Just another morning in the staff offices of New York’s best-selling tabloid, The Daily Bugle.

At the far end of the main newsroom, a welcome distance from the editorial suite where the most prominent raised voices usually congregated, a young woman sat at a desk that was so cramped she had no place to rest a coffee cup, let alone her elbows, and the corner of her monitor nudged her in-tray to a perpetual diagonal. The girl seemed out of place amidst the bustle, and not just because of her tender age in the company of all these gnarled old warhorses. Cool and demure, with shoulder-length, ash-blonde hair and delicate blue eyes, she was dressed – curiously, considering the warm summer weather – in a stiff ivory blouse with a high, lace collar, a charcoal jacket and pencil skirt, and flat shoes. She was pretty – not stop-in-the-street, jaw-dropping pretty, but the more subtle, find-yourself-absently-thinking-about-her-a-few-days-after-meeting-her pretty – but her conservative attire meant she was reminiscent of a governess or teacher some sixty years out of her time. She had been a staff reporter at The Bugle for six months and hadn’t been fired once yet, which meant that she was good; an odd duck, without question, but definitely good. No, more than that. She was, according to the murmurs of the old-timers, going to be terrific, not least because she had a nose for a story keener than the majority of those twice her age – her current project being a case in point.

The young woman’s monitor screen showed a white document page, blank save for a title and by-line, followed by a flashing cursor. The story was on the verge of being written; all the groundwork was done; there was just one last interview – the most important – to be conducted before it all came together. The girl slid open her desk drawer and collected her cell, Dictaphone, keys and purse, then gathered a lightweight lilac raincoat from the back of her chair. Even in summer she always carried a raincoat. Just in case. Bright sunshine and blue skies were all very well, but every silver lining had a cloud: she knew that better than most. Finally, she reached out towards the monitor.

On screen, the title of the piece read: How Spider-Man Killed My Father.

The by-line read: By Gwendolyn Stacy.

The cursor flashed, waiting, waiting. Then Gwen pressed the off switch and, without word or smile to any of her colleagues – odd duck, cold fish, she was secretly known by a number of epithets – she vacated the newsroom and headed out into the city.

[ Two Weeks Ago… ]

The waiting list for a table at the exclusive Palazzo d’Argento was nine months at best, and over twice that for special occasions. For some diners, however, this was a trifling obstacle to be surmounted with ease. No money had changed hands between patron and proprietor this summery Sunday morning, yet a slew of hasty cancellations and re-bookings on the part of management had resulted in a vista of deserted tables, save one; here sat a solitary fellow serenely perusing the morning papers over a breakfast of Tuscan ricotta frittata with maple sautéed bacon and blood orange juice. This was a man who rarely bartered with cold, hard cash. His currency was favours, and the goodwill that the Palazzo had earned that morning would usually have been worth its weight in gold.

Usually. But not today. Because today the benevolence of Silvio Francesco Manfredi had been trumped by the rather more insistent requirements of a third party…

Seated by an enormous panoramic window that gazed out upon the Manhattan skyline, Manfredi was sipping his juice when the door to the kitchens on the other side of the dining floor swung open. The subsequent advance of slow, heavy boot-steps spelled trouble. A moment before, Manfredi’s glacier blue eyes had been tired and his brow creased beneath a sweep of thinning silver hair, his fifty-eight years weighing heavily upon him; the next instant his expression had instinctively hardened, those eyes lucid and sharp as a rook’s beak.

He turned his head slowly, a faint smile upon his lips although anxiety coiled in his breast. A man in his business needed to be prepared for anything at all times. That morning he’d neglected that cardinal rule, dismissing his personal bodyguards to the Palazzo’s lower floor lobby for the sake of an hour’s privacy. A foolish mistake… but was it one that would cost him his life? His gaze came to rest on the man who had approached his table and who now stood just a few metres distant.

“It’s bad form to disturb a gentleman when he’s dining,” Manfredi said, softly. “Even for an old friend, yes? And despite everything that’s happened these past few months, we are still friends, aren’t we James…?”

