Peter Parker (Earth-61610)

"'Yeah. The world's a cesspit. Nobody knows that better than I do--like two-thirds of what I do is learning about all the corruption and complacency that dominates society. The other third is me putting people in the hospital. It's terrible. But we don't get to write the world off as unsalvageable, we don't have the luxury of, of giving up. I have a responsibility. I have to try and fix it. And knowing that...feeling it in my bones and my soul, feeling all the weight that comes with it...that might give me the power to keep trying.'"Scientist, photojournalist, and full-time vigilante, Peter Parker is better known as Spider-Man within his homeworld of Earth-61610. An orphaned child, Peter was raised by his Uncle Ben and Aunt May in Queens, New York and gained spider-like abilities at the age of fifteen. Following his uncle's death, he became aware of a brewing gang war and began to fight crime in an attempt to delay it, slowly growing from a conceited and temperamental child to a headstrong and compassionate hero. Though often a loner, Spider-Man has become a cornerstone of Earth-61610's superhero community, and through his travels through the multiverse has become allied with countless alternate spider-heroes. Due to the frequency of Peter Parkers encountered throughout the multiverse, Peter-61610 is nicknamed Specs outside his own dimension.

Early Life
Peter Benjamin Parker was born on October 14, 1994, to Richard and Mary Parker (née Fitzpatrick), both scientists of some minor renown. Richard was a biologist dedicated to improving cures for cancer; Mary was a chemical engineer who focused on material sciences and polymer research. In the earliest years of Peter's life he was frequently left in the care of Richard's elder brother, Ben, and his wife May. This arrangement became permanent when, in 1999, Richard and Mary were killed in a plane crash overseas. May and Ben became Peter's full-time legal guardians and raised him as their own, moving him into the spare bedroom in their small Forest Hills apartment. In his adulthood, Peter would mention that his only memory of his birth parents was their departure.

May and Ben, though loving surrogate parents, were not financially comfortable. Ben Parker was an electrician; when Stark Industries established the HexArc in the eastern seaboard, the nuclear plant Ben worked at went out of business, and he was forced to seek work in an underpaid position in the HexArc. May, on the other hand, was a graphic designer who worked from home. Unprotected industrial work in her youth had aggravated her childhood asthma, mutating it into a cardiorespiratory condition that limited her physical ability and required routine medication. Though the two were usually able to make ends meet through their combined income, May's medication and the gradual gentrification of the neighborhood they lived in ensured that they remained below the poverty line.

Peter began to show signs of brilliance from an early age, becoming a favorite among his teachers and preferring the company of books to other students. Between this, his obvious poverty, and his Jewish identity, Peter was a common target of bullying and ostracism in elementary and middle school, and spent those years largely friendless. This isolation and mistreatment, combined with the Parkers' money troubles, instilled young Peter with a callous attitude and a burning rage, which he would struggle to control for his entire life.

Becoming a Vigilante
In January 2009, his freshman year at Midtown High School, Peter won a ticket to the first (and last) OsCorp Expo, at which he met Gwendolyn Stacy for the first time. But in the midst of a discussion on genetic engineering, the lecturing scientist was urgently called away to attend to laboratory work; Peter, curious, followed them as far as he could. It was while watching them enter a secure lab that he felt a sudden pain on his hand and discovered a fresh bite mark--a bite that, he would learn later, came from an experimental spider grown via the radioactive Oz virus, which had escaped containment due to a server crash. Over the course of the day, his health would steadily worsen until, upon arriving home, he skipped dinner and passed out in his bedroom.

Peter's sleep that night was restless and interspersed with moments of lucidity, during which he experienced horrific pain through his entire body. When he awoke, it was to find his perception of the world significantly altered, his muscles far stronger and faster than he could cope with, and his hands and feet uncontrollably adhering to everything they touched. Over the course of the day he would gradually come to control his newfound mutations, but he would only understand what they were after discovering the Oz-carrying spider, which had died after biting him and whose corpse was still on his person. He snuck out that night, experimenting with his powers on rooftops and in alleyways, until he made his way to Empire State University and broke into their biology lab to examine his own genetic code. His tests confirmed his suspicions that his genome had been fundamentally altered, but more significantly revealed that his mutations had slowed, if not outright stopped. He would not continue to mutate into something bestial, but had already, in essence, become a human spider.

He spent the next several days continuing to experiment with these powers, learning to control his new strength and speed and becoming something of an adrenaline junkie. It was during these outings that he learned of a fight club in an upper district of Queens. Buying a balaclava to conceal his face, Peter began to spend his nights there, fighting anyone he could and enjoying the thrill of violence. After the first night of this, arrogant from his first victory and more callous than ever before, Peter witnessed a bodega being robbed and deliberately refused to stop the fleeing thief.

A week of rooftop jaunts, evenings at the fight club, and days pretending to care about school went by quickly for Peter. By this time, Ben and May had realized that something was badly amiss with their nephew, and after a tense confrontation Ben elected to pick Peter up from his "project" that night. But when he finished his routine at the fight club and arrived at the parking lot he had told Ben to wait at, it was to find the car missing, paramedics and police on scene, and his uncle dead of a gunshot wound. Witnesses explained to a hysterical Peter that Ben had been the victim of a carjacking gone wrong; eavesdropping on the police radio, Peter learned the killer's approximate location and took to the rooftops to seek revenge. Chasing the police sirens to a condemned Brooklyn apartment, he apprehended Ben's murderer and nearly beat the man to death out of rage--only to discover that he was the same thief who Peter had allowed to escape a week before. Peter fled the scene in horror, leaving the man to the police.

Ben's death left the Parkers utterly destitute. Peter began to search for a part-time job, but his age, his lack of experience, and the Great Recession (in full swing at the time) continually hindered his efforts. Overwhelmed with mingled grief, guilt, and frustration, he nearly dropped out of school to seek work, only Aunt May's vehement protests stopping him.

This was about when he learned of the ambitions of the Big Man, a masked crime lord bent on uniting independent gangs of New York against the so-called Kingpin of Crime. When Peter learned that Ben's murderer had been released on bail, he donned his mask and furiously searched for those responsible until he found himself confronting the Big Man, who had been hoping for exactly this reaction. The crime lord offered Peter a lucrative position within his organization, but Peter realized that accepting would make him exactly like the man who'd killed Ben; despite temptation, he refused, and immediately had to fight his way out of the building as the Big Man ordered his murder. Still, he realized after the encounter that the Big Man's stated ambitions would inevitably result in a mob war. With guilt, rage, and desperation all threatening to drown him, he decided to get involved, attacking both sides of the conflict--partially to make amends for his earlier inaction, and partially just to vent his horrific emotional state.

His earliest exploits as a vigilante had wildly varying results, as his carelessness and inexperience frequently endangered more civilians than it protected. On multiple occasions his reckless interference into a crime or confrontation got people killed, an occurrence which horrified Peter and built upon his guilt even further. But his efforts were enough of a cause of concern to the Kingpin that a supervillain was created to kill him: the Scorpion, who ambushed Peter one night and came close to beating him to death. It was only the instability of the Scorpion's mutations and his rapidly declining attention span which saved Peter's life. Barely avoiding capture by the police, Peter managed to limp his way home before he passed out.

As he recovered over the next few days, he saw continuous news of the Scorpion's rampages and found himself reevaluating his motives for vigilantism. The events that he had witnessed and taken part in up to now had given him harsh lessons in empathy; he found that he couldn't simply stand by and allow the villain to harm people anymore. Cautiously deciding to continue his efforts, Peter began to develop defensive weapons to gain an edge over the Scorpion in their inevitable rematch--a homemade polymer of remarkable tensile strength and a pair of crude, wrist-mounted machines to fire it. Using this first pair of "web-shooters," Peter intercepted Scorpion in the middle of breaking into OsCorp Tower and, after a long battle, managed to both defeat the villain and protect nearby civilians. He also stole a few files on OsCorp's genetic engineering projects as he left.

