Avengers Arena (2013 series) #7

Arcade has abducted 16 teen heroes to his latest Murder World, but some of them have wondered at his current high power level. This issue pauses the action to explain via flashbacks.

Arcade is throwing a party in his estate for his 29th birthday and loads of villains have been invited as usual. His new assistant Miss Coriander tries to kill him from behind with a sword but he moves out of the way. He thanks her for the attempt which he had requested. He says it's a birthday tradition. Then he goes out to greet the crowd. This year he's got the whole room bugged so he can hear all the gossip, but what he hears is that they all hate or despise him. They're only here for the excellent booze and food. Constrictor is especially insulting so he smashes a bottle of wine on his head. The villain lashes back but security bots escort him out in a forcefield bubble. Arcade goes down to the basement where he finds other villains watching a video of him being chased through the snow by Captain America in a Santa hat hitting him with a large candy cane. Apparently all the videos are similar because he always loses (don't they all?). Arcade claims that his games are all about the playing not the winning, but they remind him his so-called Murder World has never managed to kill *anybody*. He starts to drown his sorrows in drink but meets Miss C with a flamethrower. She says 'Happy Birthday' as she fries him.

Days later he's recuperating in a hospital bed when Miss C visits to apologise for going so far, but again he tells her she did right. He tells her about his previous assistant Miss Locke who on his orders always tried to kill him on *her* birthday. He claims it's part of his insanity that he's obsessed with death and birthdays, probably because he killed his father on his 21st. Daddy told him he was worthless and didn't deserve his inheritance, so he burned the house down with him in it. (We see a flashback of that but he doesn't *look* 21.) Maybe he wants to be killed for that but he won't let it happen because he's a coward and a cheat. She counterclaims that he's evil but he always plays fair. He says it wasn't fair that he killed Miss Locke because she got too close to him. (We see another flashback with him leaning over her with a knife in her chest.) And he says his Murder World is always stacked against the heroes but still they always beat him - he couldn't even kill a kid sidekick. She gives him a book which might give some ideas about that. It's a real birthday present, a 1st edition of an old book he said he enjoyed reading in prison - the 1 about the kids on the island. He thanks her and then fires her because he no longer needs a beautiful assistant because he's giving up the game. But he gives her his Caribbean island and his green helicopter as a redundancy package.

We next see him in his bar The Hole in Bagalia. It's closed and he's drunk, but Constrictor breaks in to rob the place. Arcade doesn't care but the villain attacks him with his cybernetic coils anyway. Arcade accepts the beating for humiliating him at the party, but Constrictor vehemently denies any humiliation and says he's doing it because he *can* and Arcade's too pathetic to stop him (methinks he doth protest too much). But Arcade's lack of resistance takes all the fun out of it so he asks where the safe is. Arcade tells him it's down in the basement and there's a button under the bar counter to open a trapdoor. Constrictor presses it ... and a giant hammer swings down from the ceiling to smash into him. This gives Arcade a renewed vitality.

He goes to the island he used to own and finds Miss Coriander sunbathing beside the green helicopter. She greets him with a machine gun but he says he's been rereading the book she gave him and he wants her to help him create an new Murder World in the Antarctic.

Months later we see her showing him her handiwork. He'd asked her for superpowers and now he's flying and he wants to know how. She says she considered cybernetics, magic, gamma radiation and Stark tech but then realised power wasn't what he really wanted, it was control. So she built stuff such as force fields into the environment and gave him compete control of it built in to his suit. He commends her on her insight but then adds that she knows him too well to live and he blasts her. But she was expecting something like that and it has no effect on her. Then she teleports away as he congratulates her on playing a good game.