Peter Parker was crouched over the unmoving body of Ash Kennedy, a courier employed by a scientific research company OsCorp. Ash’s presence at ESZI, the Empire State Zoological Institute, was due to him delivering a package containing a developmental hazard suit to the Department of Entomology and Arachnology where Peter worked as an assistant to one of the foremost experts in the study of spiders, Doctor Alistair Smythe. Doctor Smythe was currently on vacation in Aruba. To be honest, Peter really, really wished that he was in Aruba, too. Because whilst he’d only known Ash for all of fifteen minutes, that was time enough for him to get bitten by a particular spider specimen recently discovered in Madagascar and then shipped to New York, whereupon it had somehow escaped from its case and – likely rather hacked off at having been displaced from its natural habitat – had attacked.

Fifteen minutes. Time enough also for the lives of Peter Parker and Ash Kennedy to be turned inside out. Of course, they had no idea that this was just the beginning…

“Ash! Ash!”

Ash groaned and rolled his head to one side. His eyes flickered open. His caramel skin was pale and beaded with sweat. The wound to his chest – inflicted by the spider biting through his leather jacket and deep into the skin beneath, indicating an incredible strength on the part of the arachnid – was livid and swollen. It was known that some spider bites, commonly those of the brown recluse, could result in a condition known as necrosis – the gradual decay of living cells in the area of the bite – but this toxin-induced decomposition usually happened over a period of days or weeks. Ash’s flesh was darkening at shockingly rapid pace. Just minutes before, Peter had been blithely quoting statistics regarding the surprisingly low mortality rates caused by spider envenomation. Now he had no choice but to accept a sickening truth.

Ash Kennedy was dying. And it was all Peter’s fault.

“Spider…” Ash croaked. “Where…?”

“Don’t worry about that, it’s gone,” Peter murmured – a complete fudge, in all honesty, as he had no idea where the spider had disappeared to in the minutes that had passed since attacking Ash. “Just hold on. I’m going to administer the antitoxin, okay?”

Ash tried to focus on the syringe Peter was holding in his hand. It should have been easy – it was the biggest needle he’d ever seen in his life. The trouble was, there was this warm, comforting darkness closing all about him like an enormous fluffy pillow, and all he felt like doing was sleeping…

“Ash? Dammit!”

Peter ducked his head in momentary despair, the syringe shaking in his grasp. But he didn’t hesitate for long. He had no choice; he’d already wasted enough time collecting the antitoxin from another lab. He placed the sharp tip of the needle against Ash’s skin, breathed deeply, and then pushed down with his thumb.

The Madagascan specimen had only been with the department for a few days, and intensive study of its venom had hardly begun. This was a base antitoxin, concocted by Doctor Smythe before his vacation for research purposes rather than correct usage; it was experimental, utterly untested. Peter knew that he was contravening numerous ethical and lawful tenets by his actions, and that Alistair would be livid – but what choice did he have? He was responsible for this situation. He was responsible for Ash’s life.

He removed the needle and discarded the syringe, then sat back and closed his eyes. In the distance he could hear the faint approach of sirens, an ambulance to take Ash to the hospital, although his chances of still being alive when he reached that destination were remote – almost as remote as Peter remaining employed once Doctor Smythe returned from Aruba to find everything shot to hell. His face crumpled, and he buried his head in his hands. If only he hadn’t… if only -

“Hey, Pete. This idea of yours about confronting your phobias? Well, I think it kinda needs some work…”

Peter opened one eye. Ash, who was now sitting up in front of him, smiled broadly and gave a little wave. His colour had already returned to normal and the swelling on his chest was beginning to diminish. Which, quite frankly, was impossible. Peter blinked.

“So,” Ash Kennedy declared. “what’s a guy gotta do around here to earn a beer?”

[ Now… ]

“Beer? Seriously, is that all you think about?”

