The Spectacular Spider-Man

Issue #1 – Tangled, Part One written by Zak Chambers


The cool night air swept over his masked face, renewing him. More often than not the city he loved so much and gave his all to protect ended up spitting back in his face, but when he felt gravity tug at his webline, and pierced the soft blanket of night, Spider-Man could forget all that.

Each night he would hit the rooftops and leap unfrightened into the air. Each night he would bring down any number of bad guys. And each night there was always the inevitable encounter with an angry citizen. Their comments varied but usually remained similar.

"Wretched webslinger!" was one of his favorites. He appreciated alliteration even if it was unintentional. Having a name like Peter Parker had that affect on him.

"Stupid webhead!" was another one he heard often. He gave it a zero for creativity but sometimes had to award points for when the statement was followed up by a flower vase being thrown at his head.

"Arrogant criminal!" usually brought up the rear as far as his favorite accusations went. It was because of one man that Spider-Man received statements like that on a nightly basis, and that man was none other than the infamous J. Jonah Jameson.

Jameson had apparently made it his life's mission to drag Spidey's otherwise good name through the mud. Yellow journalism at its finest, Jameson took pride in his headlines for the Daily Bugle that New York's citizens took their copy points from. As far as public images went Spider-Man had one of the worst and it was all thanks to J.J. Why Jameson had such a monumental grudge against him Spidey would never know.

Spider-Man plopped onto the corner of a Manhatten brownstone overlooking Central Park, relaxing into a crouch that would seem uncomfortable to most other people. His ability to cling to just about any surface allowed him to perch on the side of the building as opposed to a horizontal surface, which overall gave him a better view. Plus it just looked cool.

"Another night out on the town," Spidey said to no one. "Just me, myself, and I. Unless you count the two muggers waiting for a nice police officer to come cut them down from the lamppost on Fifth and Main."

Extending his wrist, Spider-Man pressed down on the webshooter concealed beneath his glove, which in turn shot out a thick wad of custom made webbing from the hidden nozzle. It raced through the open air to latch onto the corner of the next building, solidifying as it soared. No sooner had the fresh webline made contact than Spider-Man yanked down on it and swung out across the street below.

The relative solace he found in webslinging was short lived.

"Help!" screamed a woman from somewhere down in the thick woods of the park. Releasing the webline prematurely, Spider-Man dropped down through the air and clung to the wall of the building he had been swinging from. He tried to get a visual of the damsel in distress but the blanketing nightfall in addition to the cluster of trees made it nearly impossible to see anything.

Firing another webline, Spider-Man anchored his transportation on the top of a flagpole and swung down to ground level. He hit the grass covered park with a thump and fell into a crouch, scanning the immediate area for signs of a woman that needed his help.

That's when he felt it. The panging feeling was hard to describe. He once compared it to the enhanced senses of another vigilante named Daredevil, but even then he didn't think he was doing his 'spider-sense' justice. His sixth sense for danger had come along as part of the package deal that were his animalistic powers. It allowed him a moment of precognition, materializing in the back of his head in the form of a small buzzing. Usually, the greater the danger the greater the buzzing.

Right now the buzzing was like a siren going off inside his brain, demanding he move immediately. Spider-Man cast himself to one side, somersaulting in midair to land facing the direction he sensed the danger coming from. He stole a glance to his side, where he had been crouched, and saw a pair of silver daggers imbedded in the soft earth.

"Look what we have here," someone said. Spidey saw a pair of bulky thugs walk out of the bushes toward him. The larger one had an assortment of knives and daggers clinging to his black vest, while the other was fighting to suppress a smile. "It's like an infestation in our hood, Tony!"

"Hehe," the other one, Tony, giggled. "Yeah, Big John. Gonna have to squash those bugs."

"Okay," Spidey quipped, "who forgot to pick up their toys after dinner? I nearly tripped on your little collectibles. If your mother catches you—"

"Help me! Someone help!"

The girl screaming tumbled out of the bushes, the same ones that the thugs had crept out of, with her clothes barely hanging on. Her blouse was torn in several places and there were cuts on her cheeks, complete with trickles of blood running down her otherwise unblemished skin. Spider-Man looked in a stare with the two brutes that twitched when they saw that their prey was getting away.

Spider-Man quickly regarded the pair of thugs. In any city but New York the two might look out of place, but the simple fact of the matter was that an overweight man twirling shimmering silver knives, as well as an accomplice that could barely contain a maniacal laughter, just sort of blended in with the landscape. As far as street trash went they weren't anything special.