The newcomer was a curious fellow. Towering well over six feet tall and broad across the shoulders, he cast an impressive figure in an indigo pinstripe suit and black shirt, with a burgundy string bowtie. The hues of his attire served to accentuate the pallor of the man’s face and hair, which were an identical, ghastly white; even his lips and eyebrows were colourless. An albino, with the blackest eyes where the pupils and irises were all but indistinguishable, like a shark. Strangest of all, however, was the shape of the man’s head; similar to a blacksmith’s anvil, his face was narrow above a square cut of chin but beneath an entirely flat crown, as if the top of his skull had been levelled at mid-brow to a horizontal plane. Which, in truth, was more or less what had happened.

Beneath a fine dusting of white hair this man’s flesh was stretched not over bone but over a wedge cap of solid iron that had been grafted onto the remains of his skull following an unsavoury incident six months past. James Thomas Lincoln’s head had been held down beneath the front right wheel of his own Cadillac whilst one of his attackers had slowly and sadistically stepped on the gas. The victim’s cranium had splintered like an eggshell. At least two shards of bone had penetrated his cerebellum before colleagues had discovered his plight and had slaughtered the six men torturing him in a hail of bullets. During those months of recovery in the hospital, the brain damage that James had suffered had manifested in a number of ways – none more odd, it had to be said, than an all-consuming obsession with the black-and-white gangster movies of his namesake James Cagney. This psychological fascination wasn’t inexplicable. After all, when Silvio Manfredi had sent his men to kill James Lincoln that night they’d ambushed him in the rear lot of an old retro movie theatre where their quarry had just watched a rerun of the classic gangster noir White Heat. And, of course, James himself was part of the modern day mob, newly employed by a woman known only as Rose Red who was freshly arrived in the city and looking to establish herself as some kind of underworld kingpin. This was why Manfredi, James’ previous employer whom he had spurned in favour of Rose, had felt the need to make an example of him in the first place.

Friends and enemies, an eternal cycle of blood. Rose Red had long since achieved her ambitions, with the majority of mob families rallying, perhaps sensibly, to her cause. Only Manfredi had refused to bow before his enemy, too proud to accept the inevitable. Now, presumably, he was going to pay the price for that. And wasn’t it just like Rose to send Manfredi’s ex-lieutenant to do the deed…?

“You made the Palazzo management an offer they couldn’t refuse, I take it,” Manfredi murmured, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “Not to mention my own men, else you wouldn’t even have made it as far as the elevator. Even the staunchest loyalty has a buyout clause, yes?” He sighed, his heart heavy. “You were like a son to me, once upon a time. But, as Leslie Poles Hartley said, the past is a foreign country. Has she sent you here to kill me, James?”

James Thomas Lincoln’s black eyes glittered, and when he smiled he revealed teeth that had been meticulously filed down to points. He’d been busy in the hospital, filling his recuperation time with all manners of interesting pastimes in-between watching old Cagney films over and over. And over and over. And over and over and -

“Not James, old-timer, not any more,” he whispered, his voice soft but quick and with a distinct, nasally affectation he hadn’t possessed before the previous winter. “Name’s Tombstone now, see? A guy’s gotta have a business name to be someone in this crummy burg…”

“Well, that certainly is one of our dear Rose’s little foibles,” Manfredi snorted, with unrestrained distaste. “Her army of colourful freaks, with their monikers and gaudy, Mardi Gras masks. You fit in well.”

James – Tombstone – inclined his head, his eyes shining. “Gotta message for you, pops. The boss says to tell you, youse had your chance, see? You should’a signed your interests over to her when she asked. Now you need a dose of persuasion.”

It should have been ridiculous, perhaps, this 1920s gangster-speak… but no. Manfredi hadn’t seen James since that night last winter but he’d heard things. Terrible things. Schizoid-crazy as he was, Tombstone had become Rose Red’s chief enforcer, with buckets of blood on his bone-white hands. The faux-Al Capone patter, the Cagney fixation, the Boris Karloff-shaped steel head, all of it was simply embellishment; it was the man beneath it all, the black-hearted butcher, whom one had to beware. But Manfredi hadn’t survived this long without possessing balls of solid rock. Provoked, his gaze hardened and he rose slowly from his chair… revealing the revolver in his hand.

