MYSTERIO

Quentin Beck — Hollywood effects genius turned Mysterio, the fishbowl-helmeted illusionist who had tormented Spider-Man since 1964 — was in prison when doctors found a brain tumor and lung cancer, blamed on years of breathing the chemicals and radiation of his own effects gear. Given roughly one year to live, he was granted an early release, and the showman in him demanded one last production: a final, glorious revenge on Spider-Man, revealed in Daredevil Vol. 2 #7 (1999), the climax of Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada's "Guardian Devil" arc.

Then Beck read the newspapers and changed the billing. He deduced that the Spider-Man then active was only a clone — the Ben Reilly era — and he saw no dignity in spending his finale defeating a copy of the real thing. So he re-aimed the entire production at Daredevil, a hero who had recently foiled one of his insurance scams. Beck called them kindred spirits: two second stringers with little reputation outside their home turf. He bought Daredevil's secrets from the Kingpin and built his most elaborate illusion ever — a baby proclaimed the Antichrist, a faked HIV diagnosis for Karen Page, Foggy Nelson framed for murder, and Bullseye hired to finish the heartbreak.

The finale flopped. Daredevil unravelled the trick, beat Beck, and — fatally for the script — refused to kill him, instead panning the whole plot as derivative: a "human Xerox" copying the Kingpin's old drive-a-hero-mad routine. His last show reviewed as a rerun, Beck announced he would steal one final idea, from Kraven the Hunter, and took his own life in front of his intended victim. It was a genuine death, not another fake-out — later stories eventually returned Beck to the land of the living, as Marvel deaths tend to, but for years the curtain stayed down.