← SILVA COMICSISSUE #19
Issue #19

Here Lies Silva

ARC NINE · BRAND NEW DAY REPRISE. The bite is mutating. Organic webbing comes in — and the cycle that gave it to him takes him out. Death isn't the end when a thread of black was left behind.

Zachary on a rooftop staring at his wrist as something shifts under the skin
BROOKLYN. SIX MONTHS AFTER BATTLEWORLD. SOMETHING UNDER ZACHARY'S SKIN IS CHANGING.
// NARRATION

The bite never really stopped. It had been waking up for weeks. His wrists itched. His pulse ran a half-beat hot. And one Tuesday in May, on a rooftop above Atlantic Ave, his web-shooters jammed — and the web came out anyway.

// ZACHARY

"…that came out of ME. That came out of my WRIST. Aight. Aight, that's — that's new."

Zachary swinging on a web that's flowing straight from his wrist
ORGANIC WEBBING. THE BITE WAS FINALLY FINISHING WHAT IT STARTED.
// NARRATION

For three weeks it was a gift. No more cartridges. No more midnight chemistry sets. Just him, his body, and the city. He felt — closer to the spider than he ever had.

// NARRATION

Then the cycle malfunctioned.

KHHK—!
// ZACHARY

"Can't — can't breathe — webbing's in my LUNGS — abuela — tell her I — "

Zachary collapsed on his Brooklyn stoop in his red and black suit, mask half pulled off, neighbors gathering
BEDFORD-STUY. JUNE 4TH. THE AMAZING SPIDER DIED ON HIS OWN STOOP.
// NARRATION

Three hospitals. Six doctors. One coroner. Nobody knew what to call it. The bite that made him had finally unmade him. They buried Zachary Silva in his red and black suit, because his abuela said he'd want it that way.

// NARRATION

Across town, in a storm drain on Fulton Street, a single thread of black — left behind when the suit pulled itself off his shoulders on Battleworld — twitched.

// THE THREAD

"…ssssilva."

A single tendril of black symbiote slithering through wet city streets toward a cemetery
ONE THREAD. ONE NAME IT REMEMBERED. ONE GRAVE TO FIND.
// NARRATION

It moved for three nights. Under manhole covers. Through cemetery soil. Down six feet of fresh dirt. It found him. It remembered the shape of him. It wrapped him up the way it had on Battleworld — lungs first.

// NARRATION

His heart kicked. Once. Twice. A third time it stayed.

Zachary in a glossy black symbiote suit clawing out of his own grave under purple lightning, gravestone reading HERE LIES SILVA
ST. JOHN'S CEMETERY. 3:11 A.M. DEATH COULDN'T HOLD HIM. THE BLACK WOULDN'T LET IT.
HAAAAH—!
// ZACHARY

"I was — I was DEAD. I was in the ground. I was — oh god, abuela buried me. ABUELA BURIED ME."

// THE SUIT

"ssssilva. we found the thread. we found you. breathe. we have your lungs again."

// NARRATION

He sat on the wet grass next to his own headstone for a long minute. The rain came down. The lightning came down. And Zachary Silva — for the second time in his life — understood exactly what the bite had cost him.

Shadow Spider in his black symbiote suit crouched on a stone gargoyle ledge in heavy rain over Brooklyn
HE SWUNG. ONE BLOCK. THEN TEN. THEN HE LANDED ON A GARGOYLE OVER FLATBUSH AND JUST — STOPPED.
// NARRATION

He couldn't go home. Not yet. Not tonight. His own funeral programs were still on the kitchen table. His abuela was sleeping with his photo on her chest.

// ZACHARY

"Suit. We're not the Amazing Spider tonight. We're not even the Shadow Spider. Tonight we're just — the kid who climbed out. Aight?"

// THE SUIT

"ssssilva. aight."

// NARRATION

Rain on black symbiote. Lightning on a high-top under the cowl. Brooklyn glowing yellow at his feet. Somewhere down there, a city that thought it had buried him was about to learn — it hadn't.

// NARRATION

TO BE CONTINUED. ZACHARY SILVA — THE SHADOW SPIDER — RIDES AGAIN.

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