I never put much stock in the cape-and-colorful-long-johns crowd. When it comes to massive disasters and psychopaths with crazy technology, you might every now and then see one fly through on their way to wreck midtown Manhattan. But when it came to the problems of us normal guys, you can hardly expect a demigod or a billionaire to concern themselves with the problems of the mortal 99%.

My name is Francis McDoogel, a beat cop for the 14th precinct. My experience with so-called "superheroes" was limited to what I'd seen on TV and read in the Daily Bugle. Sure, I had buddies on the force who claimed to have run into Daredevil or got an assist from the Heroes for Hire. But I always thought that anyone who spends their nights in skintight suits beating up gangsters with their bare hands must have been a head case at least as serious as some of the crooks.

That all changed the night me and my partner got called to an old abandoned warehouse on 45th. The call was for a possible drug deal in progress. Little did Buddy and I know that the drug deal was between some low level street thugs and what turned out to be some Maggia from the Hammerhead family. Before I knew it, we were pinned down with nothing but a couple of barrels for cover, and the Maggia's machine guns were rapidly making that cover disappear.

I still had a couple rounds left, and I know it doesn't sound heroic, but my last thought wasn't to go down in a blaze of glory. Instead, I put my gun down and started writing a text to my wife. We'd had a bit of a spat about money before we'd gone to bed before my shift, and I really wanted to tell her and the kids how much I loved them before they got the news that my last meal was a lead sandwich.

That was when I heard the noise.

If you've never heard the noise, it's hard to describe. It sounds like something between a high-pressure squirt gun and that swish that basketball players call "nothing but net." But, for me, from now on, I'll always remember that sound as the sound of redemption. The sound of my bacon being pulled out of the fire.

The dude was so fast, if it wasn't for the sound, I never would have known he was coming. One minute, I'm saying my prayers, and the next minute he's there. Right in the middle of it all. In the darkness of the warehouse, you couldn't see the colorful costume or the weird webs he was swinging from. All you could see was the light reflected off those big bug eyes, staring creepily at you. One second he was in one spot, the next another. The Maggia were raining gunfire in a crazy hailstorm, but he weaved through them like they were dodgeballs being hurled in slow motion by fifth graders. And then he was on them, snatching the guns out of their hands like he was taking candy from babies. When he threw a punch, it looked like he barely tapped them, but the seasoned gangsters would go flying like they got hit by a ton of bricks. Then he moved into some crazy acrobatic moves, somersaulting in midair, lining up feet to faces in smooth, liquid motion that I would have sworn was some choreographed dance if it hadn't ended with full grown men screaming like they were being pantsed on the playground.

The weirdest part was when I saw a sniper off in the distance, way behind the guy's back and far outside his field of view. He squeezed off some shots at the back of the guy's head, and though I saw them coming, it was still too quick for me to even call out a warning.

He didn't need a warning. It was like he smelled them. He just moved his head to the side, and the bullets went right past him. He turned around and shot a couple of those weird weblines from his wrists. The first one knocked the sniper's gun right out of his hand, and ended by completely gluing his fingers together in that weird, sticky fluid. The second shot put a net over his head and stuck firmly to his shoulders. Caught in the web, the sniper was yanked forward as his assailant somersaulted backward, spinning another series of webs to catch all the thugs he'd already taken out. In a minute, they were hanging from the ceiling in those crazy cocoons, like insects waiting to be eaten by the Spider.

The Spider. It's hard for me to think of him as a man. He has a distinctly human body, but he doesn't move at all like a man. More like some otherworldly creature with a twisted sense of humor.

I say twisted sense of humor. The remaining thugs-that hadn't already had their keysters handed to them-started running. Gangsters who would laugh at the idea at running from the cops, turned tail and skidoodled out of there like misbehaving toddlers who saw their dad coming at them with the belt.

"Hey, where you kids goin'?" shouted the Spider. "Don't you know Thursdays are family game night? Don't you wanna play Twister with Uncle Spidey?"

They were almost out the open bay door of the warehouse when a pressurized ball of web hit the door control with precision accuracy from fifty feet away. The door slammed shut in front of them and they stopped short to avoid getting squashed.

In half a second, the Spider had leaped through the air to cover the distance between them, and was hanging by his feet from the ceiling, firing a series of web shots that stuck the fleeing felons to the ground by alternating limbs.

"Left hand green, right foot blue!" the Spider called out jovially, his webbing pinning the corresponding extremities to the floor.

"Don't forget, the winner gets to eat the last piece of birthday cake. Aww, what the hey? Cake for everybody!" He punctuated that comment by shooting webbing into the goons' mouths.

As Buddy and I started to collect our wits, the Spider lowered down on a webline to stare at us with those creepy eyes, upside down. I could barely see the outline of a man's face under the mask, but the voice made it sound like he was grinning maniacally.

"Don't forget, officers, your friendly neighborhood wall-crawler is available for all office Christmas parties, children's bouncy houses, and groovy teenage sockhops. You could call my secretary to make an appointment, but I don't have one. So, if you need me, please don't hesitate to scream."

Before I could ask him if that was a Mel Brooks reference, the Spider had skittered up the webline and disappeared into the shadows.