The larger one turned to toss a throwing blade at the fleeing woman, but Spider-Man was much faster, thanks in no small part to his tainted blood. With a flick of his wrist the overweight thug's throwing hand was covered in a sticky goo that wouldn't come off no matter how hard he pumped his fist.

"What the?" Big John blurted out in irritation, which suddenly flared up into rage. "Tony! Kill that freak!"

Tony managed to stifle his laugh long enough to concentrate of grasping the fully automatic Uzi that had been hidden under his jacket. He pulled back the trigger and sprayed the nearby ground with bullets, not needing to bother with something so trivial as aiming. Not when he possessed a weapon that relied more on general direction than pinpoint accuracy.

The hot lead perforated the ground but the object of attention, namely their friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man, had all ready leapt over their heads to avoid the attack. The heightened agility that he had mastered since being an awkward teenager was at his precise command as he twisted in midair, planting his feet squarely into Tony's forehead with enough force to make him tumble over several times before laying him out on the ground.

"Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can't you see?" Spider-Man sang as he turned to face the bulky thug. "You ever heard that song? I don't remember the rest of it, but you kids and your rapping music—whoa!"

His spider-sense warned him a few seconds ahead of time, but he was still taken by surprise by the sheer speed of someone like Big John. The thug's webbed fist nearly knocked Spidey's head clean off its shoulders. Spider-Man bent over backward, his flexibility being tested almost to its limit, but he managed to dodge the clubbing blow. Instead of springing back up after the bulldozer fist had passed him by, Spider-Man allowed gravity to take over and he dropped back. He flung both his feet out and caught Big John just under his chin with a loud smack.

The brute took a few steps back. Spidey had no doubt that the thug was seeing birdies thanks to his proportionally augmented strength giving his kick that little extra oomph. He could have sworn he felt the ground shake slightly when Big John crashed into it.

"All that meat on ya and you're still packing a glass jaw?" Spidey quipped. "Tsk, tsk. Isn't your face going to be red at the next annual street hooligans' conference. I bet they make you sit way in the back under the bad lighting and everything."

After hosing the pair down with a healthy dose of webbing, content that it would hold them until he pointed a police officer toward them, Spider-Man began to look around the darkened park for any trace of the assaulted woman. She had looked pretty beat up and he wanted to make sure she got medical treatment. As sad and unbelievable as it seemed, the statistics on unreported personal assaults were staggering.

She wasn't in the immediate area but after swinging to the top of a nearby tree he saw her leaning against a streetlight close to the edge of the park perimeter. Latching on another webline to a tree branch between them, Spidey swung back down to the ground and made sure that the light covered him completely. No need to scare off the person he was trying to help by sneaking up on her.

"Stay back!" she said as soon as she caught notice of him.

"Relax, m'am," the vigilante replied. He held up both his hands, palms out, in a gesture of humility. "I just want to make sure you're okay. I can get an ambulance for you, or a squad car, or—"

Spider-Man paused as he stared at the woman. Now that she was in the light and there weren't a pair of thugs trying to take him down he could focus on what she looked like. Aside from the torn clothing and scratched skin, she was an attractive redhead that looked tone and in shape. Her blazing red hair, which shocked him that he hadn't noticed before, was long enough that it draped lazily over her shoulders.

She was panting from running through the shrubs that had blocked her from the nearest streetlight. Sweat glistened off her skin in the moonlight, but somehow she remained an air of feminine beauty.

It wasn't the fact that he had just saved this woman moments ago that held his attention. Looking at her in the light, he saw a face he recognized like none other on Earth. He suppressed the need to rip his mask off and run to her side, for some reason thinking that would be the wrong thing to do. It went against his nature to stand twenty feet away from her, but the terrified look on her face told him he didn't dare come near.

Near the woman he loved. The woman he had married.

"Mary Jane?"

"Stay away from me!" she demanded. She gripped the streetlight with both hands and moved behind it. "I'll scream, I swear I'll scream!"

"What? Why? Sweetheart, I don't—"

Mary Jane turned to face the street on the other side of a row of hedges behind her and started waving her arms in the air. At that time of night typically people would be asleep in their warm beds, but in the Big Apple there were a few stray cars that contained people that were just waking up to hit the trendy nightclubs. A passing taxicab screeched to a halt when he saw her excited plea for help.