“You think you can frighten me, you freak son of a bitch?” he hissed. “You think you can threaten me? Rose is a poor judge of character. I’m too old to fear death, James…”

Tombstone chuckled then, unperturbed by the gun pointed at his chest. “I ain’t here to kill you, pops,” he breathed. “Just deliverin’ a message, see. You know Rose, how she loves her little psychological games… how she loves to watch youse mooks all dance to her tune. Well, there’s a pretty little filly sittin’ on a memorial park bench not too far from here, soaking up the summer sun, thinkin’ ‘bout her future, see. College, boyfriends, vacations… trouble is, Miss Alicia Manfredi don’t know her poppa has gone an’ got himself a rep for - ”

Manfredi roared as he raised the gun and fired. Prepared, Tombstone ducked his head – and the bullet ricocheted off the flat of his iron skull with a sharp ring, dislodging a square inch of powder hair and scalp but otherwise causing no harm whatsoever. Before Manfredi could pull the trigger a second time Tombstone was on him, swatting the revolver away with one hand whilst grabbing the older man around the throat with the other.

“Don’t be a mook, pops,” the albino snarled, pressing his face close. “All I wanna do is rip out your lungs for what you done to me, see? For this thing you turned me into. But Rose, she wants to see youse run. Run like a rabbit. She wants everyone to see what happens when someone flips her the bird, capiche? That’s my message. You wanna save your little girl Alicia? Well, you got twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to get from here to that bench with the memorial plaque in her momma’s memory; twenty minutes before someone sticks a shiv between her ribs and bursts her heart. Understand? Tick tock, pops. Time’s a wastin’…”

Manfredi’s complexion was now as ashen as that of his tormentor, but his eyes remained as cold as flint. “I’ll kill you for this, James,” he whispered. “You hear? I’ll kill both of you, you and Rose.”

Tombstone simply stared down at the older man as he released his grip. “Before this,” he rasped, tapping his skull, “I had a wife and kid. Remember? Now I got nothin’. Nothin’ but hate. Don’t you get it, pops? You already killed me. An’ this? This is just the beginnin’ of payback. Now put in your teeth an’ crank up your pacemaker, Gepetto… it’s time to start runnin’.”

“I think I’m in love…”

Peter Parker grinned and curled an arm about his companion’s shoulder. “You old romantic. And here was I thinking we were just friends.”

Ash Kennedy shrugged himself free with a grimace. “Not with you, geek boy. Her.” He pointed to a pretty young brunette sitting on a bench at the bottom of the shallow hill where he and Peter, who had been previously been wandering aimlessly along a path through the park, were now loitering behind a chest-high stone wall like a pair of chads. “Seriously,” Ash murmured, “don’t you think she’s beautiful? I think she’s beautiful. Do you think I should go give her my phone number?”

Peter looked aggrieved. “Geek boy?”

“You wear a lab coat and study spiders for hours on end. Spiders. And, let’s not forget, I’ve seen your racy redhead of a girlfriend and know that she’s hot, too, yet still you spend more time with arachnids than her. So, yeah. You’re the Great Geek King.”

“Am I being browbeaten here?”

“Yes, you are.” Ash leaned forward, arms folded on top of the wall and chin resting upon his crossed wrists. His expression was glum. “Actually, she’s the next level beyond beautiful. You know what the next level is?”

“Angelic?”

“Unobtainable. As in, she must have a boyfriend already. Or she’s married. Do you think she’s married? I bet she’s married. God, I’m depressed...”

It was a pleasant summer morning as summer mornings in Manhattan went; warm and hazy, but with enough breeze and cloud cover to keep away what otherwise would have been an unbearable mugginess. A couple of months from now the leaves on the trees throughout Central Park would begin to turn, triggering lazy trails of amber and scarlet fire that would swiftly build to a gorgeous conflagration, but Fall was still some way distant. For now everything was a luxurious green, green upon green upon green, a natural barrier against the traffic and the dirt and the endless monoliths of glass and concrete beyond. Ash loved Manhattan, he truly did, but there was something here in the park – especially on a gorgeous, lazy Sunday – that touched his spirit. Of course, standing around mooning over a pretty girl he’d only just laid eyes on was a pre-requisite on just such a day. At least it was for your standard goofy, awkward, twenty-year-old male…

Ash sighed. “You ever read those Charlie Brown cartoons?”

