Silk (Cindy Moon) Powers, Enemies, & History | Marvel (2024)

Empowered by an irradiated spider bite and hidden in a bunker for a decade, Silk emerges as a Super Hero ready to fight crime and take back her life.

Marvel 101

Silk (Cindy Moon) | Marvel 101

Cindy Moon has been working to find the missing members of her family since she escaped the bunker that was once her home. This week on Marvel 101, Silk is taking her powers to new heights.

Comics

Refined Silk

Robbie Thompson shares how Clone Conspiracy changed Cindy Moon!

Marvel Quickdraw

Helen Chen Draws Silk #9 | Marvel Quickdraw

Marvel Artist Helen Chen pencils and colors the cover from Silk #9!

Marvel Quickdraw

Helen Chen Draws Silk #11 | Marvel Quickdraw

Marvel Artist Helen Chen pencils and colors the cover from Silk #11!

After manifesting spider-powers from a spider bite, staying hidden from totem predators, the Inheritors, and training for 10 years in the use of her powers, Cindy Moon emerges from the bunker ready for anything. She takes the codename Silk and becomes a crime-fighting Spider-hero, replete with outdated references and a flip-phone.

Entangled in a Web

Korean-American teenager Cindy Moon, born to Nari and Albert Moon Sr., grows up in Manhattan, New York. She uses her photographic memory to coast through classes, preferring to play hockey and spend time with her boyfriend, Hector Cervantez, much to parents’ disappointment. While attending a science demonstration with Hector for extra credit, she gets bitten by the same irradiated spider that had also bitten fellow attendee Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man.

In the days that followed, she develops strange, spider-like powers. Similarly spider-powered billionaire Ezekiel Sims approaches her, offering to keep her safe in a bunker that would prevent her from falling prey to the vampiric Inheritors. Initially reluctant, Cindy agrees after she realizes her powers made her brother, Albert Jr., fearful of her. She stays there for 10 years, receiving combat training from Ezekiel, watching recordings of the heroic Spider-Man and learning to control her powers.

At some point, Moon’s family mysteriously disappears. Eventually, Parker learns of her existence and frees her from the vault. Initially elated by her freedom, she creates a makeshift costume and dubs herself Silk. Almost immediately, their intermingling pheromones result in the two becoming uncontrollably attracted to each other. Together, they battle Max Dillon, AKA Electro, and Felicia Hardy, AKA Black Cat, all the while trying to resist each other.

Silk continues to act as a vigilante, and designs a new costume for herself. She becomes an intern at the Fact Channel TV station to use their resources in her search for her missing family. She quickly endears herself to news director John Jonah Jameson, AKA J. Jonah Jameson, who admires her old-fashioned research methods and inside information on Silk, nicknaming her “Analog.”

Silk-Sense

Cindy can generate organic webbing from glands in her fingertips, possibly limited by her body’s health and nutrition. These organic webs have a remarkable tensile strength and can be woven into clothing. She releases her organic webbing through her fingertips. The same ability and webbing material allows her to form claw-like extrusions from her fingertips. She is extremely skilled at manipulating this webbing, and can use it to form weblines and barbed hooks.

She also has superhuman strength, lifting approximately 5 tons. Her musculature is later augmented so she can lift (press) about 8 tons. The bite also grants Cindy superhuman speed, agility, and endurance. She can cling to walls, has perfect balance and equilibrium, and a spider-sense, or Silk-Sense, which alerts her to impending danger. Since she and Parker were bit by the same spider, Cindy can sense and track him anywhere across the Multiverse.

Cindy is also a trained hand-to-hand combatant, has a photographic memory, and is a capable researcher. She’s also an expert ice skater, specifically versed in ice hockey. Several colleges recruit her to play the sport but due to her time in the bunker, she was not able to fulfill that dream.

A Web of Enemies

When Cindy first becomes a vigilante hero, she fights the likes of Electro and Black Cat. One of her earliest missions involved taking down the Goblin Nation gang, who her brother Albert gets involved with. To do so, she infiltrates Black Cat’s criminal organization, where she gathers information to pass off to the intelligence and protection agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

Cindy’s most deadly enemies, however, are the Inheritors, a family of spider-totem-hunters that feed on the life force of Spider-People. She goes up against them with the Spider-Army and eventually they’re defeated. She also goes head to head with her doppelgänger while visiting Earth-65.

Spider Allies and Super Team-Ups

Cindy allies with S.H.I.E.L.D. under the tutelage of scientist and spy Bobbi Morse, AKA Mockingbird. While working with them, she infiltrates Black Cat’s operations and helps her steal things to get more information on her family’s whereabouts.

When Cindy first meets Peter Parker as Spider-Man, they experience an uncontrollable attraction to each other due to pheromones. On account that they were bitten by the same spider, she can track him anywhere, including the whole Multiverse. She occasionally teams up with him and other spider-people, such as Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman, who becomes her mentor, as well as Gwen Stacy of Earth-65, AKA Ghost-Spider. Cindy is a founding member of the Order of the Web.

