Sandbox:Martha
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- For the giant winged insect from the Godzilla franchise, see Mothra.
Martha is a spider that grew to enormous size who debuted in the third issue of The Kong Crew by Eric Herenguel in 2021. She lived with her friend Clavius in the Manhattan Jungle until her apparent death in October 1947.
Design
Martha is a gigantic arachnid with two body segments and a small head. She is dark in color, and her body is covered in dark hair. She has large, hairy pincers on her face that can sometimes look like another set of legs. She is inconsistently depicted with between five and eight eyes.
Martha's young children are uniformly depicted with three eyes and hairy bodies with hairless legs.
When equipped for travel, Martha has Clavius' belongings wrapped in a cloth and tied to the top of her thorax. Clavius' fishing pole and bucket are kept outside of the bundle, and are fastened to its side.
Origins
When Kong was brought to New York City, he brought with him strange invasive parasites that spread through the food chain and are theorized by Dr. Jonas Parker to cause "retro-evolution" in each following generation of the infected species. The parasites are also suspected to accelerate the creature's life cycle, allowing faster growth, maturity, reproduction and death. Martha's ancestors before 1933 were regular spiders, whose children represented a previous and presumably larger stage in the species' evolution, which continued until Martha was born either in or after 1933. She was raised by Clavius, a man who remained on the island during the 1934 Manhattan exodus, since she was small, and remained by his side until her apparent death in 1947. She loved to eat dogs and pterodactyls, but humans gave her indigestion.
History
The Kong Crew
"Hudson Megalodon"
Martha and Clavius found journalist Irvin Stone in an old pharmacy building, where the humans worked out a deal to search for Stone's associate Dr. Jonas Parker. Martha watched silently from the remains of the ceiling. Martha then carried their supplies as they made their way through the rainy streets. She and the humans narrowly avoided being crushed during Kong's battle with the serpents.
"Teeth Avenue"
Martha is not shown in the fourth issue, but Clavius mentioned her while Dr. Parker revealed his hypothesis about the parasites being the reason for the strange creatures present after Kong's arrival and the evacuation of humans from the island. Later on, the humans attempted to reach pterodactyl nests on the rooftops, and Clavius led them along paths used by he and Martha.
"Upper Beast Side"
With Clavius on her back, Martha carried Stone and Parker up the side of a building using a rope tied to her backpack and a small metal beam for the men to sit on. Atop the building, the men watched a mutant pterodactyl attacking an orangutan, and Stone shot at it to shoo it away. Martha and the others then watched as he bandaged the ape's wounded hand, and the pterodactyl circled back around and flew off with Parker in its grip. Clavius warned Stone about the dangers of going after him, but when he was adamant about following the pterodactyl into Central Park, he had Stone grab a rope attached to Martha and kicked him off the roof. Martha leapt off as well, but spun a thread from her thorax that broke the pair's fall before hitting the ground. Clavius shouted after them that he was going to stakeout the Grand Plaza Hotel.
"Blast Exit"
Martha arrived atop the hotel, and found Clavius held prisoner by an FBI assassin named Nergal. Nergal's dog Deimos leapt up and ravaged her. With Nergal's target Damara in his sight, Clavius warned him not to shoot, because the sound disturbed Martha. Nergal fired anyway, and Clavius cackled as Martha's myriad offspring, who shared their mother's disdain for gunfire, attacked and presumably killed the man.
Abilities
Physical strength
According to Clavius, Martha is able to carry up to 100 times her own weight.
Loyalty
Martha displays capability for some kind of selective loyalty, and is able to follow Clavius' directions, and remains by his side throughout her life.
Silk spinning
While she is never seen with a true spider web, she is able to generate silk, and use it to break her falls.
Weaknesses
Martha and her offspring have highly sensitive hearing, which can drastically affect their mood and behavior. While the ticking of Clavius' watch is said to soothe them, the sound of gunfire can send them into a frenzy. The extent to which this affects their health is not specified, but it caused Clavius to unload firearms left behind in the jungle near their dwelling.
Eating humans is known to give Martha indigestion.
Gallery
Martha on the cover of issue 5
Martha equipped for travel
Martha's children
Martha's children attacking Nergal
Trivia
- Martha has at least 89 children.[1]
References
This is a list of references for Martha. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]
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