Mac Carter snorted, then patted his overly developed belly. “Ah, hell no,” he said, adding a ripe belch for good measure. “Sometimes I think about pizza.”

Lindsay Shaw sighed and stared despondently out of the windshield at the red taillights that filled the road before her. Gridlock. Five miles in fifty minutes. If this had happened on yesterday’s run she would have been sitting next to Marcos, Greek and gorgeous and more than happy to chat about art and culture; tomorrow and it would have been Ritchie, not so gorgeous and happily married but with a wicked sense of humour that would have kept her in stitches. But no. It happened today, with Big Mac and his belly and his Fred Durst ass-fluff beard, and his seemingly one and only topic of conversation that revolved around that endless debate that so perplexed an entire nation: Bud or Coors?

“Listen,” Lindsay murmured. “You want to phone ahead again, tell them we’re still stuck? I mean, I know they’ll be checking the GPS every few minutes, but they’re bound to be antsy.”

Mac chuckled. “Ten million dollars worth of art? Damn right they’ll be antsy. Hell, if I was one of those Dutch suits cooling their heels at LaGuardia I’d be more than antsy, I’d be… uh… dammit, I got nothing. What’s another kinda bug besides an ant?”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. “Well, let’s see. There’s always - ”

Ka-tunk.

Mac and Lindsay swore, simultaneously. The object stuck to the outside of the windshield, on the passenger side – hard, metallic, black, the general size and shape of a Coke can – had appeared as if from nowhere. Then, suddenly – Ka-tunk. Ka-tunk, ka-tunk. Three more. And, in quick succession, another four, scattered across the glass.

“What the…?” Lindsay slammed the heel of her palm against the horn. She knew it was a futile gesture, but what else could she do? Ka-tunk, ka-tunk. The objects kept on appearing, although not from thin air as it had seemed at first – they were dropping from the sky, on a slight gradient, travelling at incredible speed. Then, abruptly, each of the objects – now numbering more than twenty – began to glow with a strange, bluish-green luminescence… and to vibrate.

“Oh, man,” Mac moaned. “Honey, I got a real bad feeling about this…”

Lindsay scowled. “Don’t sweat it. This is a Class-5 armoured vehicle with multi-layered ballistic-resistant glass and inner anti-fragmentation shield lining. Whatever the hell these things are, they’re not - ”

With total synchronicity, the objects unfurled their wings. Suddenly it was obvious what they were supposed to be – desperately ironic considering the conversation that had immediately preceded their arrival. They were bugs; cybernetic bugs, with cylindrical black bodies and bluish-green wings.

Beetles. Scarabs, to be precise. Cyber-scarabs.

And, as Mac Carter and Lindsay Shaw looked in mute amazement, the swarm executed their remote relay directive and detonated with an almighty roar…

[ Two weeks ago… ]

Thumpa-thumpa-thump.

Peter Parker awoke with a startled yelp, and for a moment was convinced that someone was setting off firecrackers in his apartment. Then, as he panicked and slid sideways off his sofa like a drunken penguin and landed on his face with a crunch, he realised: it was just someone hammering at his door. With a grunt and a bleary-eyed half-stare he clambered to his feet, tied the belt of his robe around his waist and padded barefoot across to gaze through the peephole. When he saw who was responsible for the hammering he grunted again, this time in surprise. Then, he opened the door.

“Ash? Man, what time is it? I mean, I just took a shower and sat down to watch a movie, and I must have fallen asleep, and, well, anyway… dammit, where the hell have you been? You were supposed to meet up with me when they checked you out of hospital, but you just disappeared. You didn’t show up at OsCorp, no-one at your apartment block has seen you for - ”

“We need to talk.”

Peter blinked. Standing out in the corridor, with his cornrows and black suede jacket damp from rain, Ash Kennedy didn’t look happy. He actually looked even less happy than two weeks previously when he’d been bitten by a spider the size of a small dog, and that was saying something.