Confused, Spider-Man took a step forward but stopped when he saw Mary Jane hop over the hedges and run to the cab. She looked back at him over her shoulder, flinging her hair to the side as the cabbie stumbled out of the driver's side door in a hurry. She pointed directly at him, startling him when he saw the look of pure terror on her face.

A police car chirped its siren briefly as it pulled up beside the taxi, which had blocked off both lanes of the street. A pair of officers stepped out of the squad car and ran over to Mary Jane, who was still sobbing and pointing at the wallcrawler. One of them tried to calm her while the other started to draw his weapon.

"Stay right there, buddy!" the officer commanded.

This wasn't right. It couldn't be. Something was wrong with the entire situation, but he didn't think he would be able to convince the police of that. Quickly stepping back out the light provided by the overhead lamp, Spider-Man leapt over a set of shrubs and ran off into the concealment offered by Central Park. He didn't know what was going on but he did know that he couldn't stay there to figure it out.

Spider-Man fired off a string of webbing and watched it connect to the edge of a building. Yanking back on the elastic material he pushed off the ground and shot up into the night sky. He flew straight at the side of the building and clutched it with his grip, sticking to the side of the vertical surface. Crawling in a similar fashion to the creature he had taken his persona from, Spider-Man crept along the wall and back into the side alley, all the while thoughts of what could be going on swirling in his head.

"What the hell just happened back there?" he wondered aloud.

Reaching the rooftop, Spider-Man flipped over the edge and sat down. He let himself fall back against the edge and ripped his mask off. His spider-sense told him it was safe to reveal his real face. He wanted fresh oxygen, not the stale-tasting air that was filtered through his mask.

The look on MJ's face bothered him immensely. Not only was it similar, too similar, to the looks he received from the general public but it was stronger. More intense. She had been genuinely scared of him.

He placed his palms against his forehead and touched his elbows to his knees. That couldn't have been Mary Jane. He'd been witness to such extravagant things as cloning, replicants, android duplicates, and even alternate reality versions of people. In dealing with the more colorful criminal crowd, Spider-Man had all ready listed several names that had the power to screw with his head in such a manner.

His list of enemies seemed to grow each week, and more than one of them were capable of performing the scenario that had unfolded. The question was which member of his rogue's gallery was behind it this time?

Sure that the answer was right in front of his face and that he just wasn't looking in the right place, Spider-Man hopped back up to his feet and replaced his mask over his skull. He looked around the view of the city for a moment to get his bearings, and then vaulted off the side of the roof. A webline broke his fall and rocketed him across the skyline like a slingshot. He fired off strand after strand of his signature webbing, weaving in and out of particular buildings.

The first place he needed to start looking for answers was at his apartment. When he had left shortly after dinner, a meal that Mary Jane herself had prepared for them, his wife had been resting comfortably in front of the television. She typically made it to bed before he came home a few hours before dawn, but every once in a while he would catch her curled on where he had left her on the couch. If there was someone posing as his wife then the first thing he had to tell was tell her about it.

He latched another thin strand of webbing onto the corner of the building across from where his apartment rested. He swung both of his feet out hard, using the gained momentum to rise higher into the air. At the apex of his swing he let go of the webline and tucked his legs under his crossed arms. He somersaulted backwards due to the angle at which he had let go of the webbing and landed in a crouch on top of a water tower. Even an Olympic gymnast would have been envious of his maneuver.

A long way from Queens where he had spent a lot of his childhood, Spidey plopped down onto the Manhattan roof across from his own. Nearly every night he returned home he would perform the same act, scouting out his roof before hopping across in case someone was watching. He had gone to great measures in the past to make sure his identity as Peter Parker remained wholly separate from his alter-ego of Spider-Man. Regardless of the fact that he had a long-lasting connection between the identities, where he would pose as Spidey for his own pictures and turn them into the Daily Bugle as Parker, he wanted the world at large to truly believe they were two individual people.

So when he peered through his apartment window and saw someone standing in his kitchen that looked exactly like him, he wasn't quite sure what to think.

"Oh my god…" Spider-Man muttered.

He couldn't believe the information that his eyes were sending to his brain. Peter Parker was standing in the kitchen of the small apartment, busily chopping an onion to toss into a boiling pot of water on the stove. Everything from the length of his hair to the way he wiggled his nose at the smell of the onion seemed to mimic Parker, yet that was impossible.