By this time his exploits had been noticed by many news outlets, and the Manhattan-based network Daily Bugle Communications began to advertise rewards for bringing in photos of the vigilante. As the Parkers' financial struggles came to a head and eviction loomed, Peter began attempting to take pictures of his own battles for the money. Consequently, when he discovered the operations of career criminal Adrian Toomes, he made an effort to sensationalize his battle and defeat of the sexagenarian--only to be dropped into the East River from a mile up for his trouble, as Toomes utilized his winged, electromagnetic flight suit to get rid of the pest. Still, the photos that he managed to take of the humiliating defeat were popular enough with the Bugle to be bought and used in their story of the event. As the news network's front page nicknamed the supervillain the Vulture, Peter set to work tracking him down. Toomes barely managed to escape their next confrontation; with the help of a homemade device to nullify the harness' magnetic field, Peter successfully apprehended the Vulture in their third fight, in the process rescuing the occupants of two helicopters that Toomes had destroyed. As he sold the photos of these events, Peter managed to secure an internship position with the Bugle and ensured that he and May would, however barely, be able to afford their necessities.

From "spider man" to Spider-Man
Even as all this had been happening, Peter had been growing increasingly friendly with Gwen Stacy. The two attended different schools, but following the OsCorp Expo (and at the subtle prompting of her father), Gwen had made sure to keep in touch with Peter, even briefly visiting him after Ben's funeral. She had introduced him to her best friend, Harry Osborn, the son of OsCorp's founder, and the three had spent several afternoons working on homework together in a cafe called the Coffee Bean--but Peter's increasing focus on vigilantism and his desperation to get a job made the development of this friendship rocky, as both Harry and Gwen had begun to grow frustrated with Peter's unreliability.

His life at home and school, too, had changed. One of his childhood bullies, Flash Thompson, had attempted to extend an olive branch immediately after Ben's death, but Peter had been furious about the perceived pity and rejected the offer outright, reigniting the longstanding enmity between the two boys. And Aunt May had noticed her nephew's increasingly late hours, confronting him repeatedly and demanding to know the origin of his ever-present bruises and scrapes. As their neighbor's niece had moved into the apartment building recently, May made attempts to introduce Peter to her, but the asocial and exhausted boy continued to make excuses to avoid this. Between May's desperate prying into his secrets, the (far from one-sided) harassment he received at school, Gwen and Harry's irritation towards him, and Peter's own enduring grief, he turned to his rooftop jaunts more and more as a form of escapism, diving into the role of the web-slinging vigilante who had begun to be nicknamed "the spider man."

He was given a harsh reality-check when the supervillain known as the Shocker robbed a bank, and Peter arrived only to find himself walking into a trap. Under Kingpin's orders, the Shocker worked with a Russian mobster piloting a stolen rhinoceros-themed mech to beat the vigilante senseless, in retaliation for his defeat of the Scorpion several weeks before. The spider man was soundly defeated and left for dead; it was only Shocker's realization that his target was a child, and his subsequent hesitance to finish the job, that saved Peter. But when Peter managed to make it home he learned that his own beating had been a distraction: while he had been getting his ass kicked, the Kingpin had ordered his underlings to destroy a hideout used by the Big Man's major gang. Despite all of Peter's efforts--or perhaps partially because of them--the mob war had begun.

Peter resolved to give up his vigilante habits after this, believing (not unjustifiably) that he had done more harm than good. But as he recovered from his defeat over the next few days, he found himself introduced to the neighbor's niece entirely by accident, and Mary Jane Watson took a liking to him instantly. Unbeknownst to Peter, Emjay (as she preferred to be called) had already deduced that her neighbor was the spider man, and as he began to spend more time with Gwen and Harry she invited herself along. Her presence was the catalyst the three of them needed; between her extroverted energy and Peter's renewed commitment to his newfound social life, the four teenagers rapidly coalesced into a tight-knit group of friends.

All was not well in the other aspects of Peter's life, however. Without his vigilante activity he had difficulty getting decent photos for the Bugle, which steadily drained the Parker's finances and was a clear irritation to J. Jonah Jameson, the publisher. May had spent several nights in the hospital as her chronic illness flared up, straining their wallets even further, and Peter found himself distracted in school as he worried about her--this was the first time this had happened since Ben's death. And every day Peter witnessed news of this supervillain rampage or that violent shoot-out as the gang war raged throughout the city, and every day he grew more uncomfortable doing nothing to help civilians caught in the crossfire. Gradually he admitted to himself that he needed to act, just as he should have the night he had let Ben's killer go. Sewing together his first prototype costume, Peter once more reentered the fray. But he did so more carefully than he had previously, confronting the Shocker and Rhino separately and with a plan in mind. After defeating them both, Peter moved on to trying to undercut the power bases of both the Kingpin and the Big Man. This was when he met and began to develop what would become a longstanding alliance with the so-called Devil of Hell's Kitchen (not yet known as Daredevil); though at this point in their respective careers they frequently irritated each other, Murdock was impressed enough with Peter's talent and resolve that he agreed to teach the young vigilante the basics of boxing and krav maga.

At some point during this time Peter began to call himself Spider-Man. A combination of factors led him to transform the label he had been given into an official codename, ranging from Jameson's insistence that the vigilante needed a name to the fondness Peter had developed for it, and so when a child he had rescued asked who he was he jumped on the chance to present himself as the superhero he was attempting to be. For several months Spider-Man tried to alleviate the violence of the gang war, sometimes working with Daredevil but usually on his own. Through his efforts he saved dozens of lives, apprehended many low-ranking mobsters on both sides of the fight, and found the police to be an unhelpful nuisance at best and actively corrupt at worst. But, as he took pictures of his adventures for the Bugle, he gradually realized that the efforts of the reporters there to detail all the facts of these encounters was a far more valuable resource than the police could ever have been. He began to involve himself more closely in the business of journalism.

The Powder Keg Ignites
During the months between March and May Peter managed to find something of a rhythm. He would call his immediate supervisor at the Bugle after school, spend an hour or more at the Coffee Bean with Gwen, Harry, and Emjay, and sneak out of his room during the night to work as Spider-Man. Weekends he would spend at the Daily Bugle, learning all he could from the journalists and photographers formally employed there and arguing with J. Jonah Jameson; it was during this time that Spencer Smythe approached the publisher and received the endorsement for his first robot designed to combat the vigilante. Overall, Peter began to find himself outright enjoying his life as Spider-Man--barring the occasional supervillain he needed to fight, or violence between gangs to intervene in--and allowed himself to believe that the hardest parts of the job were behind him.

This illusion was shattered by the emergence of Doctor Octopus. Spider-Man's first encounter with the scientist involved a bank robbery in broad daylight; he needed to leave school in the middle of class to attend to this, and the resultant chase across Manhattan forced Peter to miss multiple appointments with the Bugle and his friends. Eventually, Ock endangered civilians, forcing Spider-Man to save them rather than continue the chase. What few pictures he managed to take of the encounter were substandard; the Bugle refused to accept them, and his friends were furious at him for standing them up again. Disappointed, he vowed to track down Doc Ock--yet when he finally succeeded two nights later, he was beaten into unconsciousness, thrown off a building, and failed to prevent the abduction of Anastasia Hardy.

Feeling himself a failure, and with his friends angrier with him than ever, Peter took a step away from the superhero business as he licked his wounds for a few days. During this time, he met Johnny Storm, aka the Human Torch, who had arranged a visit to the high schools of New York to appeal to his fans. Peter, jealous of the Torch's good publicity, refused to attend the assembly, but when Storm's powers were hijacked by the supervillain Pyro Peter suited up as Spider-Man to rescue him. Afterwards the two teenage superheroes spoke in private for the first time; though they butted heads, some of the Torch's advice resonated with Peter, and he returned to his mission to stop Doctor Octopus.

