Spider-Verse - The Madding Crowd, Part 13 - Ray Wonsowski

Okay, I'm fully aware I'm bending the rules a bit on this one....

Double-page spread:
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Panel 1- Foreground: Standing on the back of a giant grand-daddy Hellspider, ECLIPSO rides, holding onto the reins with one hand, brandishing a long ornate scimitar over his head with the other. He is relishing the horror to come. Midground: Countless hellspiders swarming, all following after ECLIPSO's mount through space. Background: The Madness Gate that separates our universe from the spiders' has been breached by the Lovecraftian most-elder Spider-God, P'tah Pk'ha, the Arachnos of a Billion Eyes, its forelegs holding the gate open, mandibles slavering as they tear open its own egg sac, its delicate albino young interspersed in the silk. Three caption boxes on the left page, three on the right.

CAPTION, LEFT 1: When he was one with the I-Am, he was Kezef, the Wrath of God made manifest.

CAPTION, LEFT 2: The Lord thought the Forty Night Flooding of All Creation was way off the reservation, so to speak, and cast Kezef off.

CAPTION, LEFT 3: Banished to the dark side of the moon and his power-essence trapped in the Heart of Darkness on Apokolips.

CAPTION, RIGHT 1: Kezef was bloody furious. He had sided with God in the first Angelic War, obeyed orders, destroyed and killed at God's command, and eternal exile away from His light and presence was to be his great reward?

CAPTION, RIGHT 2: #&@k God, he said.

CAPTION, RIGHT 3: It was then that Kezef became Eclipso.

Panel 2- Night. On the deck of the Coast Guard Cutter Gavyn, HAWK and DOVE are battle-ready and impatient listening as WILLIAM GRAVEL smokes a cigarette and HARRY DRESDEN wipes spiderwebs from his duster coat.

DRESDEN (small lettering): Not that the Spectre was the picture of restraint. That whole first-born thing in Egypt...

HAWK: Get to the point.

Panel 3- Close-up on GRAVEL, gesturing with his cigarette as he explains.

GRAVEL: You two are the Avatars of God's Covenant with Noah after the flood.

GRAVEL: Forty days of sodding rain, Noah sent a raven first, to look for land.

GRAVEL: But the raven turns his back on Noah, so God set the hawk upon it as His vengeance.

Panel 4- Foreground, GRAVEL, back to us, leans against the deck railing, waving his cigarette as he speaks, the smoke spiraling in the air. HAWK is facing him, still in a battle-ready stance. Between them, DOVE stands thoughtfully as he listens, one arm back as if to hold his brother back. The sky has gone starless.

GRAVEL: Noah dispatches the dove then, returns with an olive branch, so on...

GRAVEL: The Lords of Order and Chaos have been allowed to fill those offices to keep humanity's ledgers balanced. The Hawk and the Dove...

Panel 5- Midshot, heads and upper bodies. HAWK has grabbed GRAVEL by his coat, holding him nearly nose to nose. Both men are showing teeth, HAWK in furious grimace, GRAVEL with a $#!t-eating grin biting his cigarette.

HAWK: The point, old man!

GRAVEL: Easy, boy. SAS, I am. And the six pants-pissing scariest words an SAS man can say?

GRAVEL: "I have a plan, old son..."

...to be continued...