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The Curse |
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References: |
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27, 28, 31, 32, 33, 40, 41, 44, 45, 48, 50, 65, 75, 86, 121, 150, 153, 209, 231, 233, 234, 296, 297, 299, 300, 301, 318, 321, C18, C19 |
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Alias(es): |
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Paul Krahn |
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 The Curse was a religious zealot named Paul Krahn. As a boy, he obsessed about religion and his devotion to God was unquestionable. To prove his devotion he thought it was necessary to self-mutilate. When he was a young man he sacrificed his eye, scarred his face, and chopped off his arm to gain favor with God.
Of course the doctors and authorities said he was merely seeking attention, but the Curse never wavered in his beliefs. He did, however, relent with his actions and begin trying to live life the way they wanted him to. He went to college and eventually became a successful businessman.
As he got older, playing by society's rules made Krahn very wealthy. His businesses blossomed and he accumulated massive wealth. It was then, when he had achieved success in the secular world, he returned to his true calling. He once again began struggling to gain God's attention.
 After the appearance of Spawn in New York, Krahn felt he had been forsaken. He mistakenly believed that Spawn was a powerful tool of Heaven sent by God - a chosen one for which Krahn hadn’t been selected.
Furthermore, Krahn believed that by killing Spawn, he could prove to God who was truly the most righteous and deserving. Krahn used his wealth to create amazing weaponry for himself and an armored suit in which he called himself The Curse. Ready to do battle, Curse journeyed to the alleys to find the one called Spawn.
Curse quickly found him and immediately shot Spawn with his energy weapon. He was amazed that he had been able to win so easily and began to bask prematurely in his victory. Believing Spawn to be dead, Curse began preaching his religion to the homeless, and he declared that since Spawn had been defeated so easily he could not have been a tool of God. Instead, he clearly must have been a minion of Satan.
When Spawn came-to, he angrily began pummeling Curse - even as some of the converted homeless tried to protect him (27). Nevertheless, Spawn easily defeated the Curse and crucified him to a brick wall in back of the alleys. Defeated and demoralized, hanging from a wall, the Curse denounced his beloved God. He decided that from that moment on, he would fight for himself, not God, and he would begin his new life by destroying Spawn (28).
Curse remained pinned to the wall for quite some time, until the vampire known as Sansker came to town. Like Krahn, Sansker had come to hunt down Spawn, but found the Curse instead. He cut him down and took him back to his lair where he tortured the Curse for information (32). Somehow, the Curse escaped or was released, and he began preparing for his next assault on Spawn.
He assembled a small army of little cybernetic henchmen to assist in his schemes and built an enormous lab in a castle. When the time was right, the Curse laid a trap for Spawn. He bribed a few of Spawn's homeless alley-mates to booby-trap Spawn's throne with a device that would neutralize the hellspawn. When Spawn sat in the seat, he was wrapped with cybernetic coils and knocked unconscious. When he awoke, he found himself in the Curse's lab listening to his insane ramblings (40).
The Curse explained that since last they had met, he had come to terms with his mission. Though his God had forsaken him, it was still his duty to fight evil in all its forms. He amputated his remaining arm (as well as other portions of his body) and replaced it with a newly constructed cybernetic version. He then dissected Spawn alive in hopes that he might find the secret of his necroplasm and the root of his evil. While being dissected, Spawn managed to break one of his hands free long enough to fracture the glass containing his symbiotic suit. The small crack was enough to unleash the angry symbiote and defeat the Curse. Before he could be killed, however, the Curse detonated his own lab and both he and Spawn were expelled in the blast (41).
Later, the Curse came up with a new idea to gain an upper hand on evil. He devised a plan to kidnap and dissect a servant of God - a member of the secretive Knights Templar. In this new dissection, he believed he could find the secret to the Knight's spiritual armor, or as he called it: his "soul-sword". With this secret, the Curse would be able to defeat Malebolgia and his minions.
 Most of the Curse's scheme went off as planned. He tricked mobster Antonio Twistelli into revealing a Knight Templar working within his organization, then successfully kidnapped the man. During the dissection, however, the Curse seemed unable to discover the secret that he had been searching for. He was forced to end the examination early when Twistelli returned to exact revenge upon the Curse, and once again the Curse's lab was destroyed. This time, he was forced to leave behind a number of his cybernetic body parts though, and was not seen again for quite some time(C19).
When the Curse finally resurfaced,
he once again kidnapped a man, but this time he intended to peer inside his victim, find the evil inside and replace it with God's "heavenly touch" (231). He chose the man who had been miraculously saved on live TV by Jim Downing, the Saved Paparazzi.
After vivesecting the man, the Curse was confronted by the mysterious priest Daniel Kilgore. Kilgore had been investigating those touched by Jim Downing's powers, and his search had led him to the Curse's lair.
Kilgore told Curse that he had seen his kind many times before and that the Curse would never be able to find the evil he was searching for because he himself was evil. Kilgore then transformed himself into the being called Haunt and ripped Curse to shreds - ending his evil once and for all (234)
After death, Curse was resurrected by Spawn to serve as his minion in a war against the angels and demons of Earth. (289) Some time after an encounter with The Rapture, Curse disappeared from Spawn's secret base, and his whereabouts are unknown.
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