Twilight (New Universe)

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caption= Artwork by Paul Ryan from D.P. 7 #15.

comic_color = background:#ff8080
character_name = Twilight
alter_ego = Lenore Fenzl
publisher = Marvel Comics
debut = "DP7" #1 (1986)
creators = Mark Gruenwald
Paul Ryan
alliance_color = background:#c0c0ff
alliances =Therapy Group C Clinic for Paranormal Research Central Intelligence Agency
aliases =
powers = Generates a fatigue-promoting bioluminescence.

Twilight (Lenore Fenzl) is a fictional paranormal in the Marvel Comics imprint New Universe. She first appears in D.P.7 #1.

Fictional character biography

Early life and the Clinic

Little is known about the first 65 years of Lenore Fenzl's life. She was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on April 30, 1920, and was a Quaker. She never married, or even had a serious relationship, referring to herself as an 'old maid'. She was in the Class of '41 at Marquette University, and received a masters degree in Latin. She later became a teacher of Latin in high school, but retired in 1984.

One day, shortly after the White Event, Lenore noticed a strange silvery spot on her skin. She showed it first to a friend, and then to a nurse, and both of them fainted. She feared the spot was cancer, especially as it began spreading, and she began covering herself up.

At one point, when the condition had spread over to her whole body, Lenore went to see another doctor, and the doctor also fainted. Lenore phoned a crisis intervention hotline and they told her about the Clinic for Paranormal Research. She enrolled there to get help with her problem, and was assigned a therapy group.

The Clinic

One of the members of her therapy group discovered that the clinic had been spying on them and that several of its staff were paranormals. The group fled, and Lenore along with them.

She stayed with her friends, using her abilities to help keep them safe against some bounty hunters the Clinic had sent after them, but they were all eventually recaptured.

Some of her friends managed to reform the Clinic, although without the funding that Philip Nolan Voigt provided, many of the patients had to fill staff roles. Lenore became a teacher to the Clinic's younger charges, but she was having trouble as she began to find her need to use her powers growing.

Lenore had been regularly using her abilities on her friend Jeff Walters to slow him down to normal speed and help him sleep, but was finding herself both craving more and suffering from excess energy that she needed to work off. She began to be worried about what she was becoming, although she was torn because her powers also provided her with a young, healthy body, and the Clinic's physical therapist flirted with her. The cravings continued to increase and at her lowest moment she exposed a young student, staying after class, to her powers in order to get a fix. She decided that she had to accept that she had a problem, and decided to stop giving Jeff a nightly dose of her power.

Determined to beat her addiction, Lenore first asked the physical therapist to paint her entire body with non-toxic paint, so she could have a chance to enjoy her new youthful body one time. But since that could not be a long term solution, she then withdrew into seculsion in her room so as not to expose herself to temptation. Her body began deteriorating and her friends saw little of her for over a month. She came out of hiding to use her abilities to quell a riot, and after that had to jog without rest for days as her once-again rejuvenated body had too much excess energy.

After the Pitt

Lenore decided to leave the Clinic with many members of her therapy group to go after Jeff Walters, who had lost family in the sudden destruction of Pittsburgh, and apparently gave up the idea of quitting her addiction cold turkey, for she freely used her powers on several occasions to get past roadblocks and other other situations.

The group managed to find Jeff but got split up after being attacked by a batch of scavenger types preying on people on the outskirts of the Pitt. They were led by a man named Pitt Bull who was immune to Lenore's powers. The group got separated and, after a few days of wandering, Lenore, Charlotte Beck, and George Mullaney (known as Mutator) were captured by the United States Army.

Male paranormals were becoming subject to a new draft, but female ones weren't required to serve. However, because being in the area of the Pitt was illegal, the army was about to use the threat of prosecution to force the women to sign up. The Central Intelligence Agency managed to make a better offer, and Lenore and Beck spent the next few months in a CIA training facility.

There, when confronted with a former acquaintance who was developing a unique skin condition, Lenore informed the CIA about another paranormal, Stephanie Harrington, who might have been able to help, and then went out to attempt to recruit her.

Lenore went missing in the jungles of Brazil on her first mission for the CIA. They were sent out to locate a biological weapon. The weapon was a paranormal mass of flesh that absorbed any other flesh it came in contact with, and the creature enveloped her. It is possible that she still survives, at least in some form, as part of this creature.

Powers and abilities

All of Lenore's exposed epidermis produces a bright, white light through a form of bioluminescence, that somehow generates the production of fatigue poisons in the body and sleep chemicals in the brain. Most living beings exposed to this light find themselves extremely tired and lose consciousness. A man of average weight would be rendered unconscious by ten seconds of exposure. The longer a person is exposed to this light, the worse the effect is. It is possible that, were one exposed to the effect long enough, they would die, but this never occurred in the series.

Additionally, when Lenore uses her powers on another human being, she feels energized to a degree proportional to the amount of energy. Her body also becomes more youthful. Both effects are temporary, and if she refrains from using her abilities on others for more than a month her body begins to age rapidly to her original state. Because of this, her power is both physically and psychologically addictive.

The light produced by Lenore's skin produces a light equivalent to 1500 candlepower.

Lenore cannot cease the use of her powers, and so she must cover her body completely in order to interact with people.

Other versions

Exiles World Tour

*During the Exiles World Tour, an alternate version of Twilight came into existence after the Exiles battled the Proteus possessed Justice shortly after DP7 escaped. Her history, demeanour and powers remained that same.