He found him by tracking shipments of scientific equipment throughout New York. Confronting Octavius in the latter's makeshift laboratory, Spider-Man managed to tear off a tentacle, and this time was able to defeat the man with a simple punch to the jaw. Though Anastasia Hardy was alive and could be rescued, Peter found the remains of two other victims who Octavius had abducted: these corpses had been dissected and lobotomized, and Otto had integrated pieces of their brains into the "Octobots" he had been prototyping. During the fight, Otto had briefly mentioned that OsCorp was taking an interest in Spider-Man; between this and what he had seen Peter came home in a horrified stupor. The following night he snuck into OsCorp's biology labs and found extensive records of his own activity. Though OsCorp apparently had yet to learn Spider-Man's true identity, it was clear that they were attempting to recreate his powers. Peter followed the head of the project home for more information.

Said project head was a certain Dr. Curtis Connors, who proved far more helpful than Peter had expected: in fact, he had been intentionally dragging his feet once it had become clear to him that his superiors had ulterior motives for assigning the lab this task. Through several nights of conversations, Peter learned about the Oz virus that had been in his spider bite, and the years of research and failed prototypes leading up to it. The data behind the spider's creation had been lost in the same server crash which had allowed the spider's escape in the first place. Peter, who by now had come to suspect OsCorp of ties to the Kingpin, learned from Connors which portions of the lab to sabotage to hinder the project without impacting more benign research.

Between his repeated conversations with Connors, his work at the Daily Bugle, his attempt to make up to his friends, and a mystery over several weeks surrounding a shape-shifting "Sandman," Peter was so busy that he utterly failed to notice May's deteriorating health until she collapsed in their apartment. The stress of the last months had worsened her condition considerably; she was required again to spend several weeks in Queens County Hospital and prescribed a series of steroids to manage the increased symptoms. Unfortunately, by pure coincidence, it was this very hospital which was attacked by Doctor Octopus, whose near-immediate escape from custody was covered up by SHIELD in an attempt to save face, and who had since gone on to organize the escape of five other villains. Together with Vulture, Electro, Sandman, Shocker, and Rhino, Ock planned to destabilize New York City in what became known as the first Sinister Six incident. As the Avengers and SHIELD were mobilized within the city, chaos reigned, infrastructure collapsed, and Spider-Man was caught between a dozen simultaneous crises.

Peter nearly worked himself to the bone as he battled Rhino, Vulture, and Electro simultaneously. This battle was a disaster, completely leveling a city block and killing a dozen people, and as Peter evacuated the wreckage after the fight he found that a stray blast from Electro had fused the Rhino mech to the body of the pilot, Olesya Sytsevich. It was during this aftermath that Peter was confronted by SHIELD for the first time; director Nick Fury implied knowledge of Spider-Man's identity and attempted to strongarm the young hero into service. Outraged, Peter suplexed Fury and escaped the scene. But many of the agent's arguments had struck closer to home than Peter had liked, and so he found himself conflicted as he attempted to track down the rest of the Sinister Six. Distraction and exhaustion compromised his performance and nearly allowed the Sandman to kill him; sandblasted and losing dangerous amounts of blood, Spider-Man was forced to flee this battle to survive. What little sleep he got that night was filled with nightmares. He awoke the next morning to even worse news: that SHIELD, trying to outmaneuver Ock, had halted all shipments into New York--including the shipment carrying Aunt May's medication. Desperate, Peter made his way to New Jersey, hoping to steal the medication, but Otto had had the same idea and sent the Shocker there. Spider-Man just barely managed to defeat Schultz, but lost the medication as the Sandman collected the entire shipment. Despite SHIELD's attempt at interference, Peter followed Sandman to Ock's hideout, an abandoned subway station beneath the East River. There he fought the two villains like a man possessed, and the battle destroyed key structural supports for the station. At last the hideout threatened to collapse, Otto and Sandman were forced to flee, and Peter found himself pinned beneath a mountain of debris as the station began to flood.

Desperate to save Aunt May, Peter pushed his body beyond its limits to lift the rubble off of himself and managed to recover the medicines that the Sandman had stolen. The station flooded entirely as he made his escape; despite his inability to swim, Peter survived this through sheer will, managing to escape to the surface and deliver the medications to the appropriate hospitals. As the two remaining villains were apprehended by SHIELD and May began to recover, Peter took a few days off to spend time with his friends.

However, once he got back to work, he immediately found himself trying to track down Connors, who had mutated into a giant humanoid lizard. A conversation with Curt's wife, Dr. Martha Connors, gave Spider-Man a partial understanding of what had happened--Connors, under immense pressure from his superiors, had tested a reptile-based strain of the Oz virus on himself--and he broke into OsCorp again in a bid to manufacture an antidote. But as had been the case with Gargan, no such antidote was possible; after much research and study, and even with the help of Martha and what few OsCorp employees he could trust, the attempt to save Connors essentially unraveled his chromosomes, killing him. Heartbroken by this failure, Peter returned his focus to the mob war and began to avoid both OsCorp and the remaining Connors family.

Hunter and Goblin
And so he spent most of the summer after his high school freshman year attempting to learn more about both the Big Man and the Kingpin. This consisted mostly of nightly investigations and several days a week at the Daily Bugle, and in this time Peter learned a remarkable amount about both the nature of organized crime and the process of journalism. But as Aunt May was released from the hospital, she insisted that Peter spend as much time as possible with Gwen, Harry, and Emjay, and so the four teenagers began to see each other almost daily. While visiting Harry's home for the first time, Peter was introduced to Norman Osborn, who was impressed by the boy's ingenuity; but Peter, who had come to distrust OsCorp anyway, was alarmed by the way his spider-sense tingled in Norman's presence and so remained wary of the man.

Sometime mid-July Spider-Man began to hear of rumors connecting the Big Man to a mysterious supervillain known as the Green Goblin. He pursued these rumors for weeks, connecting the villain to a series of thefts and bombings throughout the city--but he only managed to first encounter the Goblin in late August, in an aerial battle that Spider-Man was forced to abandon in order to defuse a bomb. So began what would become one of the defining conflicts of Peter's life.

As Peter's sophomore year in high school began, the superhuman bounty hunter Sergei Kravinov arrived in New York with the stated intent of capturing Spider-Man. For several days Peter managed to avoid the hunter, focusing on an investigation of the Kingpin's legitimate businesses, but eventually the hunter confronted and attacked Spider-Man. Peter barely escaped with his life, with one arm sprained and a stab wound in his lower stomach. His difficulty performing first aid with only one working arm forced him to seek help from Aunt May. Though she acquiesced, she understandably demanded to know how he had been injured; Peter's hasty lies and his refusal to be upfront about the truth prompted yet another argument, something that had grown increasingly common in the Parker household since Ben's death. May and Peter concluded the night furious with each other, and Peter slipped out as Spider-Man the next morning to avoid her.

His investigations revealed that Kravinov had been hired by Wilson Fisk through a proxy, and this information proved an invaluable part of the case that Spider-Man had been helping Daredevil to build against the crime lord. But as Peter worked with his fellow vigilante to finish the job of exposing Fisk, Kravinov managed to track him down, and Spider-Man lured the hunter away to give Daredevil time to escape. On live television, Spider-Man and Kravinov beat each other senseless, wounding each other horrifically until, at last, Peter triumphed. He managed to escape the scene, limp home, and patch up his injuries before he lost consciousness...whereupon Aunt May discovered him in this state, with the remains of his costume on the floor.

The conversation the next day was deeply, deeply uncomfortable. The truth came out entirely, as Peter explained not only that he had been Spider-Man for the past eight months, but exactly why, finally confessing his part in Ben's death. May, of course, was horrified by all her nephew had put himself through behind her back, and by the guilt and grief he had been carrying every step of the way. Though she was outraged by Peter's violent pastime and how much he had lied about it, she couldn't help but take some pride in his growing dedication to helping the helpless. Over the next several days, the case against the Kingpin was made public and Fisk was forced to flee the country to avoid arrest; May followed the details of the story closely, astonished by what Peter had helped to do. Compromises were made, curfews were established, and May signed Peter up for several classes in first aid and taekwondo. Peter continued the role of Spider-Man, now with May's tentative approval, and he began to focus all his efforts on the Big Man.