“Peanuts.”

“What?”

“Peanuts,” said Peter. “The strip, it was called Peanuts. Charlie Brown was the character. Some people call the whole thing Charlie Brown, or Snoopy, which is even worse, but it was Peanuts.”

Ash inclined his head to give his friend a withering stare. “Great. Geek. King.”

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“In Peanuts, did Charlie Brown ever get together with the little red-haired girl? I mean, I know it was pretty much the point that he didn’t, but… I just wondered, in, like, the last cartoon that was ever drawn, did it finally happen? Just because, you know, it would have made life feel… worthwhile?”

“I don’t know. I never read it.”

“The final strip?”

“Any of it.”

Ash looked on, dumbfounded. “You never read Peanuts?”

“No, I just know it’s called Peanuts, not Charlie Brown.”

“What kind of man has never read Peanuts?”

Peter shrugged. The sun was getting warmer. Overhead a flock of starlings took flight and wheeled momentarily then quickly returned to the trees, as if they honestly couldn’t be bothered to do whatever it was they’d originally intended. Beyond the wall, at the base of the incline, the young woman who was the object of Ash’s attentions was engrossed in a paperback novel. She was, as Ash had observed, decidedly attractive, with cropped black hair and a sweet face beneath a pair of mirrored shades, and a slender figure in a sleeveless cream blouse and short, summer-sky-blue skirt that displayed an eye-catching set of tanned, tapered legs. She reminded Ash, obscurely, of a swan, but he didn’t mention this to Peter because he didn’t want to have to the kind of exasperating conversation that would inevitably follow, about feathers and long necks and taking everything far too literally. It would have spoiled the moment.

“I know why you’re doing this, you know,” Peter said. “All this chatter about girls and cartoons.”

“Because I like talking about girls and cartoons?”

“Because you don’t want to talk about the suit.”

Aaaaand… moment spoiled. Ash groaned and buried his face in his arms as Peter hefted a black case onto the wall between them. “You’re right,” he snapped. “I don’t want to talk about the suit. Man, I can’t believe you brought that here…”

“Don’t worry, no-one will notice. It’s tame compared to some of the outfits people wear jogging.”

“You understand this is theft, right? I mean, this is some expensive hula; you said so yourself, it must have cost ESZI a fortune to commission this from OsCorp and - ”

“ESZI didn’t foot the bill, Doctor Smythe did.”

“So you’re stealing from him then.”

“Borrowing.”

“And when he eventually gets back from Aruba?”

“He doesn’t even know OsCorp followed through with this project yet, let alone delivered it. Listen, Ash – Alistair’s rich. Stinking rich. Old money, more than he can keep track of. He’s not like the rest of the scientists at ESZI, working off grants; he funds himself. The only reason he doesn’t set up privately is because his presence at the Institute gathers more revenue from sponsors than you could ever dream of and he’s a narcissistic glory junkie.”

Ash scowled. “So it’s okay to steal from rich narcissists?”

“Borrow. We’re borrowing. Give it a month or so, try it out, and then we’ll tell him. Trust me, his fascination with your condition will totally outweigh his reservations that we’ve been using his equipment without explicit permission.” Peter looked on earnestly. “Come on, Ash, think about it. You’ve got special powers. You’re a real spider-man – a wall-crawler, a webslinger, a daredevil. And you’re enjoying it, you can’t deny that. I mean, now the initial shock’s fading, these past few nights you’ve been out on my roof practising back-flips and webs-spins like a kid turning drainpipes on his first skateboard.”

“Half-pipes.”

“Whatever. You are loving this – but if you go swinging back and forth across the city in jeans and t-shirts you’ll be captured on CCTV or by some photographer from The Daily Bugle and your face will plastered all over YouTube within 24 hours. Then there’ll be government and military dogging your every step, journalists, the CIA…”

Ash snorted. “And wearing a red and black bodysuit and mask won’t attract attention?”

