KINGPIN

Richard Fisk grew up rich believing his father was an honourable businessman. At college in Switzerland he learned what the money actually was, and the shame rewired him: he would atone for the family fortune by personally ending the career it came from. Word soon reached New York that Richard had died in a skiing accident in the Alps. Wilson and Vanessa Fisk buried a son who was, in fact, alive, funded, and building a criminal organisation of his own.

The new outfit had exactly one policy: dismantle the Kingpin. Its leader called himself the Schemer, hid behind a lifelike mask of a cranky middle-aged stranger, and spent Fisk money on gadgets, muscle and intelligence about Fisk operations — because the Schemer knew the empire from the inside, having been raised at its dinner table. Spider-Man kept blundering into the gang war, at one point getting netted and delivered to Fisk headquarters by men he thought were police.

When the two bosses finally stood face to face, the Schemer peeled the mask off. Underneath was the orange-haired young man the Kingpin had mourned. Richard told his father that the years spent living on crime money had to be paid for, and that nobody was better placed to collect than the man's own son. The revelation did what no rival, raid or superhero had managed: Wilson Fisk's mind simply shut down, and the Kingpin of Crime went catatonic on the spot.