With Fisk out of the picture, the Big Man tried to expand his criminal empire across New York, with the Green Goblin acting as his primary defense against superheroes. But, as Spider-Man battled the Goblin above the city streets, Peter Parker utilized the skills he had learned from the Daily Bugle to investigate organized crime more quietly. Through photojournalism and anonymous tips, Peter managed to get half a dozen of the Big Man's key enforcers arrested, as well as shut down many of his sources of income. But the crime lord himself remained evasive, and the Goblin continued to escape capture through the use of backup plans and hostage-taking.

Peter spent every available second of his spare time with Gwen, Harry, and Emjay. Though they were concerned by their friend's obvious exhaustion, the three were pleased to have him, and May got into the habit of hosting the group in the Parker apartment in the afternoons. It was during these hangouts that Peter realized that he was bisexual, having developed crushes on all three of his friends without noticing. He kept in the closet about this for a while, only divulging to May, who was supportive.

The Big Man's true identity came out almost by accident. During a gang bust Peter managed to photograph a piece of evidence that linked the crime lord to a business in Brooklyn, which he monitored for days before tipping off the police. Though the Big Man escaped capture once again, publicly released evidence made it clear to the entire Daily Bugle staff that he was in fact one of their own--a reporter named Frederick Foswell, who had disguised his build and voice when acting as the gangster, and who was in the room when this revelation was made. Foswell attempted to escape by taking Peter hostage, but Peter outmaneuvered him by shoving him down the stairs...defeating him once and for all not as Spider-Man, but as Peter Parker. This victory was slightly deflated when Foswell was murdered by the Green Goblin shortly after being arrested.

The Goblin, who had of course been planning this all along, immediately began moving to take over what remained of the Big Man's mob alliance. Spider-Man had been a bane on organized crime for months at this point, and so the Goblin decided to engage in a public attack on the vigilante, both to win the respect of his future underlings and to get rid of the pest once and for all. In mid-October (coincidentally only a few days after Peter's 16th birthday), the Goblin bombed the Roosevelt Island Tramway and held a cable car hostage over the East River until Spider-Man's arrival. When the Goblin dropped the tram, Spider-Man rushed to save it, ending up dangling beneath the Queensboro Bridge with a broken arm and helpless against the Goblin's attack. By the time it was over, the cable car had plunged into the river, killing all onboard, and only a passing garbage barge saved Peter from drowning alongside it. The ordeal, which became known as the Cable Car Incident, left Peter so shaken that he nearly quit his vigilantism altogether. Its trauma would haunt him for the rest of his life.

War on Goblin
For several weeks after this disaster Peter was a husk of himself. Though Gwen, Harry, and Emjay were disturbed by this change, they got little time to think about it, as the Cable Car Incident had been only the beginning of the Green Goblin's reign of terror across New York. Bombing after bombing rocked the city, gangs under the Goblin's leadership threatened to seize control of entire districts, and it was rage as much as guilt that drove Peter back into his vigilantism. After some rudimentary training in disaster relief, Spider-Man exploded back into action, attacking multiple mob hideouts and hospitalizing everyone inside in an attempt to draw out the Goblin. This plan worked, and the hero and villain savagely battled above the city streets all throughout November and December. While the Goblin focused on Spider-Man, Peter's surreptitious investigation resulted in the arrests of nearly all remaining underbosses. It wasn't long before the Goblin had come to see Spider-Man as his single most significant obstacle.

At the same time, Peter and his friends had started to notice an enormous decline in Harry's mental health, as his father (neglectful and strict even at the best of times) had become outright verbally abusive. Harry spent most of Christmas break alternating between Gwen's and Peter's homes, trying to avoid Norman's presence, but with Peter spending so much time as Spider-Man he struggled to be as present as Harry required. Looking back, an older Peter would regard this as one of the greatest mistakes of his childhood. Indeed, for several months it created a rift between himself and Harry, which Peter was surprised to find himself deeply bothered by. In late January, as the Green Goblin was forced to lay low for a while and recuperate his losses, Peter attempted to repair his strained friendship with Harry, and (despite being attacked by the first ever Spider-Slayer robot) more or less succeeded. Even so, he struggled to contain his jealousy--toward both parties--when Harry and Emjay began to date.

For a little while Peter had the luxury of worrying about such things. He struggled with his social life, attempted to diversify the photography jobs given to him by the Bugle, tried to plan for Aunt May's birthday, and uncovered the operations of Tombstone in Brooklyn. But it was not to last: when the Green Goblin began to openly operate again, he began by attacking the Bugle offices and questioning Jameson for the identity of Spider-Man's photographer. Though Jameson refused to give Peter up to the Goblin, once the Goblin had been chased away by Spider-Man he fired the intern--in the hopes of protecting both the Bugle and Peter himself from future attacks. Peter failed to appreciate the gesture, far too focused on the desperate financial situation this put him and May in. The stress this brought upon him combined with that from the news that Doctor Octopus had escaped Avengers custody: it was now, at sixteen years old, that Peter both developed his first stress ulcer and began to discover grey strands in his hair. Spider-Man had become such a source of pressure to him that Peter began to seek out excuses to avoid spending his nights as a vigilante.

Harry and Emjay were obnoxiously sweet to each other as a couple, so Peter drifted towards Gwen instead during this period of shirking responsibility. The time spent between the two resulted in an unexpected romance blossoming between them, which Peter enthusiastically threw himself into. But the pair of couples engaged in frequent double dates. One of these dates, however, was interrupted by Norman Osborn's hired security, who escorted Harry to safety in the wake of an attack on Norman by a so-called Robot Master. Angered by the threat against Harry's safety, Peter investigated the issue as Spider-Man, but what he learned put him directly back into the conflict he had been trying to avoid. The Robot Master was actually Mendel Stromm, the co-founder of OsCorp, who sought revenge against Norman after allegedly having been framed for embezzlement. Hoping to discover the legitimacy of this claim, Spider-Man instead found evidence linking Norman Osborn to the Green Goblin. Peter struggled with this knowledge, feeling validated that his wariness of Osborn had been justified but worried about Harry's proximity to the matter. But he got very little time to muse on what to do, for when Emjay discovered that Harry had developed a heroin addiction she broke up with him, and in attempting to escape his heartbreak Harry accidentally overdosed.

When Peter visited Harry at the hospital in early April, he found himself confronted by Norman, who demanded that the teen stay away from his son. The argument that this launched was fierce and livid, neither Peter nor Norman willing to back down from their possessiveness towards Harry, and in their anger both parties ended up providing the other with all the information they needed. Norman wasn't simply connected to the Goblin: he was the Goblin. And what was worse, the industrialist had realized that Peter Parker was Spider-Man. These revelations paralyzed Peter for a few hours, knowing what needed to be done but terrified of indirectly hurting Harry, but Norman had no such hesitation. The Green Goblin kidnapped Gwen Stacy in broad daylight, instructing Peter via her phone to meet him on the roof of OsCorp Tower. When he arrived as Spider-Man it was to find Gwen drugged and the Goblin issuing an ultimatum that Peter turn himself in to the company for dissection. Naturally Peter refused. In the ensuing battle, Gwen was thrown from the top of the skyscraper, and in his attempt to save her Peter instead fatally broke her neck. Norman escaped the scene, only for Peter to track him down within the span of hours; grief-stricken and almost insane with rage, Spider-Man nearly beat the Goblin to death before, attempting to strike Peter from behind, Norman accidentally impaled himself on his glider. As the supervillain apparently died, Peter took steps to conceal as much evidence as possible linking Norman to the Green Goblin's actions, hoping to spare Harry from the sins of his father. This decision, though well-intentioned, would have disastrous consequences in years to come.