“Not to you – not to Ash Kennedy. See, I’ve thought really hard about this. Ash will remain untouched, your secret identity. All the world will see is Spider-Man, including any of the OsCorp techs who worked on the design, and if any of them contact the Institute I’ll give them the runaround until something’s been worked out with Alistair. All in all this’ll buy you enough time to make your mark as a hero, and then we can - ”

“Oh, wait, wait, wait. As a what?”

Peter breathed deeply. “Ash, do you watch the news? Read the papers? This city… I don’t know what’s really going on or why it’s happening here, but this past year we’ve started to sink. The crime rate was always high but now there’s more than just muggers and carjackers out there. Every week there’s a report of some new lunatic hitting the streets, dressing up like something from Hallowe’en and terrorising innocent people. There was another one last night, some nutjob with a pumpkin mask riding around on a jet-glider…”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Ash said, quietly. “Started a fire in Harlem then killed two members of the rescue crew when they tried to pull a guy out of the building, right? The footage was hazy, but… man, that freak was just too much. The police didn’t stand a chance against him.”

“No. But if you’d been there – as Spider-Man – I’m betting you could have done something.”

Ash stared down at the black case. It remained closed, but he knew what lay inside. The suit. He remembered the day he’d delivered it to ESZI all too clearly – especially the way it had ended. “I’m sorry, Pete,” he sighed. “I know we’d all like to think of ourselves as heroes – protecting a woman on a train being harassed by drunks, or stepping in the way of some crackhead stealing a bag on the street – but putting on a costume like something out of a movie and going up against homicidal crazies? It’s not me, Pete. I am sorry, but it’s not. I don’t want to end up dead in an alleyway.”

“The suit’s tough. You’re tougher. You could do this.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You don’t think you were given these powers for a reason?”

Ash grimaced. “This conversation’s over,” he declared. “There’s not going to be a Spider-Man, or a Slinger, or a Daredevil, or whatever kooky name you can come up with. Peter Parker may be hero material, but not Ash Kennedy, okay? I guess that spider bit the wrong guy.”

Peter stared down at the black case, then glanced away. The sun was still shining, the leaves on the trees were still a glorious green and the girl on the bench was still pretty, but suddenly that Sunday morning in Central Park wasn’t quite so wonderful. “Yeah,” Pete muttered. “Yeah, I guess it did. Listen… yeah, I should be going. Stuff to do.”

Ash rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, don’t…”

His voice trailed off as he suddenly stiffened, his head twitching left and right. The bench on which the pretty brunette was sitting was located at the edge of a wide path. There was an athletic blonde in vest and shorts approaching from one direction, jogging with an iPod tagged to a belt at her microscopic waist. From the other direction there came two men, both strolling casually in shirts and slacks. Both wore shades. Both walked with their hands resting on their hips. No conversation passed between them. The blonde didn’t register in Ash’s perception, but the men…? Oh yeah.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asked, frowning as he followed Ash’s gaze.

“Those men.”

“What about them?”

“Dangerous.”

“What? Why?” Peter looked flummoxed. Ash’s expression was so intent all the colour had drained from his cheeks.

“I… can’t explain it. It… listen, when I’m jumping or swinging on a web, it’s like I’m being guided by something, some weird sense of intuition, okay? How to move, when to move… and I’m getting that same tingling now in the back of my head, watching these two guys. It’s something to do with the powers.”

“Telepathy?”

“I just said, I don’t know,” Ash snapped. “It’s the girl on the bench – they’re heading for her.”

“You can’t be sure that - ”

“Yes, I can.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

Ash blinked. “What…?”

“You’re going to let the bad guys hurt the pretty girl?”

“Oh, enough. I can’t just - ”

“Are you going to let them hurt her?”

Ash scowled. Peter arched an eyebrow and put the case back on the wall. Ash’s scowl deepened.