As Cindy Moon, she earns her G.E.D. and works with Fact Channel’s director Jameson, who takes a liking to her and her ability to report on her alter-ego Silk. He helps her track down her brother Albert, and nicknames her “Analog” for all her old-school ways of doing things.

Cindy also teams up with Jimmy Woo’s Agents of Atlas, and works with Amadeus Cho, AKA Brawn, and a host of other heroes from the Pacific Rim to battle forces during the War of the Realms.

When she eventually reunites her family, she becomes close with her brother, Albert.

Universe, Other Aliases, Education, Place of Origin, Identity, Known Relatives, Powers

Weaving a Spider Web

After Silk left the vault, the Inheritors sensed her liberation and as she was their prophesied “Bride” they needed to sacrifice in order to stave off their own destruction, they began a Multiverse-spanning hunt for spider-powered individuals. Silk and Parker were soon drawn into the conflict, and evacuated to a safe zone on Earth-4, along with dozens of other Multiversal spider-heroes. As Inheritors took a particular interest in her, she recklessly struck off on her own to avoid endangering the others, fleeing from universe to universe before reaching Earth-3145, an irradiated wasteland lethal to the Inheritors.

There, she survived by weaving an anti-radiation webbing suit, and found that Earth’s Spider-Man, the Earth-3145 counterpart of Parker’s Uncle Ben, who had survived in Ezekiel’s bunker while the rest of humanity perished. Silk summoned the other spider-heroes and joined them in taking the fight to the Inheritors’ homeworld, Earth-001. She was captured during the final assault, only to be rescued before the sacrifice was complete; meanwhile, Parker planned to strand himself on Earth-3145 to also trap Inheritor Morlun there, but Silk, able to sense Peter, saved him.

Returning to Earth-616, Silk soon realized that her grasp of modern culture was a decade out of date, and learned Hector was now engaged to another woman. She came into conflict with the Black Cat’s organization after she defeated Hardy’s superhuman operative Harris Porter, AKA Dragonclaw; however, she befriended the hapless Porter. Sensing that Cindy was troubled, Parker had the Fantastic Four set her up with a psychiatrist. Though upset with Peter for meddling, she went on a date with Parker’s friendly rival, FF member Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch.

Soon afterwards, the Black Cat set up a trap for her, but her henchman, the Repairman, who secretly worked for the Moon family’s abductors, took Silk for himself. The Black Cat attacked the Repairman, freeing Silk, but he was killed in the process; angered at losing a connection to her missing family, Silk furiously defeated the Black Cat. Thanks to Jameson, Cindy found her brother Albert, who had fallen in with the Goblin Nation gang, and suffered trauma that had rendered him largely amnesiac, however the final incursion occurred, which destroyed the multiverse as Earth-616 and Earth-1610 collided, killing everyone.

After the multiverse was restored, so was Cindy and her family. She allied with S.H.I.E.L.D., who arranged to get her brother therapy, and infiltrated the Black Cat’s organization. She soon became one of the Black Cat’s most trusted operatives, but even after a staged battle with her S.H.I.E.L.D. handler Mockingbird, Jameson refused to believe Silk had become a criminal, and continued to give her positive coverage on the Fact Channel. Nevertheless, Silk relished the chance to take on the Black Cat’s rival Goblin Nation gang to get revenge on them for victimizing her brother.

When she joined Spider-Woman (Jessica) to visit Gwen Stacy of Earth-65, they were attacked the mysterious robot The Super Adaptoid, threatening Gwen’s reality! The trio of Spider-Women donned their suits and took it out, but someone stole Gwen’s backpack which contained her interdimensional bracelet—Cindy and Jessica’s only way home. Jessica tracked down Reed Richards of Earth-65 who could help them get home, while Cindy disappeared. She visited her parents, or at least that world’s Cindy Moon’s parents, and they were not happy to see her. Her Earth-65 doppelgänger hadn’t been heard from in three years so they were quite upset. She left, apologizing for the pain she caused (even though it was really her Earth-65 doppelgänger) and her brother Albert chased after her. This reality’s Albert just graduated high school and hadn’t fallen in with a gang. They hugged and then she departed. She eventually discovered that her doppelgänger was a megalomaniacal mad scientist who had trapped her and her friends on Earth-65! Cindy-65 also traveled to their home universe and framed Cindy for a series of tech robberies. When Cindy and Gwen tracked Cindy-65 to Parker Industries, Cindy-65 offered Cindy a chance to live with her family and Gwen a chance to live a life without powers. They refused and the brawl that followed sapped Gwen and pummeled Cindy into using the stolen tech!

When she finally returned to her reality, she felt the pressures of working as a mole for S.H.I.E.L.D. in Black Cat’s gang, but Cindy-65’s interference secured more of Black Cat’s trust. This allowed her to finish her S.H.I.E.L.D. mission and get intel from them on her parents whereabouts. She found her parents in the Negative Zone, who had been seeking a cure for her powers, and then she investigated New U Technologies using the alias Silkworm with a costume inspired by traditional Korean dress. This identity lasted for this mission only and she then changed it back to Silk and then accepted Mockingbird’s invitation to join S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy.