Aftermath
Peter was able to get his job back at the Bugle as soon as the news of the Goblin's death became public. But Gwen's death was a severe trauma to practically everyone who had known her. Harry, fresh out of the hospital, had to cope with the loss of his best friend and his father. Emjay was something of a hedonist at this point in her life, and so attempted to put distance between herself and all this grief. And Gwen's father, police captain George Stacy, furiously sought vengeance against Spider-Man, seeing as he was the only survivor of that night. With Harry's grief and rage eating at him, Emjay's behavior frustrating him beyond words, and the NYPD gunning for him more than ever, Peter's trauma and guilt compounded on itself and drove him to the edge of a nervous breakdown. Things were made even worse when, despite Peter's efforts, a team of hackers deduced that Osborn had been the Goblin and began a series of assassination attempts on Harry--perhaps seeking a sort of consolation prize.

Spider-Man attacked these would-be child murderers violently, both furious at their attempt on Harry's life and eager for the catharsis of violence, but his brutality only worsened Peter's mental state. Emjay, wanting nothing to do with the messy and violent boys surrounding her, ran away and left New York with no intention of returning. At roughly the same point, the world-renowned superhero Mysterio appeared in New York, claiming to be investigating recent supernatural phenomena in the area. Spider-Man publicly butted heads with this dome-headed sorcerer even before discovering him to be a fraud, but it was almost by accident that he learned the truth. Mysterio was, in fact, a special effects genius named Quentin Beck, who had capitalized upon the emergence of the Avengers in 2005 and engineered heroic feats and supernatural events in order to make a name for himself. Peter's first attempt at exposing the ruse ended horribly, with Mysterio gaslighting him with an array of effects and hallucinogens and hitting him with a train. But, after a lengthy talk with Aunt May, Peter was inspired by her gumption and formed a plan to reveal Beck's deceit on live TV--using an action camera, which streamed the truth of the illusions and Beck's vainglorious, monologued confession to the Daily Bugle. This time Peter used his spider-sense to entirely ignore Mysterio's illusions, easily apprehending the villain and ensuring his arrest.

Personality [WiP]
Neurotic, anxious, self-reflective, and often resentful. Sharp-tongued, sarcastic, and fond of kvetching. Desperate to save and protect people. Far more impulsive in his youth, but always 100% ready to throw down to save someone. Peter is viscerally angry: as he's grown he's learned to restrain and control this, and the nature of this anger has shifted from being rather selfish to become entirely righteous fury. His PTSD gives him nightmares and flashbacks; he dislikes sleeping and is haunted by his failures. He's extremely self-reliant, despite extreme self-doubt in his youth, and dislikes both authority and the interference of other superheroes into his personal life. Introverted and often slow to trust, yet craves intimacy. Finds himself caring for younger or newer adventurers quickly, especially as he continues to mature. Disaster bisexual. Enjoys responsibility and likes to keep busy. An information sponge with an analytical mind, Peter occasionally slips into becoming a mad scientist, and is an extremely talented investigator. A brilliant chemist and engineer, and a voracious reader (though he doesn't read for fun much anymore). Learns from his mistakes; even by 16 he had become an extremely competent superhero. Sad, tired, but relentlessly determined.

Major Powers

 * Mutated Physiology: Peter's genome has been permanently altered through a highly aggressive experimental retrovirus, granting him traits taken from various members of the order Araneae. This particular strain of the Oz virus had been designed to hybridize the common house spider (Parasteatoda tepidariorum) with six other species, including Eratigena duellica, Hexura rothi, Portia fimbriata, and others. The Oz virus' radiation-fueled nature played a hand in accelerating Peter's mutation, granting him superhuman strength, speed, toughened flesh, and various arachnid-like traits.
 * Superhuman Strength: Peter's muscle cells have been significantly altered, their protein structure enhanced and their density increased to resemble the equivalent cells within jumping spiders. How exactly this mutation circumvents the square-cube law is unknown, but is believed to fall under the Gojiran exception. As an adult, he is capable of bench-pressing ten tons and deadlifting fifteen. (He has proved capable of exceeding these limits on rare occasions, but overexerts himself in the process and the effort almost always results in injury.) Weights of several hundred pounds have been seen to barely register to him as weighing anything at all. In combat against non-powered opponents, he must be careful to pull his punches; otherwise, his blows could easily deliver enough force to kill.
 * Superhuman Leaping: Peter's physical strength also extends to his legs, enabling him to jump incredibly high and leap absurdly long distances. With effort he can jump over a hundred feet straight up; he is capable of jumping heights of thirty to seventy feet easily and repeatedly. Given a running start, he has been observed to be able to leap over 600 feet forward--almost an eighth of a mile.
 * Superhuman Speed: Peter has inherited the proportionate speed of the giant house spider, Eratigena duellica, which can move up to 33 times its body length per second. As Peter is 5'8" as an adult, he is capable of running 187 feet per second--roughly 127 miles per hour--at a dead sprint. He has on many occasions crossed short distances before the human eye can register movement at all, a move nicknamed "flash stepping." However, like any sprint, this top speed cannot be maintained for very long; through practice, Peter has learned that he can maintain speeds of 80 to 100 miles per hour without significant effort, registering these speeds as his equivalent to jogging.
 * Superhuman Reflexes: Similarly, Peter displays reflexes similar to those of trapdoor spiders, enhanced far beyond the limits of ordinary humans. His nerve cells fire at incredible speeds, granting him both reflexes and a cognitive processing speed around forty times faster than those of a trained athlete. The flicker-fusion horizon (the speed at which some objects appear as a blur) in his eyes is similarly enhanced. Peter is immune to the same "flash step" maneuver that he routinely executes, can see the flicker rate of most electronic screens and florescent lights, and is even known to be able to track the movement of bullets in flight. Even without the assistance of spider-sense, his reaction time averages around six milliseconds.
 * Enhanced Stamina: Unlike many of his alternate selves, Peter does not have the ability to exert himself at full capacity for extended periods of time. His stamina has, however, been enhanced roughly in proportion to his other powers, allowing him to continue significant exertions if he paces himself. Peter's mutation did not immediately grant him the body of an athlete; he developed his stamina through strenuous regular exercise, and must regularly work to maintain his current level of fitness.
 * Superhuman Durability: Peter's body is physically tougher and far more resistant to some types of injury than an ordinary human, above all impact forces. This is likely a side-effect of the same mutation which grants him super strength. He can withstand great impacts which would severely injure or kill a normal human with severely reduced discomfort; he has survived, among other things, blows of a Hulk-like strength, being inside a collapsing skyscraper, and even being hit by a moving train. It's been speculated, though Peter isn't interested in testing this, that he is capable of surviving a fall at terminal velocity. Peter is durable to the point that he must roll with punches thrown by people without similar durability, lest their wrists break. Other forms of injury, such as stab or puncture wounds, he is far less resistant to, but some level of enhanced durability is evident even here. Though a bullet wound, for instance, can still prove life-threatening if left untreated, most bullets seem to do considerably less damage to him than they likely would if an ordinary human was shot in the same place. Electric shocks, knife wounds, and third-degree burns have all caused Peter extreme pain over the years, requiring extensive first aid or even hospitalization, but he has, more or less, survived them all.
 * Superhuman Agility: Peter's agility, balance, coordination, and equilibrium are all enhanced far beyond the limits of the finest human athletes. He is extraordinarily limber; his tendons and connective tissues are twice as elastic as a human being's, despite their enhanced strength. Complex gymnastic stunts like flips, rolls, and springs are second nature to him; he can easily match or top the performance of any Olympic gymnast, and most parkour maneuvers he can execute with ease. A notable caveat of this is that his agility tends to favor more contorted, "bug-like" positions, perhaps as a result of some inherited instict; he is comfortable resting in a spiderlike couch, and his movements, though graceful, often emulate a spider in ways that onlookers find unsettling.
 * Adhesion: Similar to the scopulae of many jumping spiders, the pads of Peter's hands and feet are host to millions of microscopic, hair-like bristles called setae. These are believed to be extensions of his skin cells, rather than growths of tissue, due to their outrageously small size. Each individual seta branches into even smaller fibers, no more than 20 nm wide, which at this scale exhibit a slight inter-atomic attraction called the Van der Waals force. Multiplied millions of times over, this force grants Peter the power to adhere to solid surfaces with an upper limit of several tons per finger. The (relatively) long and narrow nature of Peter's setae allow them to reach through the gaps of some fabrics, particularly thin and loose-knit ones; he must carefully select the material of his gloves and boots in order to ensure that he can stick to walls through them. Though Peter is apparently capable of extending and retracting these setae at will, essentially "deactivating" his adhesion, they appear to be extended by default: Peter's adhesion is active most of the time, especially if his focus is elsewhere or if he is unconscious. It's been demonstrated on several occasions that, when standing, Peter sticks to the ground with his feet and must remember to release when taking a step.
 * Hypersensitivity to Vibration: Peter's sense of touch has been altered to be able to detect subtle vibrations and changes in air pressure, to a degree unmatched by normal humans. Air currents, the movement of objects, and even electricity through wires can all create vibrations in their environment, which are conducted through solid objects and through the atmosphere; like a spider in its web, Peter can feel these vibrations with a superhuman clarity and extrapolate from them a surprising amount of information--a skill he has nicknamed tremorsense. He has demonstrated the ability to feel heartbeats in the air from over twenty feet away, or the ripples in air pressure created by moving objects. Similarly, but to an even greater degree, he can feel vibrations through objects he touches, for example the tremor of footsteps hundreds of feet away or the movement of water through plumbing. Through this he can determine an enormous, and finely detailed, level of awareness of his environment, learning information that even his spider-sense may neglect to alert him to.
 * Spider-Sense: Peter possesses a unique extrasensory awareness of danger, which manifests as a full-body tingling sensation concentrated especially at the base of his skull. The precise nature of this sense is unknown. It has been suggested to be a manifestation of a spider's awareness of atmospheric electricity, a subconscious limit placed on his tremorsense, a reaction of spiderlike survival instincts with Peter's anxiety disorder, or outright clairvoyance. Whatever the case, it has grown both far more powerful and far more paranoid over the years, due to a combination of years of continuous use and the hypervigilance created by his post-traumatic stress disorder. Initially the only manifestation of spider-sense was what narration refers to as "a high, sharp note of move," directing Peter's attention towards immediate threats to his wellbeing; it has since expanded to encompass theoretical danger with less distinct but far more varied sensations. Potentially dangerous people and objects, for example, induce a continuous low hum of spider-sense through mere proximity, which rises and falls in response to their movement relative to Peter and which becomes a brief, insistent tingle at any sudden movements. Through this and his tremorsense, working in tandem, Peter is granted an unrivaled level of situational awareness, capable of detecting potential enemies through walls and easily sensing all potential weapons and hazards around him, regardless of concealment; however, it also worsens his anxiety and threatens to overwhelm him, as spider-sense reacts to all potential threats this way regardless of their intent. Spider-sense gives a notable response to the mere action of another person touching a potential weapon, a superpowered ally existing in his vicinity, or even the action of lifting a razor to his own face.