“Okay. Uh… you want a soda? Beer? Coffee? How about - ”

“Peter, shut up. And come with me.”

“I thought you wanted to talk?”

“I do. We’re going to start off with me talking and you listening. But not here.”

“Where are we going?”

“Up on the roof.”

“Can I get dressed first?”

“No.”

“I’m not wearing anything under this robe.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Not even boxers?”

“Nothing.”

Ash pursed his lips. Peter raised an eyebrow.

“Uncomfortable moment?”

“Very.”

“Good. Serves you right.” Peter scowled. “Give me five minutes…”

[ Now… ]

Lindsay was in bad shape – concussion, whiplash, heat blisters on her face and hands, none of it life-threatening but all of it as painful as hell. Still, that was an improvement on Mac. He must have been leaning closer to the windshield when the cyber-scarabs had detonated, because most of the flesh had been seared from his skull, leaving behind a bloodied, semi-cauterised mess. It was the kind of horrific injury that was way beyond the capability of a plastic surgeon to repair. Probably a stroke of good fortune, then, that he was dead.

Whimpering, Lindsay stared dumbly at the molten glob that was the remains of the bullet-resistant glass. An anti-fragmentation shield lining hadn’t been particularly useful in protecting against a thermal discharge. She tried to move, but it hurt too much to even disengage her safety strap. It was then that she heard a muffled crump as something landed upon the roof of the armoured car – something far heavier than a metal bug. She gasped, and held her breath.

Then, when the creature in the black, blue and green shell scuttled down from the roof onto the scorched hood and slithered in through the hole in the windshield, Lindsay couldn’t help but choke on her scream…

“The combination lock to the rear doors of this vehicle requires a fifteen-digit pass-code,” the creature declared. “Considering that I have no wish to damage these wonderful works of arts you’re currently transporting by letting my volatile little pets loose on the rest of your vehicle, I would be inestimably grateful if you could share that code with me, yes?”

The voice was male but greatly distorted, rendered shrill with feedback and flecked with a chittering hum. It was a man, Lindsay realised, not a beast – but a man in an armoured bodysuit and helmet. The shell that encased his torso was fashioned from interlocking plates, replicating the chitinous appearance of certain insects, whilst the black helmet was dominated by a green faceplate that was crested with a stab of two jagged horns – antennae. The mask was otherwise featureless, save for a pair of opaque, golden half-spheres for eyes, again reminiscent of a bug.

When Lindsay showed no signs of responding, more through shock and fear than defiance, the armoured man reached out a hand – encased in a black gauntlet – and splayed his fingers. As Lindsay watched, those fingers suddenly began to elongate with telescopic extensions, swiftly travelling the short distance between them and latching onto her face with miniature suckers at each fingertip.

“I shall give you one chance and one chance only,” rasped that terrible voice. “My name is The Beetle. I am a very, very bad man. And if you don’t cooperate within five seconds I shall puncture your flesh with tiny needles laced with a virulent nerve-toxin that will ensure your subsequent death will be more agonising than anything you can imagine. And it will last for a long time. Now – the pass-code, yes?”

Lindsay closed her eyes, pale and trembling. And then she began to narrate a sequence of numbers.

[ Two weeks ago… ]

“Ash, look… I know it’s almost summer, but rain is rain at any time of year. I’m standing out here in the middle of the night in a t-shirt and jeans – although I guess that’s better than buck-nekkid, right? – and I’m going to get soaked to the skin and catch pneumonia. You said you wanted to talk, so - ”

“Something’s happened.”

Peter exhaled heavily, and leaned back against a wall. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “Yeah, I kinda got that impression. What’s going on, Ash? Just tell me.”

It was dark up here on the roof of the Chelsea tenement where Peter Parker rented his apartment, the moon low overhead but obscured by huge swathes of black storm clouds that swelled with the dimly reflected haze of the city. For a moment, Ash remained silent. Then, slowly, he eased off his shoes and socks and removed his jacket, and stood there barefoot in the driving rain in black slacks and a red sweater. Peter looked on, too unsettled to be amused.

