Origin
Before the Avengers Academy, Maddy Berry was an average teenage high school student until one day she discovered her gaseous state. Maddy was deceived into trusting that Norman Osborn could help her. She was tortured until Osborn was taken down and then enrolled in the Avengers Academy due to the fact that her molecules were disappearing and she was feared to turn evil after her torture.
Creation
Veil was created by writer Christos Gage and artist Mike McKone and debuted in the Avengers Academy series.
Character Evolution
Veil has gone from being a relatively shy, average school girl to quite the daring young woman. Since being in the Avengers Academy, Veil has joined in seeking out Norman Osborn during a visit to the Raft during a prison riot and activated a dangerous machine that had the potential to bring back the Wasp, which caused disastrous results. Veil continues to have these outbursts due to her fear that she will be forgotten or that her disappearing molecules will be incurable.
Major Story Arcs
Avengers Academy
Maddy Berry was just a normal teenager at Harry S. Truman High School when her powers first manifested. She lived in a trailer and had a crush on the most popular boy in school and couldn’t believe that he could be interested in her in return. One day she started receiving texts from Brad sharing really sweet things but he was too nervous to talk to her. In a text he
asked her if she’d go to Homecoming with him and she went up to him in school to tell him yes. Brad though had no idea who she was, it was in fact Julianna Navarro a popular girl in school who had been texting Maddy. Julianna was hooking up with Brad and was using his phone to text Maddy in order to mess with her. Maddy was so embarrassed she wished she could disappear and that’s what she did. Unknown to everyone including herself she had the ability to turn into a gaseous state.
Norman Osborn visited her that night and invited her to join the Initiative saying she could be a hero like Ms. Marvel. Being a huge fan of Ms. Marvel, Maddy agreed not knowing that Osborn was a former villain and signed up. After months of experimenting they managed to duplicate the event that turned Maddy to gas though the experimentation was very traumatic to her. After Osborn was taken down, Hank Pym took up her case and determined the limits of her powers and the effects of Osborn’s experimentation. Because Osborn forced her body to undergo such drastic changes before she was ready she was slowly dissipating and would one day completely disappear.
Like her crush on Brad back at her school she has started to develop a crush on Vance Astrovik aka Justice one of her instructors.
Veil, Finesse and Hazmat are being lectured about the oppressive male society by Valkyrie when Tigra interrupts, reminding Val she should be teaching them to fight. Hazmat approaches Veil and asks about her torture at the hands of Norman Osborn. She also tells Veil how the Academy is planning a trip to the Raft, where Osborn is being held. Veil, Mettle and Hazmat plan to force Osborn to change them all back to normal. Once they arrive Veil is totally freaked out when passing the cell of Crossbones. Luke Cage then takes them on a tour of the rest of the facility and to meet the Thunderbolts. Hazmat kills the power while Mettle tears the door off the room and the three take off towards Osborn. When they actually do confront him Hazmat tells Veil that the real plan is to kill Osborn because if Pym can’t fix them no one can. Osborn interjects & explains how he has made each one of them better and that Pym is lying to them to gain leverage. He goes on to say he can fix them all as well, but not today. They leave Osborn in his cell and head back to the group. They are stopped by the rioting prisoners and become surrounded until Pym and the rest of the teachers save them. When Pym questions them about their involvement, Mettle jumps in and says they had nothing to do with the blackout but could not resist the opportunity to settle up with Osborn.
Veil is next seen in a training session with the rest of her class mates against Captain Steve Rogers. After the skirmish he suggests that she read a book on the ninja use of fog as “metsubushi” or “eye closers”. She later goes on to turn down the advances of the ever arrogant Striker. Veil and the rest of the Academy are ambushed by Whirlwind and after a quick battle she runs to tell Justice of her encounter. She accidentally walks in on Justice and his girlfriend Ultragirl and is devastated. She storms after Striker to take him up on his previous offer and surprisingly he passes up and lets her rant until she passes out.
Later on, Veil sneaks in to Hank Pym’s office, whom discussed that he was ready to bring the Wasp back from her current state.
After witnessing Tigra’s brutally attacked by the Hood on a web video, she joins Hazmat and Striker in revenge against the depowered convict who recently escaped prison, videotaping the event. When Tigra saw their attack, she was furious, asking who filmed it. Veil admitted her involvement, and in anger Tigra expelled the three students. But the other teachers went against this decision, and the three were allowed back, but had strict warning that they are on thin ice.
Veil didn’t take this threat well, and constantly was scared about making mistakes, in carelessly offended Speedball. While spying on him, she found him cutting himself, and after a battle at Stamford, blurted out what he was doing to himself. The Academy said that it was good that she told them, but she shouldn’t have spied. Feeling a bit down on herself, Veil tried to impress the others that she wasn’t a screwup by activating a portal Hank Pym created, intending to bring Wasp back from the dead… which ultimately failed as it brought back the wife of Korvac whom Hank Pym mistaken for his wife, Janet. Korvac appears as well and demands that his wife return to him as the Avengers begin their attack. Veil starts to beat herself over her mistake, but Korvac’s wife tells her that she must act when she offers Veil her future body with her current consciousness. As the Academy students charge into battle, Veil realizes that no one will save her, but she must choose to save herself. After the Hazmat defeated Korvac, Veil obtain the molecular structure of Korvac that would stop her from dying of her power.
Fear Itself
Later in Fear Itself, Veil and the other student are assisting civilians to safety when she sees a little girl who tells her that her mother was trapped. Shortly saving the girl’s mother, the mother was brutally killed which angered Veil and she morphed into a poison gas formed and killed the villain. She then looked at the girl and was took by a veteran and says “I’m sorry” and cried by the mothers dead body.
The kids then return to the Avengers mansion, when Absorbing Man and Titania as Worthies attack Titania rendered Veil unconscious along with Mettle and Reptil leaving Hazmat, Finesse and Striker to hold off them off. After the class escapes with the help of the teachers, Veil announces she’s quitting Avengers Academy because of being put in a war zone and being put in a position where the kids were about to sacrifice their lives. After the end of Fear Itself she began working for Jeremy Briggs at Briggs Foundation.
Final Exam
During the final story arc of Avengers Academy, Jeremy Briggs calls both Veil and the rest of her former team to his building, where he reveals that he has developed a cure for superpowers, which he had already used on Veil. When Briggs revealed his plan to distribute the cure worldwide in order to remove all super powered individuals on the planet, Veil decides to help her old team to defeat him.
Powers
Veil has the ability to transform into various gasses but had very little control at first. Osborn’s experimentation eventually helped her turn into different types of gasses but the side effect is that she is slowly losing cohesion and will one day dissipate.
The future version of Veil seems to have the power of possession, which she used to hold Korvac while the future Hazmat killed him with anti-matter.
After working with Jeremy Briggs, Veil has been cured of her powers, but she remains a competent fighter.