When the War of the Realms came to Earth, Cindy joined Jimmy Woo’s New Agents of Atlas to protect the Pacific Rim from Sindr, the Queen of Msupelheim and her minions, the Fire Goblins. She helped Brawn in South Korea liberate their captured comrade Seol Hee, AKA Luna Snow. When they went up against Sindr and her forces for the final battle, they lost their teammate Pele and the Monkey King, but she was finally defeated.

Cindy then received an offer from Mike Nguyen from Wyverns to join the protectors of the city of Pan but refused along with her Agents’ members. They discovered that Mike had intended to use a captured sea serpent’s scales to create portals. Cindy and the team tried to save the serpent but a furious Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner, came onto the scene. Silk and the team learned that Mike recruited the Sirenas, longtime enemies of the Atlanteans. Ultimately ending up between the Atlanteans and the Sirenas, Silk decided to protect Pan. A brawl followed and after Nguyen transformed Amadeus into the Hulk with a tech implant, his out of control behavior caused shockwaves and a massive tsunami headed toward Pan. Namor and the Agents freed Amadeus from the implant and Silk helped the citizens to shelter. Amadeus and Namor worked together to save pan from the tsunami, but Mike perished while helping a Madripoorian refugee and her son. A month afterward, Atlantis and their former enemies the Sirenas signed a non-aggression pact recognizing Pan as a nation. Amadeus quit the team but informed Cindy that his comms would stay open for her.

After Cindy had a vision of Peter Parker dying, and Julia Carpenter, AKA Arachne, revealed that Spider-Man had a conflict with Stanley Carter, AKA Sin-Eater, Cindy joined the Order of the Web. She then saved Peter from Norman Osborn, AKA Green Goblin. When the Sin-Eater’s efforts abated but then she witnessed Peter sacrifice Norman to the Sin-Eater, a deal he made with Kindred to get rid of Norman, who had always plagued him. As a result, Cindy became possessed by a demon sent by Kindred. The demonic Cindy attacked the city’s innocent and battled the New Warriors. Though she was eventually freed, she was soon captured by Kindred alongside ally Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, and the Order. Mary Jane Watson then saved her and the others, liberating them.

Cindy started a new job as a journalist at the news site Threats & Menaces. After her first article about a vicious attack on a group of gangsters in Queens went live, shady men threatened her boss, Jameson. Donning Silk threads, she swung into action and saved Jameson, leading him to make her his bodyguard. She grudgingly agreed, having felt responsible. During the fight, Silk discovered the culprits were wearing high-tech earpieces wired to their brains. Through investigative journalism and super heroics, Cindy learned that the company behind the tech is Fujinet, headed by the mysterious young woman, Saya Ishii. Silk soon faced off with the cat demon Kasha, who was responsible for killing the gangsters in Queens and who wore the same earpiece. Realizing there was a connection, she wrangled an interview with Fujinet’s soon-to-be CEO, Saya.

Meanwhile, Cindy started crushing on her therapist, Max. Later, during her interview with Saya, Saya revealed that she knew Cindy’s secret identity as Silk. Cindy retreated but received an anonymous note requesting a meeting. At the rendezvous point, she discovered the sender was the notorious crime boss and spider-foe Silvio Manfredi, AKA Silvermane, who was also Saya’s father.

In a turn of events, Saya approached Cindy for help with Kasha, who had gone rogue and attempted to summon an ancient demon god. Saya needed access to a lab where she could solve her Kasha problem with tech, but all of Cindy’s science nerd heroes were unavailable to provide one, so Cindy called on her brother Albert to help out. He allowed them access to his place of employment, the United World Defense Council (UWDC). Once Saya had what she needed, in the form of earring drones, Silk fought Kasha, and eventually, Saya navigated one of her drones in Kasha’s ears and set it to explode. Horrified, Cindy chastised her for using her technology for ill intent over good. Saya sicced her gangsters on Cindy as she hopped in a getaway car driven by her brother Max, Cindy's therapist. Though shocked at this new information, Cindy refused to beat herself up over trusting them because if she let it set her back, it would be like living in the bunker again, and she’d prefer to be in the world, despite the risks.

Silk returned to Dr. Sinclair, juggled classes, and even attended a Luna Snow concert with her coding teacher, Ivaan. However, when reanimated statues infiltrated the show, Cindy leapt to save the day and ditched Ivaan. When Silk attempted to stop a 400-year-old Korean witch from siphoning energy from young celebrities and influencers, she became a victim and aged rapidly into an old woman. Cindy then received a call from the Metropolitan Museum's curator Dr. Ferguson and raced to help but found the witch attempting to rewrite reality using magic. Going up against the witch proved difficult since Silk's powers and strength had diminished from aging.

Through some prodding, Silk learned from the witch that she was attempting to bring back her kingdom Joseon from the past, which would wipe out Cindy's world. Silk tried to fight her to no avail but realized that the witch's amulet necklace held her youth. Silk bought some time by revealing that she thought she'd lost herself but realized her purpose and the source of her happiness was being Silk, which brought the witch physically closer to her. At the first opportunity, Silk webbed up the necklace, smashed it, and her youth returned. Silk threw a nearby idol at the witch, but her foe was sucked through a portal and vanished.