“Telling doesn’t do this justice,” Ash said, quietly. “Best I show you instead.”

And with that, he jumped. Straight up. Not a hop, not the kind of vertical leap and hang you’d see in basketball, but a jump that carried him clear of Peter’s head and kept on going. Then, at a height of approximately fifteen feet above the roof, Ash suddenly twisted at the hips and flipped his legs backwards and over his head whilst spinning, executing a manner of gymnastic move that didn’t have a name because it was physically impossible for goodness sake. Ash’s body arced, then fell into a graceful swan dive, whereupon he abruptly flicked his hips to the side once more and performed a second set of twists that propelled him to the exterior wall of the air-con turret against which Peter was currently leaning. It was here that Ash came to rest. Ten feet up, directly above Peter’s head. Clinging to the wall simply with the palms of his hands and his bare toes.

The entire demonstration had lasted five seconds. Ash wasn’t even breathing heavily, and he was adhered to wet brick without the slightest hint of exertion. Peter’s jaw sagged.

“Gah.”

“I know.”

“Gah.”

“I know. But wait. There’s more.”

Ash sprang away from the wall and returned to solid ground, then sprinted – at what was, quite frankly, a quite unfeasible velocity as far as Peter was concerned – towards the edge of the roof. He didn’t slow down, or change direction. Instead, he jumped. Struck mute by what he was witnessing, Peter didn’t even have the sense of mind to yell as he stumbled forward, staring out over the perimeter railing and down into the microcosm of the city far below, expecting to see his friend plummeting… but no. As the other man had promised, there was something more.

Ash wasn’t falling. He wasn’t flying either, although for an instant Peter was convinced otherwise. Instead he was swinging, suspended on a nigh-invisible thread from the overhang of a neighbouring high-rise, his body sweeping majestically through the dead space between buildings. Then, without warning, he released his grip on his thread-cord… and instantly created another one, conjuring a lash of silver from his outstretched hand and projecting it back across the abyss, where it adhered to a wall some twenty metres from where Peter was standing with a gloopy snakk! Transferring his momentum to this second thread in a manner that fell somewhere between high elegance and spontaneous spasticity, Ash wheeled in midair and slung himself forward, then replicated the feat with a third cord, using this one to convey him back to his starting point, at Peter’s side.

Peter stared out at the night, dark save for a kaleidoscope of lit windows and the refracted neon far below. He was agog. He was also soaked through by the driving rain. So was Ash. Peter refused to turn around.

“What… was that?” he asked, softly. “What did you just do?”

“Enhanced agility and speed. Some kind of mutation in my muscles and tendons; improved elasticity and durability, meaning that I not only have the strength to perform all those somersaults, I’m not going to rupture ligaments in the process. The sticking to the walls thing? No idea. I was thinking intuitive molecular adhesion, but - ”

“You sound like a text book.”

“Yeah, well, not my usual style, I admit. But I’ve been reading a lot this past week. Library, the Internet…”

Peter turned now, his face pale. “And the swinging?”

Ash breathed deeply, then held up his hands. He pointed to the proximal row, the region beneath the heel of the palm where the wrist creased, specifically to a small aperture that Peter had to squint to detect. “It comes out of there,” Ash said, miserably. “Just takes a little concentration is all. I can determine how thick the ejection is, and how powerful it needs to be – gauging distance is coming pretty naturally. And - ”

“What comes out of there?”

Ash grimaced. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? How about you tell me?”