Minor Powers

 * Accelerated Healing: Peter is capable of healing from injuries roughly six times as fast as an ordinary human. Bruises tend to fade in two days, minor lacerations seal in four; a broken bone, if set properly, may heal in as little as one week. However, his healing ability is no more effective or extensive than that of an ordinary human; Peter still forms scar tissue, which may or may not eventually fade depending on the injury.
 * Radiation Affinity: In addition to hybridizing his genome with those of various spiders, the Oz virus implanted Peter's genetic code with unique genes and organelles which alter his biological response to ionizing radiation. These genes were reverse-engineered from cell samples taken from Gojira ("Godzilla"), and before their incorporation into the Oz virus were responsible for Dr. Bruce Banner's metamorphosis into the Hulk. It is believed that OsCorp's bioengineering department imposed some sort of limiter on these genes as they added them to the project; Peter does not seem to be capable of such a runaway transformation as Banner's. However, he does have:
 * Radiation Immunity: Peter's genetic code does not undergo the same degradation and destruction that an ordinary human's genome undergoes when exposed to gamma radiation. His cells, while damaged, are observed to repair and renew themselves within days, allowing for a complete recovery which exceeds both the speed and the effectiveness of his more typical healing ability.
 * Radiosynthesis: When dosed with significant levels of gamma radiation, Peter has been observed to undergo significant (although brief) increases in strength and speed.

Abilities

 * Genius-Level Intellect: Peter is extraordinarily intelligent, with a knack for many fields of knowledge but a particular focus on science and technology. He has proven himself to be a veritable information sponge, capable of picking up new skills virtually on the fly and processing enormous volumes of information on new topics with minimal outside help, even able to advance or recreate recent breakthroughs if needed. Through practice, Peter has become an adept detective, able to work out significant details of a case from scant evidence. Peter's intellect has been acknowledged in the past by the likes of Reed Richards, David Banner, and Otto Octavius--all of whom are pioneers of science in their own right--and it has been suggested that, given the motivation to do so, he has the potential to match or even surpass these men. However, Peter instead chooses to focus his talents on vigilante activity.
 * Expert Engineer: Of particular note is Peter's gift for mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineering. Self-taught from a young age, Peter is adept at analyzing, modifying, and reverse-engineering technology of all shapes and sizes; among other things, his computer and cell phone have been modified extensively to add new functions and resist their manufactured obsolescence. Peter is also capable of inventing new technology more or less from scratch. Using only a vague description from a dissertation, for instance, Peter invented his original web-fluid at the age of fifteen, and assembled machines to fire it out of scraps found in junkyards; in the years since he has improved upon the design of both, turning them into cutting-edge tools entirely through his own ingenuity. He has also designed and built numerous gadgets to counteract equipment used by his enemies, often with only an educated guess as to how said equipment works in the first place.
 * Indomitable Will: Peter is exceptionally, often infuriatingly stubborn, which translates into a sense of determination that is virtually unrivaled by his peers. Routinely, almost constantly, he receives injuries which far surpass his superhuman durability, injuries which should by all rights incapacitate him. Through sheet force of will, though, Peter has shown the capacity to ignore the pain of broken limbs or extreme blood loss for extended periods of time, fighting through concussions and beatings to accomplish his goals. Though by no means immune to mind control, he has proven to be unusually resistant to it, a skill which has been strengthened through repeated encounters with telepaths and illusionists. In the past Peter has considered or even briefly gone through with quitting his vigilante lifestyle, but his dedication to his responsibility and the needs of others ensures that these moments are rare and brief. Peter's willpower is strong enough that he has, on occasion, overcome his own physical limits, lifting weights or moving at speeds far above his believed upper limits.
 * Skilled Photographer: Through practice and training, Peter has become quite an accomplished shutterbug in the years he has worked for Daily Bugle Communications. His portfolio contains photographs ranging from celebrity pictures taken at press conferences, to immensely complicated action shots depicting battles between superhumans. As these photos often star Peter himself as Spider-Man, he has learned over time both to plan out shots ahead of time and how to manipulate a camera drone remotely while multitasking. Of particular note is Peter's skill as an investigative photojournalist, and to a lesser extent a forensic photographer; he is adept at using the camera as a tool to expose crime and corruption.
 * Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Spider-Man has steadily improved upon his fighting skills in the years he has operated, learning new techniques almost constantly and occasionally outright stealing a move from an enemy. He has obtained basic training in multiple martial arts, including boxing, krav maga (both of which he learned from Daredevil), taekwondo (at the insistence of Aunt May), and even judo (having watched and subsequently plagiarized the fighting style of "Fancy" Dan Brito). Years of extensive practice have honed his skill in each of these; using his superhuman speed and agility, Peter has folded each of them into a versatile and effective fighting style of his own creation. This fighting style relies heavily on dodging, airborne gymnastics, and weaponizing objects in the vicinity, but Peter also makes sure to fight pragmatically: he doesn't hesitate to break an opponent's bones or target sensitive areas like the liver or groin.
 * Multilingual: In addition to his first language of English, Peter has a moderate level of fluency in Yiddish, due to his Jewish upbringing and the influence of neighbors. Some words and phrases he learned in Yiddish before ever hearing their English translation; as a result his manner of speaking is dotted with Yiddish even without his conscious decision. Of particular note is his tendency to use Yiddish profanity, especially when kvetching. He is also conversational in Spanish, having taken Spanish classes in high school and college.

