Vanessa Fisk

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caption=Vanessa Fisk
Alex Maleev, Art
comic_color=background:#ff8080
character_name=Vanessa Fisk
publisher=Marvel Comics
debut="The Amazing Spider-Man" #70
creators=Stan Lee
John Romita, Sr.
full_name=Vanessa Fisk|status=Alive
supports=Daredevil
Spider-Man
relatives=Wilson Fisk(husband, separated)
Richard Fisk (son, deceased)|

Vanessa Fisk is a Marvel Comics character. She is the wife of Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin and mother of Richard Fisk.

Fictional character biography

Little is known about Vanessa Fisk's personal life and early years. As the wife of Wilson Fisk, the "Kingpin" of New York's criminal underworld, Vanessa was largely kept in the dark about her husband's criminal activities until her son Richard became involved in a plot to overthrow his father's criminal syndicate in order to punish his absentee father.

The revelation led to Vanessa and Wilson becoming estranged and ultimately her forcing an ultimatium towards her husband, after she caught him engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Spider-Man: his criminal empire or their marriage. Wilson chose his wife and spared Spider-Man as a result.

The two went into retirement as Kingpin prepared to settle his remaining business debts with his fellow mobsters and leave the world of crime forever. This infuriated one of Kingpin's closest advisors, who believed that Vanessa was a liability and had turned the once mighty Kingpin into a henpecked husband. So he arranged to help the remaining mob bosses of New York kidnap Vanessa, ransoming her off in exchange for husband's fortune with the intent of killing the two in an explosion after the ransom was paid. Kingpin survived the attempt but Vanessa was buried alive in the rubble and presumed dead. This drove Kingpin back into the world of crime, murdering his traitorous advisor and forcing the remaining mob leaders to confess to hiring Bullseye to kill several of Fisk's men.

Weeks later, Daredevil found Vanessa in the sewers. Being buried alive had left Vanessa amnesiac and mentally unstable and taken in by a groutesque mutant who lived in the sewers. Daredevil ultimately used her being alive as leverage to force Kingpin to order his newly elected to the office of mayor pawn to resign nad to confirm to the media that he was indeed a mob puppet. After reuniting with her, Wilson had his wife (now catatonic) shipped off to a sanitarium in Europe in order to have her regain her sanity. This would take years, as Vanessa's husband's organized crime empire would fall and be rebuilt during the period that Vanessa was institutionalized.

Ultimately Vanessa would recover mentally and ultimately she would remain in Europe with her husband. But when her husband was the victim of an assassination attempt orchestrated by her son, Vanessa arranged for her husband to be shipped out of the country to recover from his injuries, and to cut a deal with his fellow mob bosses to divide up Wilson's recently rebuilt crime syndicate in exchange for a truce. Vanessa then took the final, brutal step of personally murdering her own devoted son, who admitted to Vanessa that his motivation was to rid the family of his father, who he blamed for his family's troubles.

The act of murdering her own beloved son caused a horrific physical toll on Vanessa, causing her to slowly lose the will to live, which along with the injuries she substained when she was buried alive, culminated in her body undergoing terminal organ failure. Blaming her husband for her family's tragedy, Vanessa faked Foggy Nelson's death in an attempt to provoke Murdock into killing Fisk while in prison. When that failed, she manipulated the super-hero Iron Fist into posing as Daredevil, which ultimately drove Matt to break out of prison to find Foggy's murderer and the identity of the man impersonating him, culminating in her confronting Matt with an offer to clear his name in exchange for him clearing Kingpin, so that the two would be free to try and kill each other anew.

Though Daredevil refused this deal, Vanessa went ahead and arranged for the murder of Leland Drummond, the corrupt FBI director who outed Matt in order to advance his own career within the FBI. To discredit his outing of Daredevil, the murder was made to look like a suicide and a false and highly damning suicide note was planted at the scene, claiming that Drummond took his own life after it became apparent that his scheme to frame Matt Murdock was about to be exposed. Shortly afterwords, Vanessa died and Matt found himself morally guilted into serving as as the Kingpin's lawyer, getting the charges dropped on the grounds that the evidence was too tainted to bring him to court. But Daredevil would exact his own form of Faustian bargin with Kingpin, as he forced the crime boss to renounce his American citizenship and leave the country forever in exchange for his nemesis's legal services.

Other versions

Intercompany Crossovers

In "Batman & Spider-Man #1", Vanessa is infected with terminal cancer by Ra's Al Ghul, who offers the Kingpin the cure for it in exchange for his help in a plot that will destroy New York. Disgruntled under Ra's, the Kingpin forms an alliance with Spider-Man and Batman and succeeds in defeating Ra's, only to be denied the cure for his wife's cancer by the beaten eco-terrorist. Vanessa is cured near the end of issue by Ra's Al Ghul's daughter Talia Al Ghul, who recognizes Vanessa as a kindred spirit, as both of them loved a man that society would regard as a monster.

Ultimate Universe

Vanessa Fisk has had only a cameo in "Ultimate Spider-Man", but she is nonetheless important to Kingpin's character.

The Kingpin sought the Tablet of Time, but was stolen by the Black Cat, who wanted revenge on Fisk for putting her father in jail. She threw it in the water before being impaled by Elektra.

It was later revealed that Kingpin wanted the Tablet for his wife Vanessa, who was in a coma. Although he didn't believe in its alleged powers, she did, and he would do anything to wake her up.

Later, after Kingpin torched his law office, a crazed Daredevil broke into Fisk's home and threatened to murder the comatose Vanessa by snapping her neck, but was stopped by Spider-Man. Fisk ordered Vanessa to be taken out of the country before he was arrested himself over the attempted murder of Moon Knight.

In other media

Vanessa Fisk has appeared in "", played by Caroline Goodall. In the series, she is one of the few characters who are aware that Wilson Fisk is the Kingpin. In the end of Ravages of Time, Vanessa decides to leave New York and Wilson for good, unable to deal with being the wife of a criminal.