“No. No, I am not putting on a bug-suit and I am not calling myself Spider-Man, and - ”

“Just take the mask then,” Peter barked. “But hurry up, will you? If you’re right then you’ve only got about five seconds to get down there. Tick tock, Ash – time to choose…”

An accomplished English Literature student at Empire State University, Alicia Manfredi was no fool – far from it – but even at twenty years of age she remained suitably oblivious to her father’s affairs, always referred to cryptically as ‘the family business’ and no more. Her brothers, Gianfranco and Joseph – four and two years her senior respectively – had both long been groomed as future key figures in Silvio Manfredi’s underworld dynasty, but sexual equality had rarely encroached upon mob territory, even now in the twenty-first century. As far as the male members of the Manfredi clan were concerned it would forever be in Alicia’s best interests to be kept separate from their chosen path. This had been the solitary wish of Caterina Manfredi – Alicia’s mother – on her deathbed twelve years previously, and Silvio had never seen any reason to break his promise.

And, when all was said and done, such subterfuge had always been surprisingly simple. Alicia hadn’t even needed a bodyguard since she was fourteen; after all, who would ever have dared threaten a member of the notoriously ruthless Manfredi family…?

As critical events unfolded about her without her knowledge that summer’s morning, something – some inexplicable intuition – caused Alicia to glance up from her novel and set her eyes on the silver plaque affixed to the back of the bench where she sat. The engraving read: In memoriam, Caterina. Beautiful wife and mother. You shall always be in our hearts. Alicia smiled, sadly. With every passing year her private recollections of her mother faded to sepia, and no photograph or snippet of video reel could replace them. However, coming here simply to sit for an hour in the sunlight, she felt –

Alicia’s head shot up, a screech of car brakes followed by a raised cry of alarm jolting her from her reverie. Along the path some hundred metres distant – in a section of the park where vehicles weren’t supposed to be allowed – a black limousine with tinted windows was careering forward in her general direction, scattering bystanders and pigeons alike in all directions. She gasped. She didn’t need to check the plates to recognise her father’s car. But what was he…?

“Your daddy’s ten seconds too late, little girl,” a gruff voice snapped at Alicia’s ear, just as a hand came down heavily on her shoulder. “Rose Red sends her regards.”

Alicia tried to turn, panicking, but suddenly there were two men – one moving in front of her whilst another leaned over the back of the bench behind her, both acting with swift, orchestrated precision. The man behind her was the one with the knife, reaching down to insert the blade between her ribs through the cream cotton of her blouse and on into her heart. The original plan had been to stab her and then walk on whilst his companion obscured the act from the gaze of anyone watching; by the time anyone had realised what had happened they’d already be clear of the scene; but Silvio Manfredi’s Herculean efforts to reach his daughter’s side in the frame of opportunity allotted by Tombstone altered their scheme. Now the two men would have to separate and run… but that wouldn’t affect the central tragedy of the moment.

Alicia felt the point of the knife beneath the swell of her breast. Her eyes shot wide. Her heart spasmed. She saw a flash of a sadistic grin, and felt the blade begin to press…

…but then, without warning, there was a flurry of movement and a flash of reflected light, followed instantly by a grunt and the whack of some solid impact – and both the knife and the man holding it seemed to vanish in a blink. The second man, the one in front of the bench, uttered a brief curse and whirled where he stood. In the next heartbeat he was staggering backwards, his head snapped back by some kind of physical blow that happened too quickly to pinpoint. Alicia shrieked, frozen to the spot. And then, a moment later, the black limo was screeching to a halt alongside her and the driver’s door was flung open.

“Alicia! Alicia! Come with me! Now!”