Peter blinked, then slowly let his head drop. “Oh, God…”

[ Now… ]

The cloud of cyber-scarabs numbered in excess of one hundred, perhaps even closer to twice that, but their swarming was perfectly synchronised – and orchestrated. As the grotesque figure of The Beetle emerged from the ruined cab of the armoured vehicle, dragging the trembling form of Lindsay Shaw behind him, his pets swept down from above in a veritable blanket that turned the sky black. The collective throb of their synthetic wings resounded like the pulse of a giant heart. The Beetle inclined his head, golden eyes gleaming. The pointed tips of his antennae hummed. At his silent command, his drones immediately surrounded the car and attached themselves to the metal chasse at regular intervals, in three parallel rings.

“Stand down! You there! Stand down!”

The Beetle turned in the direction of the cry and saw two police officers flanking his position, firearms at hand. The gridlock that had caused Mac and Lindsay such problems remained, with cars and vans crammed bumper to bumper across four lanes and on all sides, but now some members of the public were beginning to clamber out of their vehicles having noticed the drama unfolding in their midst. Some one hundred yards back along the street there was the telltale red-and-blue strobe of a squad car siren – but just the one. These two officers had picked their way through the traffic knowing that potential backup wouldn’t be arriving any time soon. Brave. But, ultimately, foolhardy.

“I’m afraid I must decline,” The Beetle chittered, flinging Lindsay to the ground. He then spread his arms – and, in turn, a set of green wings that had hitherto been folded flat against the back of his armoured shell now extended to a combined width of some eight feet in diameter. The officers were momentarily stunned, and that was all the time that The Beetle needed. In a flash his telescopic fingers lengthened, each tip no longer capped with tiny needles as had been the case when threatening Lindsay but now spitting with blue sparks of electricity. Discharge was imminent…

…but never came. Instead, in the following split second, a dark form appeared from nowhere and slammed into The Beetle’s back with a deafening ring of impact, propelling the armoured killer forward at great velocity into the rear of a stationary Buick that was snared in the gridlock directly ahead. The air was suddenly filled with splinters of jagged metal, causing Lindsay to scramble for cover and the two officers to recoil – but not before they’d glimpsed in full the identity of the mysterious arrival who had saved them from certain death.

“Pest control!” declared the man in the distinctive black-and-red costume now crouching upon the roof of the armoured car. “No job too big, no job too small. We’ll do roaches! Hornets! Termites! Scientologists! Any kind of critters you care to name! Just one question – anyone got any Raid?”

One of the officers shook his head in disbelief. “Another one? Who…?”

“The esteemed Sensational Spider-Man, esquire, at your service. Don’t let the bug motif fool you. I swear upon my creepy-crawly heart I’ve never seen this man before in my life, and contrary to vicious rumour we have certainly never double-dated.”

The officer raised his gun. Spider-Man sighed.

“Hey! Hey! I just saved your – aahhkkk!”

The masked man screamed as The Beetle’s elongated fingers curled about his ankle from behind and delivered a high-voltage burst of pain before dragging him down from the roof of the armoured car and slamming him bodily into the asphalt. Both officers were then stripped of their firearms by a swat of The Beetle’s other hand. Spider-Man gazed up from where he lay, his senses reeling.

“This… this isn’t the brightest plan… in the book, you know…” he groaned. “See the wall-to-wall traffic? How were you thinking of escaping with your loot…?”

The Beetle cocked his head. “How else, you interloping fool? Why do you think I gave my pets anti-gravity wings?”

The armoured man’s antennae hummed then, and his eyes gleamed – and, in response, the swarm of cyber-scarabs took flight, bearing between them the weight of their prize, the vehicle containing ten million dollars worth of stolen art!

Spider-Man clucked his tongue beneath his mask. “Ah, well. Ask a stupid question…”

[ Two weeks ago… ]

“Look, it’s just not possible, Ash. It - ”

“You’ve seen it with your own eyes, Pete. So, come on. We’re talking spider webs, aren’t we? I’m shooting spider webs from my wrists.”

