Scarlet Fasinera survives a traumatic childhood and forges on to create a family of her own. When she loses the family she helps create, she turns her attention to the criminal underworld where she becomes known as Stained Glass Scarlet.
Shattered Glass
Born in New York City, Scarlet Fasinera grows up with her father, who raises her on his own after her mother dies while she’s still a child. Scarlet’s father is a practicing Catholic, and Scarlet becomes fascinated with the church at a young age. She dreams of becoming either an actress or a nun when she grows up. Unfortunately, she finds it hard to reconcile her father’s seeming faith on Sundays with his behavior at home, and she suffers tremendous emotional trauma when he begins to abuse her.
One day, her father breaks his leg, putting him in bed with a cast. Scarlet believes that this was his punishment for his sins, but she takes it a step further and starts a fire in his room, killing him.
Scarlet fulfills her dream of becoming a nun, but she begins to suspect that she’s simply playing a part, as though she had become an actress. When the mobster Vincent Fasinera visits her church looking for a place to hide, she shelters him. She then falls in love with him and gives up her vows to become his wife, but Vincent quickly falls out of love with her, even after their son Joseph is born.
Crossbow Action
Stained Glass Scarlet wields a crossbow that fires pointed and explosive-tipped bolts. She is also a master chess player, and occasionally uses guns and knives.
Criminal Elements
Scarlet has it out for the criminal underworld, blaming them for taking her family away from her. She goes on a tear, becoming a vigilante and leaves many bodies in her wake.
Angelic Allies
When Scarlet first encounters the vigilante Marc Spector, AKA Moon Knight, she thinks he is an angel sent to help her. She goes to great lengths to protect him, even at the cost of her own family. Though their relationship turns tenuous when she becomes a mentally unstable criminal. Despite their ups and downs, Scarlet ultimately helps Moon Knight battle his enemies, including the death-god Seth.
Scarlet’s Story
When Joseph was fifteen, Vincent was gunned down by the police after a robbery, but the stolen money was never recovered. Joseph hated the police for killing his father, and became a criminal himself, fueled in part by a need for money to support his heroin addiction. When Joseph was sent to prison, Scarlet returned to the church where she first met Vincent. The building was now abandoned, and she took up residence there, dressing in red robes.
Joseph escaped from prison and sought the money Vincent had hidden years earlier, having learned that it was somewhere in the church. Pursuing Joseph, the crime-fighter Moon Knight met Scarlet, who regarded him as an angel of mercy come to aid her. When Joseph shot Moon Knight during a scuffle, Scarlet took a gun and shot her son dead. Hating the criminal underworld for taking her husband and son from her, Scarlet became a vigilante as “Stained Glass Scarlet,” murdering criminals with a crossbow and leaving an “S” drawn in lipstick at the scene. She began her killings by targeting the men who had made her son an addict and is dubbed Our Lady of Sorrow and Darkness. Moon Knight confronted her but could not bring himself to oppose her.
Increasingly unstable, Scarlet gathered an array of followers, all dressed in red robes like hers. She attacked friends of Moon Knight such as Bertrand Crawley and Jean-Paul DuChamp, AKA Frenchie, to draw Moon Knight out, attempting to kill him. She and her followers set off a series of firebombs in New York in a deluded attempt to “purify” the city, but Moon Knight intervened. In a confrontation atop Brooklyn Bridge, Scarlet seemingly committed suicide by leaping into the river; however, she survived the fall and resumed hunting criminals in New York. When the criminal Carson Knowles, AKA Black Spectre, became a servant of the Egyptian death-god Seth, Scarlet helped Moon Knight oppose him, and she killed several of Black Spectre’s followers, known as Ghosts.
Later, Scarlet was shot down by police in the same church where her husband and son were killed decades apart. Though Scarlet Fasinera died, Stained Glass Scarlet was reborn in whispers as Our Bloody Lady of Vengeance and each time anyone told her story, she would grow more real. They prayed for her to kill people and she followed through for her followers. When one of the fists of Khonshu, Dr. Yehya Badr, AKA Hunter’s Moon, investigated her church after bodies started appearing, he called on Khonshu who took her down.