Weaknesses

 * Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: In the time he has been active as Spider-Man, Peter has been both witness and participant to countless violent conflicts over the years; he has witnessed hundreds of violent deaths, including those of close friends and loved ones. He has also been personally subjected to severe injury and near-death experiences--and perhaps most alarmingly of all, the bulk of these experiences happened to Peter before the age of twenty. These experiences have left Peter with severe and enduring trauma, and psychologically affect him to this day. Reoccurring nightmares are so common to Peter that he has developed a fear of sleeping. In his waking life, Peter experiences flashbacks to particularly traumatic moments, accompanied by emotional breakdowns or anxiety attacks; even when not actively victim of a flashback, he mentions finding it difficult to keep his mind off of past traumas. His guilt complex and resultant workaholism is almost certainly a symptom of this post-traumatic stress. Though, over time, Peter has learned methods of dealing with these symptoms, it isn't until his late twenties that he begins to actively seek therapy for the disorder itself.
 * Sensory Overload: Peter's superhuman awareness of vibrations, as well as his hypervigilant spider-sense, constantly feed him enormous amounts of information regarding his environment. Usually he is capable of organizing this borderline-clairvoyant sensitivity, gaining useful knowledge from it or relagating it to the back of his mind when he needs to focus, but this is a skill he has learned over time. When his focus slips, his anxiety increases, or occasionally for no reason at all, his ability to filter out this constant input is compromised, overhwelming him and causing extreme discomfort. Spider-sense's reaction to even the most mundane of objects and gestures can keep Peter on high alert against his will, sometimes bringing him to the point of panic before he manages to regain control of himself--if he can at all. These senses contribute strongly to Peter's stress and paranoia even when relatively relaxed. It has been made clear, on multiple occasions, that the level of situational awareness which Peter has even at the best of times is utterly exhausting.
 * Guilt Complex: The single most defining moment of Peter's life was the murder of his uncle Ben, a murder which he easily could have prevented if he had cared enough to. The lifelong guilt Peter feels for this has been compounded by the numerous civilian casualties he has witnessed over the years, the mental breakdown and eventual death of Harry Osborn, and several events as a member of the Cluster. Lingering remorse is possibly the most constant symptom of Peter's post-traumatic stress disorder; he holds himself personally responsible for every life he fails to save and every misfortune encountered by one of his loved ones. Peter's workaholism is at least in part an effort to make up for his failures, attempting to do all he can to make up for past mistakes. He has a habit of dwelling on his past mistakes, obsessively considering them: though he claims (and perhaps even believes) that he does this to learn from them and avoid repeating the error in the future, it is also obviously a form of self-punishment and wallowing. Beyond this, Peter has a tendency to blame himself for the decisions made by others, such as Emjay's insistence on accompanying him on his Odyssey, or his children's decision to follow in his footsteps as heroes; he regards whatever negative consequences these choices produce as his own fault, and takes it upon himself to try undoing them. Peter's guilt drives him to chronically overwork himself, believe himself to do more harm than good, and--occasionally--sabotage his own chances of happiness.
 * Metabolism: All of Peter's powers, especially his superhuman strength and reflexes, burn an enormous amount of calories. This was especially true following the initial spider bite: transforming from an ordinary human into the spiderlike hybrid he is today had the side-effect of burning most of the fat reserves from his body, resulting in a borderline-emaciated appearance and a desperate appetite. However, even now that his body has grown accustomed to its mutations, Peter requires far more food than an ordinary human to function; he has estimated his basal metabolism to be approximately 10,000 calories, and physically exerting himself requires even more. Gaining and maintaining body fat is extremely difficult to Peter. For this reason, he has developed a habit of bringing a large quantity of snacks with him on patrol, and makes an effort to eat as much as physically possible at every opportunity.
 * Myopia: Unlike the majority of Peter Parkers across the multiverse, Peter's vision was not improved when he gained his powers. His eyesight at the age of fifteen was approximately 20/100: twenty feet away from an object, he could only see it as clearly as another person standing one hundred feet away. His eyesight continues to worsen over the years, particularly in his early twenties, and needs retested every year. Peter requires corrective lenses to function in day-to-day life, both as a civilian and as a superhero; in his street clothes he insists on wearing glasses, but switches to contact lenses as Spider-Man. This results in a variety of problems, from the expense of this myopia in the first place to the possibility of a contact lens falling out mid-battle.
 * Chronic Injuries: Peter's healing factor is not perfect. Injuries which would leave scar tissue on an ordinary human do the same on his own body, and said scar tissue is often sensitive and stiff, growing only moreso with age. But this is not the only ongoing physical problem Peter lives with. As noted above, Peter has a tendency to overwork himself, pushing his body to the limit and beyond with alarming frequency, and this combines with the natural wear-and-tear of his years of athleticism and combat to take a gradual toll on his abilities. Peter develops scar tissue within his muscles, his cartilage weakens and deteriorates, and his hands grow arthritic. Even in his early twenties, Peter notices the early signs of joint pain, including a stiff spine; by his late twenties, this pain becomes nearly constant, and his hearing begins to weaken from the gunshots and explosions he routinely encounters. By his mid-thirties Peter's muscles have noticeably weakened, and he requires painkillers, hearing aids, and various joint braces simply to live comfortably, let alone continue his work as a vigilante. These injuries and the declining performance they create are directly responsible for Peter's eventual early death.
 * Swimming: At no point in his life is Peter a particularly strong or confident swimmer. At the age of fifteen he was limited to a pathetic dog paddle; by the end of the War of the Worlds, though he had been taught a basic front crawl and several diving techniques, he was still deeply uncomfortable in the water. This is a gap in his skills that he never fully rids himself of, though in his twenties he becomes slightly more capable in the water.
 * Ethyl Chloride: Peter has a significantly reduced tolerance to the chemical ethyl chloride, the active ingredient in most pesticides. The exact dose that would be needed to kill him is never definitively confirmed; however, Peter himself estimates it to be about half that required to kill an ordinary human.