Alicia saw her father lean out of the limo – usually chauffeur-driven, but not in this instance – and beckon towards her with both hands. His face was flushed, his jaw trembling. He appeared to be on the verge of a heart attack. Alicia jumped up from the bench, her book forgotten… but then, hesitating, she glanced back over her shoulder. Behind her were the two men who’d attempted to accost her, but they weren’t in any position to be giving chase. Their attentions were instead occupied by a third man – a slender fellow in jeans and t-shirt and, incongruously, a red facemask with reflective eye lenses – who was treating the enemies to a wave of punches and kicks that were so fast that they simply couldn’t counter them. The first man crashed to the ground, arms and legs akimbo, then groaned and slumped; the second was unconscious before he even fell, following a sweeping boot to the jaw. Despite her fright, Alicia couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. So she had a protector? But who -

“Alicia!” Silvio Manfredi roared. “There’ll be others, Rose will have posted back-up! If we don’t - ”

But it was too late. Fifty metres away a man had already emerged from the copse of trees where he’d been stationed, an AK-47 assault rifle cradled in his arms. It was insane, Manfredi knew – unlike gang violence in other parts of the city, mob warfare was traditionally conducted in private and certainly never in the heart of Manhattan – but Rose Red’s emergence on the scene had changed all that. To her, this was all some kind of macabre theatre, and under her regime the city had threatened to become a war zone; here, today, that threat was about to spill over into reality. And nothing would ever be the same again.

The distant gunman stalked forward…

…Silvio reached for Alicia…

…and then Ash Kennedy, disguised in his red mask, whipped out a hand and released a cord of silvery webbing from his wrist, snagging Alicia at the waist and plucking her backwards off her feet just as he himself sprang forward. Collecting the girl in his arms he rebounded off the hood of the limousine, carrying her clear of Manfredi’s clutches.

“Sorry, grandpa!” he yelled back over his shoulder. “No kidnappings on my watch!”

“What?” Manfredi squawked. “You idiot! I’m not… I…”

But then the old crime boss faltered as he saw the gunman aim his rifle, and his shoulders slumped. “Yes,” he whispered, his words nowhere near loud enough for anyone but himself to hear. “Take her, then. Keep her safe, whoever you are… because I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Alicia, so very sorry. I love you. I’ll always - ”

The gunman pulled the trigger.

Ash whirled in midair, hearing the stark retort of automatic fire just as he was about to deposit Alicia behind the wall at the top of the hill close to where an ashen-faced Peter Parker was standing, watching the terrible events of that morning in utter incomprehension. Ash had seen the gunman just as he’d rescued the girl, but he hadn’t… that is, he didn’t… he hadn’t known what –

Silvio Manfredi’s body danced and jerked like a crazy puppet beneath the hail of bullets, then crashed back against the limo, limp and already blood-soaked.

“Daddy!” Alicia screamed. “Daddy, no! Daddy, no!”

Ash’s legs wobbled. “Daddy? But he… I saw him…”

“You monster! Monster!” Alicia whirled and began to pummel the masked man with her fists. “You left him to die! You killed my father!”

Ash stumbled backwards. His spider-sense stabbed at him, rippling along his spine, and he looked up to see the gunman hightailing it back into the trees on the other side of the path. He knew he had to give chase – a murderer was loose and he couldn’t get away with what he’d just done. But there was also this girl, no longer hitting him now but slumped against him, clinging to him in desperation, repeating the same words over and over and over.

“You killed my father. You monster, you killed my father.”

Ash turned and stared at Peter, his eyes brimming with tears beneath his mask. Peter looked on, stunned, the black case with the rest of the spider-suit inside clasped against his chest. And then, in the distance, there came the wail of sirens…

[ Now… ]

Delicate fingers grasped an ornate doorknocker, rapped, and then waited. A minute later the door opened, and a frail, dark-haired girl appeared beyond. Alicia Manfredi was pale, sooty rings about her eyes. She was, as the cliché went, a shadow of her former self; in the two weeks since her father’s murder in the middle of Central Park, on that summery, Sunday morning, she’d barely slept. She was also drinking. One of her brothers might have told her to stop of they hadn’t been so wrapped in their own grief.

“You’re the reporter from The Bugle,” Alicia stated, flatly, her eyes barely focussed.

The elegant blonde in the high-collared blouse standing at threshold to the Manfredi family home nodded. “My name’s Gwendolyn Stacy,” she said. “You can call me Gwen.”

Alicia Manfredi’s expression barely flickered. She simply took a sip from the bourbon tumbler in her hand and leaned against the doorframe. Gwen breathed deeply.