Peter sighed, head in hands. “I need to run some tests, but… well, okay, seeing it first hand there are definite consistencies. Spider silk is one of the most fascinating organic materials in the natural world. It’s incredibly tough, able to resist significant pressure without tearing, with a tensile strength equivalent to a highly developed industrial nylon filament. It’s also remarkably ductile, meaning that a standard strand can stretch to over a third of its original length without sacrificing stability, hence the fact you can swing on it. And, of course, certain chemicals mean that the silk can either be smooth or sticky, which is why spiders can catch flies and aphids in their webs but don’t get stuck themselves. In theory, those same chemicals, secreted through the pores of the skin, could enable you to adhere to a vertical surface – such as a wall – without being dragged down by your own weight.”

Ash looked on wretchedly. Peter shrugged. “What?”

“I was hoping you were going to tell me it wasn’t possible.”

“I just did. You didn’t believe me.”

“I thought you were going to be more convincing.” Ash cursed under his breath and stared up into the night sky. The rain had finally abated, but there was every chance it would start again at a moment’s notice. “Dammit, Peter… how can this happen? How can a spider bite turn me in to this… this freak? And does it stop here? Am I going to grow extra arms? Eat flies?”

“Well, as I said, I can run tests - ”

“So I’m a lab rat now?”

“Oh, come on, Ash. What do you want me to say? You’re fine when you leave the hospital, but then vanish and turn up on my doorstep a week later having undergone an impossible physiological transformation. You blow my mind with this stuff and you want answers straight away? I can’t do it. This is unprecedented.”

“I know, I know, it’s just…” Ash shook his head forlornly. “Man. Maybe I should be glad I wasn’t bitten by a new species of squirrel or something, right? Okay, listen. Is tomorrow good for you? I could meet you at ESZI around ten, then…”

Ash trailed off as he glanced back over his shoulder and saw Peter convulsing. Literally doubled over and shaking. With laughter.

“Hello? What the hell’s so funny?”

“…squirrel…”

“What?”

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I just can’t help think what it would be like if you’d pitched up tonight and dragged me to the park to show me… heh… show me how you could all of a sudden climb trees and crack open nuts with your teeth…”

Peter howled and slapped his knees. Tears were streaming down his face. Ash just stared.

“You’re a sick man, Parker,” he murmured. “A sick, sick man.”

And then he smiled. He couldn’t help it. This was a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. But at least it seemed that he wasn’t going to have to get through it alone…

[ Now… ]

Spider-Man clucked his tongue beneath his mask. “Ah, well. Ask a stupid question…”

“And also the last question you’ll ever pose!” The Beetle sneered, stretching out his fingers once more – only for his enemy to suddenly flick back his right hand to expose a tiny opening, like the lip of a funnel, in the wrist of his red glove. Then, before The Beetle could react, a brief glut of some strange, silvery liquid ejected from the aperture, disseminating upon the air like a fine mist… and then instantly solidifying into a net!

Smothered, The Beetle staggered backwards, clawing at the peculiar mesh. “What is this?” his distorted voice whined. “Vexatious cretin! I’ll - ”

“Vexatious? Oh, I do declare! That’s, what… thirty points with a double word score? Never let it be said this city’s costumed criminals lack in the vocabulary stakes. But then, I don’t suppose you can fall back on the old ‘prattling insect’ chestnut, can you?”

Spider-Man sprang forward and tackled The Beetle about the midriff, lifting him into the air and then hurling him into the already-dented Buick a second time. On this occasion the driver of the car – a burly woman with tattooed forearms and a beehive hairdo – leaned out of the window and shook a meaty fist. “Hey, dumbass! Anything my insurance don’t cover is comin’ outta you, y’hear me?”

“Well, excuse me, Tinkerbell. Some guys just can’t help being vexatious, you know?”

