company purchases Ravencroft with the intention of using
Shriek as a power source for the Carnage symbiote, which had been separated from
Cletus Kasady. Shriek is brought to Hall Industries, where exposure to the
Carnage symbiote, coupled with her witnessing guards beating Doppelganger
causes her to snap, and return to homicidal mania. After Cletus reunites
with his symbiote, Shriek and Doppelganger aid him in causing chaos
throughout New York City, with Shriek gaining additional powers from another
symbiote that Carnage's had spawned. Growing fearful of Shriek, the symbiote
leaves her in favor of Nieves, its initial host, to create Scorn, who
forces Shriek to use her powers to weaken Carnage, allowing Spider-Man and
Iron Man to defeat him. In the aftermath, Shriek is shown to be in a
coma, Scorn having done some unspecified damage to her brain.
Shriek regains consciousness, and is recruited by Caroline le Fay to battle
the Fearless Defenders as a member of the new Doom Maidens. After the Doom
Maidens are disbanded, Shriek reunites with Carnage, and saves him from
Deadpool in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The two killers flee pursued by Deadpool, who
crashes their car with a combine harvester, severely injuring Shriek, and
enraging Carnage. Carnage flings Deadpool away, and escapes to the base
of the Mercury Team with the unconscious Shriek. Carnage, troubled by Deadpool
making him question his nihilistic beliefs, then has Shriek help him break
into a psychiatric hospital, where they try to force the patients and staff to
answer Carnage's questions about being controlled by higher powers, a concept
which disgusts Carnage. Deadpool, who has bonded to the Mercury Team's
symbiotes, uses his new shapeshifting abilities to disorient Shriek, causing
her to run off. After a skirmish with Carnage, Deadpool captures Shriek, uses
his symbiotes to disguise her as himself, and tricks the already
distraught Carnage into nearly killing her, causing Carnage to suffer a mental
breakdown. Shriek is hospitalized, and Carnage willingly allows himself to be
arrested. Shriek recovered, and was hired onto the
Sinister Sixteen by Boomerang and the Owl. After being manipulated and
abandoned by Boomerang, Shriek and three other members of the Sinister Sixteen
sought revenge on him in the Bar With No Name, only to be defeated him, Beetle,
Overdrive, and Speed Demon. Shriek subsequently attacks a police
station with Gibbon, Griffin, and Ruby Thursday. The quartet is subdued by
Spider-Woman's apprentice, Porcupine. Powers and abilities
Following exposure to Cloak's Darkforce Dimension, 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. 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. In 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 Michael 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. 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. 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 for personal benefit. She also
creates illusionary duplicates of Mary Jane Watson, J. Jonah Jameson, Curt
Conners, and Harry Osborn to combat him. 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. Connors
and Morbius to discover if she can be cured of her condition.
= Television = Shriek has been confirmed to appear in
Ultimate Spider-Man vs. The Sinister 6. See also
Harley Quinn Hybristophilia
References External links
Shriek at Comicvine Shriek at Marvel.com
Shriek at Spiderfan.org Shriek at the Appendix to the Handbook
of the Marvel Universe