M302--Diamondback

Real Name: Rachel Leighton

First Appearance: Captain America #310 (October 1985)

By all accounts, Rachel Leighton should not have even been there.  While many of the Serpent Society board members were there of their own accord, it was an open secret that many chairs were seated by a spokesperson of interested parties, fill-ins for capitalists not willing to reveal their actual identities.  But Rachel was not even an official representative--she was an escort, a high end call girl who had been paid by the Diamondback chair's actual front man to fill in for a meeting.  And the Serpent Society was not a normal club for the rich, something made extremely obvious when they began their meeting with a prayer to the god Apep, the great snake idolized in their "holy relic," the Serpent Crown.  Symbolic as it was, they believed it was through the crown they were able to maintain power throughout the globe.

Unfortunately for Rachel, the day she was the acting Diamondback chair was the day of Sinthea Schmidt's attack on the society's headquarters.  Her bomb killed several members while leaving the rest mortally wounded, Rachel included.  The crown was destroyed, but in doing so, its actual power was unleashed.  The fragments of Apep's spirit within saved the lives of the maimed and mutilated society members, mystically rebuilding and transforming them into avatars of the serpent.  Their capital and assets had been seized by governments around the globe in the aftermath, but they were now filled with a greater purpose as thralls of Seth, the god of death who had trapped Apep within the crown to begin with.  And Rachel, who was there by nothing more than happenstance, was now a part of the reborn Serpent Society as the one true Diamondback.

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Seth's control over Rachel is much weaker than the others, however, as she had very little interaction with the crown prior to her transformation, which leads to her betraying the Society and allying herself with Captain America.  As the reborn Diamondback, her limbs are made of a gravelly coal like mineral that contain diamond like gems she is capable of magically expelling as high speed projectiles.  So she kinda "throws" diamonds.

An actual Serpent Society character has been a long time coming (other than Viper I guess).  I long ago established that they were a secret society of ultra capitalists in my universe, and that left some wondering if I would even be adapting them in a fashion at all, but here's the big twist--they end up getting transformed into the group of snake people by the Serpent Crown.  So they're magic based in my universe, which is a pretty big departure.  I had always planned on having them transform into the proper Serpent Society after getting attacked by Sin, but I went back and forth between if it would be cybernetics or occult shit that changed them, and I decided to go with occult as it just felt like such a fun way to connect a bunch of stuff.  In the comics, the Serpent Crown is actually powered by the Elder God Set, but I believe that Set is technically a Conan the Barbarian character so I went with the Egyptian snake god Apep (who Set is associated with in the comics anyway), who here was imprisoned in the crown by the Egyptian God Seth (who is a different character from Set, are you following?), as while Seth is associated with snakes in the comics, he is not really a snake god in the actual mythology so I thought that would be a way to bridge that.  Basically, Seth ripped Apep's spirit apart, stuck him in a crown, that crown broke, the fragments of Apep's spirit enter the Society members, transforming them into Seth's serpent thralls.

Rachel herself was kind of tricky to fit into this, as the one sympathetic member of the society that ends up becoming good and shacking up with Captain America (I dunno if they have a romantic relationship in my universe at all), which was difficult to fit her in as a member of some secret society of uber capitalists.  So I came up with this story of her being a sex worker that a chair fill in guy had substitute for him one day that ends up being *the* day that the Serpent Society is transformed.  So her heart is not exactly in it from the get go because... it was never in it.  She doesn't belong there, and never belonged there.  Just a victim of happenstance.

Reinterpreting the Serpent Society as avatars of an Egyptian god presents a fun and unique challenge, to take characters like Diamondback and changing them into something that's totally unlike anything done with the character before.  Obviously I had to use Moon Knight's MCU suit as a base starting point, if I'm going for a "mystical Egyptian god avatar" look.  But translating that to Diamondback's flashy, almost circus performer-esque pink and black suit was quite a challenge... but a fun challenge.  The colors were probably the trickiest, had to go for a muted purple over a bright pink for her suit in the end.  I dunno how I came up with her actual diamond throwing powers here, but I like it.  She's got like arms and legs made of gravelly rocks or whatever and diamond like crystals grown out of them, which she can expel at high speed or something?  The gravelly texture growing around her eyes to replicate her classic mask was a fun idea too.