Snarling, The Beetle suddenly reared up, tearing ferociously at the bothersome webbing with fingers now tipped with razor-edged blades. Spider-Man jumped at him feet-first, slamming the soles of his boots against his enemy’s faceplate, then twisted in mid-air, rebounded off the roof of the Buick, and sent The Beetle spinning with a haymaker to the side of the head. Emitting a distorted screech, The Beetle went skittering across the asphalt on his back, wings askew, arms and legs wriggling helplessly.

“Insurance! Insurance! Insur - ”

“Ah, shaddapayaface…” Spider-Man extended a hand and expelled a glob of webbing that wrapped about the Buick driver’s mouth like a kerchief, reducing her complaints to muffled noises of righteous anger. He then turned back towards The Beetle, only to discover that the armoured felon was now completely free of the web net and was advancing upon him at speed, telescopic fingers of one hand tipped with glowing sparks whilst the other was glinting with switchblades. Spider-Man yelped and back-flipped, leaping free of a burst of electrical discharge with a split-second to spare, then coiled at the waist and rolled clear of the blades stabbing down at his head.

“You realise this is like fighting Edward Scissorhands, right? Just not as Depp-licious. How many knick-knacks have you got in those Swiss army-fingers anyhow, Bugsy Malone?”

“Trust me, little spider, The Beetle is full of surprises – and each of them deadly!”

Spider-Man ducked beneath another attack, then swept out a fist – not in a punch, but a grab. His hand closed about one of his foe’s antennae horns, eliciting a squeal of indignation. “Surprises like this?” the webslinger asked, enclosing the struggling Beetle in a headlock. “See, these little beauties were all a-glow when you despatched your flying buddies to take wing. I’m guessing radio transmitters, right…?”

“No! Stop! You don’t - ”

Spider-Man clenched his fist – and, with astonishing strength, crushed the first antennae, quickly followed by the second. The Beetle shrieked. And then, from above, there came an ominous crack and fizz of short-circuiting wires…

Everyone – Spider-Man, The Beetle, Lindsay, the two police officers, the driver of the Buick swatting at her web gag, and a throng of gawping rubberneckers – now looked up to see the armoured car that had been carried high overhead by the cyber-scarabs, but which was now plummeting back to earth at a rate of knots.

“What goes up must come down,” the webslinger declared. “Heads up, Bugsy.”

“No! No! N - ”

The armoured vehicle impacted with an almighty crunch, shattering asphalt and kicking up a cloud of splintered debris that might have proved lethal if Spider-Man hadn’t protected everyone with a hastily erected web-shield. Well – almost everyone. The Beetle, flattened beneath the wreckage, wasn’t so fortunate. With a grunt, Spider-Man jammed his shoulder against the armoured car and flipped it over onto its side, revealing his enemy spread-eagled at the centre of the impact crater, surrounded by the remnants of dozens of squished cyber-scarabs.

The Beetle buzzed, pitifully, and his wings flickered, but otherwise he remained prone. Spider-Man arched an eyebrow beneath his mask.

“You know, from now on every time sometimes says they’re going to squash me like an insect, it’s going to be so difficult keeping a straight face…”

[ Now… ]

A slender hand, clad in a glove of exquisite cerise silk, reached forward. Fingertips brushed lightly along the long stem of a Boule de Neige, taking care not to snag upon a thorn. The air was humid and filled with a gentle music. Strauss, the Brennende Liebe. In the far wall an unobtrusive television screen played in silence, images that had become familiar in the past hour rising and falling in repeated loop. A pretty news reporter with a microphone, her cheeks flushed with recognition that this was her moment, her spotlight; a police officer, his expression still numb with wonder at what he’d seen that day; a procession of eye-witnesses, their banalities given unwarranted credence. And then, of course, the heart of the piece, two spools of opportunistic amateur footage shot from the perimeter of the scene on digital camera-phones.