Spider-Man was Parker. Parker was Spider-Man. The two couldn't possibly exist as separate characters, and yet there he was. Spider-Man shook his head, hoping that when he finished and refocused his pupils that the imposter Parker would be gone and he would be staring into an empty apartment. When he opened his eyes again he watched in horror as Peter Parker dumped the bits of onion into the boiling water.

Spider-Man placed a foot on the edge of the roof, fully intending to jump across the street below and bust throw the window. Whatever game was being played he would not be a willing participant. Just as soon as he was ready to make the jump however, a sound caught his attention.

At first it sounded like a thinly veiled alarm, but it grew louder within a moment. Spider-Man probably wouldn't have been able to hear it at all if there had been any traffic on the street under him. Not only did the unexpected but familiar noise hold his attention, but it seemed to be coming from inside his own apartment.

Crying. It was the sound of a baby crying.

Spider-Man watched Parker wipe his hands off with a towel that had been draped over his shoulder and run through the kitchen into the living room. He had to stand totally on the ledge to see what was transpiring, but in amazement he witnessed Peter Parker bend over a crib behind the sofa and gently pick up a wailing infant.

Parker cradled the baby in his arms as he bounced back and forth lightly on his feet to try and comfort her. Finally placing her over his shoulder, he patted her back to burp her. As Spider-Man watched himself care for the child, his eyes began to go dry from his refusal to blink.

"What the hell is going on?" Spider-Man yelled.

The vigilante prepared himself again to make the jump, bending his knees slightly in order to use his increased strength to launch his entire body across the street and through the window. As his leg muscles tightened he heard something explode behind him, like a muffled car backfiring. A few wisps of smoke swam out in front of him. Before he could react he felt something thin wrap around his upper torso and yank him back off the roof edge.

Lying flat on his back, Spider-Man angled his neck back to look behind him where the noise had come from. Large plumes of smoke now covered the roof, which had to have been the cause for the muffled explosion. At the center of the smoke stood a tall and eerie figure, whose costume bore green and purple hues. Spider-Man focused on the figure, recognizing him instantly.

"Mysterio!" Spider-Man said, making the villain's name sound like a swear word. "Okay, that makes sense. Should have figured that one out."

"You won't be able to even form coherent thoughts when I'm through with you, wallcrawler," Mysterio replied. His domed head reflected Spider-Man's image back at him as his echoing voice answered Spider-Man's accusation.

"Yeah, we'll see about that. If I had a nickel for every time I bashed in that fish bowl on your shoulders—"

Spider-Man strained to stand back up, but found his arms were still clasped to his side by whatever had grabbed him. He looked down to see a humongous python wrapped around his torso, its scales constricting and making it harder to pull in a breath.

Spidey tried to break the grasp again but found himself stuck. "Fancy illusion, Mysty. Hard light holograms again or simple robotics? I'll admit that your knack for getting around my spider-sense is getting better, but you just have to know this fake snake won't hold me for long."

"Illusion is a grand weapon against a feeble-minded threat such as yourself, Spider-Man," the villain stated, "but you'll soon learn that I am no longer bound by such archaic methods."

"Uh-huh. Sure. Whatever."

Regardless of the doubts in Spider-Man's mind, he admitted to himself that the snake coiled around his torso seemed to be much more than an average python. His strength, proportionally greater than the average human being, another boon of his irradiated blood, couldn't budge the long scales of the snake. As he tried to lift his arms away the snake only hold him that much tighter. Soon he was gasping for breath.

"Do you see, wallcrawler?" Mysterio commented. His flowing purple cape billowed in the smoke and smog that had accompanied his entrance. "I'm not the same illusionist since we last met. This time you'll be crucified before me in a grand finale worthy of the largest stage!"

As Spider-Man struggled against losing his consciousness, he saw another shadow appear beside the villain's. Long and thin, it was human in shape but with points extending all around it. He tilted back to see who else had joined the fray, but all he could make out before losing his vision altogether were their feet. Beside Mysterio's green boots were planted a grotesque pair of gray feet sans any type of covering. The toes looked like barbs extending from the base of the feet, and the skin covering them looked like mashed, wet paper.

The python constricted ever tighter, and even though Spider-Man fought to stay conscious, he inevitably lost the battle. The last thing he heard before drifting off was the noise of Mysterio laughing maniacally, along with a hissing and wheezing from the newcomer that sent a chill up Spider-Man's spine.


Next Issue – We shift gears and take a look at this strange evening from another perspective! "Tangled" continues, so face front, true believer!