Prologue

My name is Peter Parker

You might think you can guess the rest. You're probably wrong.

I was born in 1914. When I was nine years old, my parents, Richard and Mary Parker, were killed during a gang shoot out. I was raised by my Uncle Ben and Aunt May. I don't really remember my parents that well, and Ben and May loved me like I was their own, so I wasn't too unhappy growing up with them. Then the great depression kicked in, and everything started to go wrong.

We went hungry a lot. I had to get work as soon as I left school to help support my family. Uncle Ben wasn't exactly healthy, and I didn't have much experience, so we both had a lot of trouble getting work. I worked as a shop assistant, a cleaner at a cheap restaurant. None of them lasted long enough to make much of a difference. Certainly not enough to pay for college tuition, which I'd need for any job I'd actually be good at.

When I was at school, I loved science. I studied it as much as I could. Even after I left, I read science books at the library whenever I could. I wanted to be a scientist, like Edison or Tesla. I'd probably have been good at it too. But without a proper education, I could never have gotten started, and it turned out the universe had other plans for me.

It all started, as you probably could have guessed, with the death of my Uncle, and a spider bite. There was a bit more to it than that, though.

My Aunt and Uncle were Socialists. They believed that the people in power had a responsibility to help those without. They also believed that if those in power could not be trusted, it was the responsibility of the people to remove them. As you can imagine, this did nothing to make them popular with the people running the City. Uncle Ben paid the price for it. I found what was left after they were done with him. It wasn't a lot. He had been beaten to a pulp, then torn apart and partially eaten. At the time I assumed they had set wild dogs loose on him. The truth was much worse. He had been cannibalised alive by a monster of a man called the Vulture.

Not long after that, I got a stable job at last, and one I wanted to work on. I had met a man named Ben Urich, a reporter and Photographer for the Daily Bugle, one of the few reputable newspapers in the city. Urich took me on as his assistant, and we went and looked into every bit of crime and suffering in this city, and put it up in newspapers where it couldn't be ignored. I really felt like I was doing good. Especially since Urich was doing an investigation into the Goblin, Norman Osborne, the city's top gangster, and the man who had my Uncle murdered.

Then one night, when Urich was asleep, I got a phone call meant for him. I learned a few things. In the underworld, Ben Urich was known as the Spider, and he had informants, telling people where the crime was going on. I went over to where the current crime was occurring. Osborne was trying to steal a statue of a spider god. Apparently the guy liked foreign art. It all went wrong, of course.

The statue got smashed, and released a swarm of the most appalling spiders you ever saw. They killed all of Osborne's men, but when they attacked me, I had a vison. The spider god told me it was sparing me so it could give me "the curse of power" or whatever, and when I woke up, I had powers. I was faster and stronger than any poor kid from New York had a right to be. Much stronger. Any injuries, however serious, fixed themselves almost completely overnight. My senses were more acute than I could have imagined before. And I had this weird feeling, like precognition, that told me when someone was about to kill me, or when I was being lied to, and when someone was not what they seemed.

Not long after, I found out that Urich was in Osborne's pay. That was why he had never published all the blackmail material he had collected. Somewhere over the years, he had lost his desire to help people. He was a liar, and a coward, and a drug addict. I couldn't hate him though, because when I called him out on it, he genuinely tried to change. He never had any real chance though, because Osborne had him killed as soon as he realised he couldn't buy him anymore.

I took Urich's files. I didn't get them published though. Someone had gotten to the Bugle's editor, J Jonah Jameson, so there was no way to get them published. So I quit my job and got myself set up as a private detective, using my powers and Urich's files to help solve and deal with crimes. I studied the spiders that bit me, but I couldn't figure them out. Aside from their silk and their venom, they seemed just like ordinary spiders. The venom didn't seem chemically different from most spider venom, but when I injected myself with it; it gave my powers a brief boost. I remembered what the needle did to Urich though, so I avoided using it.

Their silk was black in colour, and had numbing properties when it touched human skin. I was able to synthesise a compound from it that I could use as a non-lethal weapon. Because of the webs I left behind at crime scenes, and the fact that I maintained Urich's circle of informants, the press and the underworld called me the Spider-Man.

Things have gone as well as I could expect after that. I took down Osborne, tried to take him into custody, but he chose suicide over prison. I shut down his criminal empire, and helped keep out people who would try to take his place. I get plenty of work as a detective, and plenty of money too, enough to support Aunt May, and help run a welfare centre for the poor of the city. I've never told her what I do for a living, though. I know she doesn't approve of Spider-Man. A few more years, and I'll finally have enough money to apply to college.

I briefly had a dalliance with Urich's old girlfriend Felicia Hardy, but she wasn't too interested in anything long term. Now, I'm with Mary-Jane Watson, one of a few rich dames who came to help out at the welfare centre. She was the only one to stay on permanently. We haven't talked about marriage or anything yet, but I'm hopeful.

There are a lot of weird guys like me out in the city now. Some of them try to help their fellow man, like I do, including Daredevil, The Iron Man, and the Wizard. Others like the Sandman, Xavier's little monsters, and an albino mobster named Tombstone, use what they have for selfish and destructive ends. I've met both, and frequently fought the latter. But out of all the strange creatures I've encountered in this city, I am still the one and only Spider Man.

Well, sort of.