Behind her mask – again, a delicate cerise silk, and featureless save for two eyeholes beneath a pair of burgundy-rimmed spectacles – the woman known as Rose Red smiled softly. She moved to a Bon Silène, its flower a deep fuschia compared to the milky white of the Boule de Neige, attending gently with the outside of her gloved forefinger. She watched the soundless action upon the screen, so perfectly magnificent set to the Strauss. She especially enjoyed the moment where the mysterious Spider-Man, so lithe and audacious in his black and red costume, lit from the scene in the wake of his triumph against his beastly rival as the hapless officers scrambled for their guns rather than display gratitude or admiration. As if an ordinary human could hope to apprehend such an extraordinary foe…

“I imagine that settles it, then?” rasped a voice that had been electronically distorted seemingly to render it as sinister as it could be. “I always knew his intervention at Reilly’s was never going to be a one-off experience. And here he is, announcing himself to the world.”

Rose Red turned. Her eyes, behind her spectacles and in the slits of her mask, were bright and fierce. Her slender body moved sensuously in a suit of cream linen, tailored to follow the delicate line of her high bosom and teardrop hips, and then the long, straight cut of her legs, down to a pair of cerise suede boots with a pointed toe and dagger heel. A single, ruby-red Danse de Feu was buttonholed in her left lapel. Across the room, a man in a dark green cowl and a copper faceplate fashioned in the ghastly style of the Jack O’Lantern from which he took his name inclined his head, awaiting command.

“Such an… intriguing development,” Rose Red whispered. “I think, perhaps, a formal introduction is in order, yes?”

She dipped a hand in the pocket of her jacket then, and produced a slimline cell. She dialled a number. When a voice answered, she smiled beneath her mask once more.

“Sergei,” she breathed. “Cancel your engagements, my sweet. I do believe I have a new hunt for you…”

What are the circumstances that lead to Ash donning the Spider-Man costume for the first time? All is finally revealed next issue! Plus, the debuts of not one but two sensational Ultimate villains! Don’t miss it!

Back when I was a kid I followed the adventures of two heroes above all others: Spider-Man and Batman. However, as great as these characters were, my enduring fascination was actually prompted by their rogues galleries more than the main protagonists themselves. Bats had Catwoman, The Joker, The Riddler, Poison Ivy and all the rest, the majority of them made popular not just through the comics but also the 60s tv series with Adam West. Spidey’s villains weren’t as universally recognisable, nowhere near, but I was enamoured – nay, obsessed – with them all the same. Growing up on UK reprints I adored the 70s bad guys such as The Jackal, The Tarantula, Hammerhead and Lightmaster before I began to appreciate the classics such as Doctor Octopus, The Scorpion and The Green Goblin, but one thing that really made an impression on me was the fact that Spider-Man (and Batman) would routinely face down a new rogue if not every issue then certainly every two or three, and in those pre-internet-spoiler days this meant that Christmas came every month in terms of surprises.

With this in mind, there are two core elements I want to bring to this series. Firstly I want to make sure that the villains I use are as colourful and as distinctive as those I remember; and, secondly, even though the main storyline will be ongoing I want to give each issue a fresh, self-contained, unwrap-the-present-and-see-what’s-inside feel. Spidey versus a different villain every month probably sounds very basic, and, well… yeah, compared to today’s comics with their regular multi-chapter epics, it probably is. But the immediacy of this model really appeals to me.

This issue’s bad guy is unashamedly 70s. The Beetle, bearing more resemblance to his early long-sticky-fingers incarnation when he tussled with Daredevil and Spider-Man on a regular basis – and now with a swarm of cyber-scarabs! – was an absolute blast to write. He’ll return sometime soon, whereupon I’ll explore his motivations and personality a little more than I had the chance to here, but one thing’s for sure: this version will not be pussying out and going straight like his real Marvel counterpart any time soon…

If you’d like to give feedback on this series, positive or critical, please don’t hesitate to drop a line to ameriades@hotmail.com

For those interested, a list of my fanfiction can be found at http://meriadesfiction.livejournal.com

Thanks for reading!

- Meriades Rai