In The Web Of Gotham

That Day

It was my 6th birthday. The family was celebrating with a front yard cookout that anyone in the neighborhood was allowed to stop in and attend. I was trying to hit the pinata with a baseball bat, it was superman themed and my uncle had painted the bat green and glowing  to look like it was made of Kryptonite. Then...I just had a bad feeling. Then a headache, the headache was radiating from the right side of my head and was moving slowly towards the back of my head. My ears started ringing, and wouldn't stop.

After I had broken the pinata open, I dropped the bat and just had this feeling to just....hide. Run and hide, somewhere you can't be seen. Like the only way I could get the ringing and the headache to stop was to hide somewhere where I couldn't be seen. I ducked behind a gazebo, curling into a ball and keeping my head down. The ringing got louder, and I couldn't hear anything but that ringing for only a few minutes. Eventually, the pain made me black out.

Which is when your family was gunned down in the front yard. A drive by courtesy of the Mob.

Yeah, I only knew what actually happened once the police told me after I woke up. I got put into an orphanage. Gotham Municipal Orphanage.

Selina said you ran from the Elliot Foundation.

I got thrown out of Gotham Municipal and brought over to the Elliot Foundation. The caretakers at GMO were corrupt, taking deals on the downlow from members of the Falcone, Marone and even the Cobblepot operations. Dismissive at best, horrendous at worst. Some of the orphans would leave, but then they'd show up on the news.

When it was my turn, I didn't go....I don't think I went quietly. I went into a place I didn't know, and when Commissioner Gordon brought me back out. He was holding me back from the caretaker. Who had looked like she had Robin maim her. The other kids said I did it to her, but I remember her pulling my arm. Me pulling back and then nothing until Gordon brought me back to the station.

I got transferred to the Elliot Foundation. By then, I started learning things on my own. How to unbend a bobby pin into a lockpick, I managed to get into places that I wasn't allowed to be. I learned how to dredge up secrets, and started learning how to hack passwords. They were rudimentary, sure. Although I guess it's fair enough that a charity orphanage doesn't have much high security. They don't expect a child to get through their walls. When I was 8, I deleted my records from the Elliot Foundation and slipped out the door without anyone noticing. Selina was 13 when she found me.

She took me in, we became a little catburglar duo. That was actually how we learned I had superpowers. When I was 13, someone caught us swiping some cash out of a personal safe. Selina and I had to make a break for the rooftops. Selina already had the Catwoman thing going, so she had her whip and she was agile as can be. I was able to keep up with her, but this time...I had slipped.
.
How did you get back up the roof? Did Selina catch you?

No, the first power I discovered was the ability to stick to and climb up walls. I pulled myself back up, but I saw Selina prepared to run back and grab me. We got away, and we were thoroughly surprised.

Tell me about when Spider-Man became an idea.

That Day...I had turned 16. Selina helped me forge enough documentation to get me into the GCPD, and I was only a few months into being a go-for boy. I got into the filing cabinets and found the files about my family's murder. I found the information about the potential leads, and how the GCPD said they exhausted everything. Obviously, go-for boy Peter Parker couldn't be snooping around potential mob territory. So I needed a mask.

A few hours of sewing, that's all it took to take some old clothes and make them into the first Spider-Man costume. When that mask came on...it felt like I was gone. It felt liberating, like an out of body experience. Like something in me became galvanized and steadfast. The first outings were....from what I understand...messy. A lot of people ended up in the hospital, bad people sure but people nonetheless.

Batsy said that the mooks had broken bones and bruised spines. Like a luchador from hell had steamrolled them. Even your footage from earlier last night had a lot of moves you'd see the Macho Man throwing out.

I watched a lot of wrestling when I was with my family. Even more when Selina  and I actually got our first apartment. By that point, the Catwoman operation became more complicated. More focused, she wanted me to dredge up the details before she went in. She wanted me to become her version of Batman's Oracle. So I started helping her, I got smarter and it got easier for me to do both jobs. Then I started grabbing some stuff for myself on the side, to try and make Spider-Man harder to trace. Harder to find, harder to be predicted.

The police started trying to catch Spidey, and they didn't want to drag Batman into it since they thought that they could handle it. They didn't realize another superhero was here.

Right, but every time I put that mask on it kept feeling like I was taking a step back and I would only catch vague instances of what I did. I would remember ideas, but get better pictures of the actions I did from the police reports.

Where did your name come from? Spider-Man, it's such a distinct name. It's like Batman, but you know...spiders. Tell me about that.

It was a few weeks before my birthday. My father had brought me to his job. He used to be a scientist for a biotech startup. It was a Gotham branch of Oscorp, a company who's mainly based in Central City. He was showing me their research of super spiders. I don't remember what they were doing for the super spiders, it's been so long. I just remember that one apparently bit me, and I was sick for 2 weeks. When I got better....I just felt better. Nothing felt off until the day of my birthday. Even then, I didn't think their deaths had anything to do with the spider bite until a year later. Then when I got the whole costumed vigilante idea, people were calling me the "Spider" and then Spider-Man just kinda...stuck.

There we go. Stop. I think I figured out what's happening to you. You've been bottling up a lot since that day, you just never realized it.

That Day....it always hurts when I try and remember that day...