Paraphernalia

 * Web-Shooters: Spider-Man utilizes a pair of wrist-mounted, compact machines of his own design and construction to manufacture strands of synthetic spider silk. Known as "web-shooters," these devices have evolved considerably in design over the course of his career, once cobbled together out of stolen lab equipment and scrap machinery but now intricately crafted out of custom-ordered pieces to Peter's exact specifications. Unlike most versions of web-shooters throughout the multiverse, those of Earth-61610 contain very little electronic components, as Electro could immediately drain the batteries and render them useless; instead, Peter uses intricate clockwork and analog valves of his own design to accomplish the same function. A single CO2 cartridge, modified to store web-fluid, is loaded into the back of the machine; when Peter's middle and ring fingers press on the trigger mechanism in his palm, a valve within the web-shooter opens and expels a small amount of fluid into an internal expansion chamber. A spring-powered turbine shapes the expanding web-fluid into a strand, aligning the polymer's fibers in the moment before they are expelled out of the nozzle to become a webline. Said nozzle has an adjustable diameter: most of Spider-Man's webbing has a diameter of 2mm, more than sufficient to support his weight as he swings, but he can widen the nozzle to generate far thicker weblines or even to form wide nets. Peter has built the design with some modular capability, allowing him to attach an additional, non-essential function to the machines when required; these have included a gauge to warn when the current cartridge is nearly empty, a motorized winch to reel in weblines once fired, and a laser sight, among several others.
 * Webbing: Itself an impressive feat of chemical engineering, Spider-Man's synthetic webbing has undergone many changes throughout his career. The basic concept remains the same, though: webbing is a viscous, shear-thinning fluid, which reacts with oxygen to expand to over a hundred times its volume and cure almost instantly into an incredibly strong, adhesive semisolid with a fibrous structure. Peter's original formula was adapted from the dissertation of his late mother, Dr. Mary Fitzpatrick, who had developed an interesting family of elastomers with properties of both nylons and silicones; with several major modifications, Peter was able to synthesize a prototype webbing out of chemicals stolen from his high school science class. All throughout high school Peter iterated and improved on this formula, increasing its strength, elasticity, and adhesive nature--upon enrollment into Empire State University, he took advantage of his increased resources to improve upon the material even further. His current formula contains spidroin (the main protein in genuine spider silk) harvested from genetically-engineered yeast, which he keeps in a jar much like sourdough starter; it is combined with inorganic polymers in a unique synthesis that Peter keeps a closely guarded secret. This webbing has a tensile strength of 1,300 pounds per square millimeter of cross section, but over the course of roughly one hour degrades until effectively disintegrating. In addition to this "all-purpose" form of webbing, Peter has engineered several more versions for more specialized purposes, including:
 * Impact Webbing: Designed only after his first forays into the multiverse, Peter's impact webbing is likely based on witnessing Ben Reilly's use of the same. Impact webbing takes the form of a large glob of liquid webbing, statically charged and protected by a polymer membrane to prevent reacting with air. This membrane is breached as the web-shot hits a target, allowing the webbing inside to expand and cure into solid strands; through a combination of momentum and static cling, the strands can wrap around and almost instantly ensnare a roughly human-sized target.
 * Medical Webbing: A sterile, hypoallergenic polymer based on VetiGel, this substance forms an organic mesh for blood to clot around and stop bleeding almost instantly. This effectively allows Spider-Man to form a bandage of any shape and size around a wound. Medical webbing contains a disinfectant, as well as a mild painkiller. Over time, as the webbing gradually breaks down, it releases nutrients which are absorbed and metabolized by nearby cells, which slightly accelerates the healing of the bandaged wound.
 * Fire Extinguisher: A liquid solution which, instead of becoming a fibrous solid, cures into a thick gelatinous foam. This substance does not complete its curing process until several minutes after its initial expansion; it instead continues to absorb oxygen, suffocating any nearby fire.
 * Permanent Webbing: A much weaker and less elastic form of webbing, this polymer has the distinction of not disintegrating within an hour like most other forms. Instead, chemical reactions within its molecular structure transform it into a fairly tough, stiff material resembling nylon. This webbing can theoretically remain in place forever, but in practice is subject to the wear and tear of the elements. Peter uses this form of webbing mostly to store his street clothes after changing into Spider-Man, or to store supplies in scattered locations around the city for emergency use.
 * Spider-Man Costume: Once Peter had become committed to his decision to be a superhero, he set about making himself a suit to fit the role. Over several months, through a series of experiments and ruined prototypes, Peter designed and built a skintight costume out of athletic T-shirts, which he cut apart and sewed back together to suit his purposes. The Spider-Man suit, in all its designs, consists of a shirt, leggings, gloves, boots, and a mask, each held to the rest through strategically placed patches of Velcro; while the chest and back logos are screen-printed, the web pattern which covers most red portions of the suit is hand-drawn and thus somewhat asymmetrical. Extra web-cartridges are mounted on each hip in an arrangement reminiscent of a utility belt. Peter's construction of this suit has gradually improved in quality over the years: eyepieces which once were taken from sunglasses are now custom-ordered, the soles of his boots are now Peter's own creation rather than being cut from old tires, and the costume itself has been treated with chemicals to render it fire-retardant and resistant to gunfire.
 * Earpieces: Peter has custom-made a pair of compact earpieces that can clip into the inside of his mask or be worn separate from it. Connecting wirelessly to his phone and containing a microphone, the earpieces allow Peter to take calls, listen to media, or give his phone simple voice commands without removing it from his pocket. These earpieces also double as earplugs: ordinarily, their rather loose fitting within the ear canal ensures that the wearer can hear his surroundings clearly despite their presence, but when the microphones detect volumes above ninety decibels a subroutine engages. The tips of the earpieces rapidly expand to fill and block the ear canal, and within the earpieces a phase-shifted replica of the noise is made which nullifies much of the sound. This function protects Peter's ears from the loud noises of gunfire or explosions, which slows the progression of his hearing damage.
 * Camera: To facilitate his job as a photographer, Peter owns a high-resolution digital camera which he has modified with hardware and software of his own creation. This camera has a variety of functions which Peter has added to its original capabilities; it is capable of taking pictures in infrared and ultraviolet light, projecting a virtual ruler to allow for easy scale comparisons, and emitting radar pulses to map 3D environments. The camera has a shutter speed of approximately 1/8000 of a second, allowing Peter to take photos with an outrageous level of clarity. Perhaps most importantly, the shell of the camera is reinforced with compounds of Peter's design, based on web-fluid, and its internal electronics are protected by shock-absorbing technology: the camera can survive a 600-foot fall onto concrete, as well as various attempts to destroy it.
 * Buzzbee: Originally a gift from Harry Osborn, Peter owns a high-quality camera drone which can be controlled by his cell phone and which (of course) he has extensively modified. Nicknamed Buzzbee, this drone is Peter's primary means of photographing himself as Spider-Man in battle, guided by a simple autopilot system and avoiding obstacles via sonar. Many of the features which Peter has incorporated into his handheld camera are also present in Buzzbee, including its shutter speed, its infrared capability, and its outrageous level of durability. Over the years, Peter has lost, been unable to repair, or (on one occasion) given away this drone; he has been forced to build a new version of Buzzbee practically from scratch several times, usually with cheap materials but ingeniously engineered components. Though primarily used for work, Peter has occasionally used Buzzbee for reconnaissance, tailing certain individuals, or even for long-distance communication--the drone carries a microphone and speaker for such occasions.
 * Spider-Tracers: Originally a means to follow the Vulture after his escape, Peter has manufactured a collection of miniature tracking devices colloquially called spider-tracers. Unlike most versions throughout the multiverse, these tracers bear no resemblance to spiders, or to Spider-Man's logo: to conceal their presence and function, spider-tracers are simple circles with a thickness of 1.5 mm and a diameter of 15 mm, colored an innocuous shade of grey. A weak adhesive coating one side keeps them stuck to whatever surface Peter plants them on. Originally the tracers simply produced a radar signal which Peter could track via his phone; while they still do this, two functions have been added. The first is a microphone which sends audio to Peter's phone, allowing him to eavesdrop on and record conversations. The second is a weak electromagnetic field, which interferes with the atmospheric electricity coming into contact with the tracer and is thus detectable to Peter's spider-sense.

Trivia

 * Peter is afraid of dogs, having had unpleasant encounters with attack dogs over the course of his superhero career. He considers himself to be more of a cat person, but in practice he's irritated when they get cat hair on his costume.
 * Peter was born with the gene variation scientifically known as OR6A2--more commonly known as the Cilantro Soap Gene. This is a gene present in a relatively small percentage of the population; it has no adverse effects beyond giving cilantro/coriander a distinctive soapy taste. In fact, Peter has implied in the past that all versions of Peter Parker in the multiverse have this gene, though he may have been exaggerating.
 * The red-and-black color scheme of Spider-Man's suit (as opposed to the more typical coloration of red and blue) was not a decision based on Peter's personal tastes or the intended attitude of his costumed identity. Instead, it was simply a way to prevent bloodstains from ruining the fabric's coloration. Several spider-heroes in the multiverse have been vocally unimpressed by the revelation that Spider-Man-61610's color scheme was based on nothing more than laundry convenience.
 * Speaking of laundry, by the time he reaches adulthood Peter tries to have at least six copies of the Spider-Man suit in his possession. This is partially for the sake of having spares in case one is damaged, but mostly to avoid wearing the same suit multiple days in a row without washing it. His efforts here are at least partially over-correcting for adolescent habits.
 * Peter has absolutely horrendous handwriting.