“I’m sorry, Miss Manfredi,” she murmured. “If you’d prefer to do this another time, then - ”

“Another time? As in, a better time?” Alicia smiled sourly. “Believe me, Miss Stacy, there’ll never be a better time. Yesterday I learned – from a story in your newspaper, as a matter of interest – that the masked vigilante who killed my father has since gained a rather high profile; that he’s taken to calling himself Spider-Man, and that some members of the public are hailing him as a hero. I can’t have that. I need them to know the truth. And, through you, it’s my intention to offer a one-million-dollar reward for anyone who knows this murderer’s true identity to come forward and expose him.”

Gwen pursed her lips. “Miss Manfredi, I feel it’s only fair to advise you… I consider myself a credible and impartial journalist. Whilst The Bugle has adopted an anti-vigilante stance since this individual’s emergence it’s my intention to gain as reliable a picture of the truth surrounding him as I can. It’s already common knowledge that he was instrumental in apprehending the gunman who shot your father on the morning in question; I’m interested in your version of events to flesh out that main story, not simply to sensationalize. If that doesn’t - ”

“Do you love your father, Gwen Stacy?”

Gwen blinked, and for a moment said nothing. Then, her composure unruffled, she murmured, “My father is also dead, Miss Manfredi. He was a policeman who was shot in the line of duty twelve years ago. And, yes, I loved him very much.”

“My… mother died twelve years ago.”

Alicia Manfredi bowed her head, and then, slowly, opened her front door wider and stepped back. “Please,” she whispered. “Come in. I appreciate your honesty – and I’ll let you judge the event of my father’s death for yourself. Just realise one thing: in my heart I know that this Spider-Man was responsible for my father’s death. And I won’t rest until there’s justice. Do you understand?”

There was a rumbling overhead, the distant trembled of thunder. Gwen Stacy glanced up at a sky that was gradually darkening, a bruise of storm clouds sweeping in from the Atlantic, and fancied that she could feel the first spots of rain. She ran her fingers absently over her lilac raincoat. Every silver lining.

“Yes,” she said, softly. “I understand.”

In flashback, how will Ash Kennedy react to the disastrous consequences of his unofficial debut in the mask of Spider-Man… and, in the present, who is the next deadly adversary who lies in wait?

My initial exposure to Spider-Man was when I was about five years old and was two-fold; firstly, a small, pocket-book reprint containing Amazing Fantasy # 15 and the first six issues of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man, and secondly, a clutch of black-and-white UK weeklies reproducing more modern tales from the Gerry Conway / Gil Kane era. Therefore, by a strange quirk of fate, my introduction to the character incorporated the two most important Spidey stories ever published: the origin and The Night Gwen Stacy Died. It was years before I understood the significance of the latter (quite literally in the case of the subsequent Jackal and his clones storyline, which confused the hell out of me until I was about 21), but I think it’s safe to say the seeds of an attachment to both Spider-Man and Gwen were sown in those first readings.

Of course, Gwen Stacy was killed in 1973 (a whole year before even I was born!) and the majority of comics fans today only know her as a footnote; to most, Mary Jane Watson is The One. She’s got the ring on her finger, the movies, the manga spin-offs, the whole caboodle. Gwen was Peter’s sometime-girlfriend for, what, five years? Mary Jane’s been his wife for two decades. No contest, right? Well, here’s the thing. Spider-Man: Blue, the retrospective mini series by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, is one of my two favourite Spidey stories ever because it tapped into what is, for me, an enduring truth. Gwen Stacy stole the show in that series because she is a more important character in the Spider-Man mythology than Mary Jane could ever be. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

So, for all those readers who’ve gritted their teeth through this Ultimate series so far, here’s another reason to hate me. Not only have I reduced Peter Parker to a supporting character, I’ve relegated Mary Jane ever further – as in, she’s not happening. At all. The ‘racy redhead’ is all you’re getting. This series is going to belong to Ash Kennedy, Peter Parker… and Gwen Stacy.

Oh, and one last item. If you recall, issue # 2’s ‘Next Issue’ teaser promised the debut of two Ultimate villains this time around. One of those was obviously Tombstone. The other? Well, I guess we’re all going to have to wait and see, aren’t we…?

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