bobweave: (just can't get away from myself)
Parker Reilly ([personal profile] bobweave) wrote2021-02-03 03:13 am

Year One AU Info [WIP]

Name: Parker Reilly
AKA: The Spider
Pronouns: She/her (trans)
Age: 19
Major: Biophysics

Parker is from a pretty normal Earth, except the year is 1969 and the times they are a-changin'. Over only the past year or two, humans with advanced technology and even superpowers have started to enter the picture. Most of them turn to crime -- some are more the lashing out type. They're all dangerous, something normal civilians can't deal with.

There's one, though, that bucks the trends and starts fighting crime, becoming the world's first super-hero. Known to the public as the Spider, it's no wonder some people admire him and a lot of people don't exactly trust her.

But geniuses are getting inspired by other geniuses, freak accidents are giving people amazing powers, and, oh yeah, nuclear power occasionally has some very unexpected side effects in this world. On the cusp of the 70s, supervillains and superheroes are about to be the new normal... They just aren't quite there yet.

Personal History: (Every event in this history taken from/inspired heavily by specific comics events -- just not all in the canonical order and with some details changed or excised. Unless otherwise mentioned, "The Amazing Spider-Man" refers to the 1963 series. This section uses details tags, so just click to expand!)

HISTORY SECTION UNDER RENOVATION

1950-1964: Pre-Bite (Amazing Fantasy #17, Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #1)
Peter Parker was born October 14, 1950, to Richard and Mary Parker. When he was still just a baby, however, his parents died in a plane crash, leaving Peter an orphan. His father's brother, Benjamin Parker, and his wife May Parker, who had recently found out they were unable to have children of their own, took the young boy in and raised him with immense love, strong morals, and deep compassion.

Growing up, Peter had a fairly normal childhood, thanks to his aunt and uncle. He was always a somewhat nerdy kid, but he had close friends in elementary school and middle school, though they did slowly start to grow apart a bit as their interests diverged. When Flash Thompson came in at the beginning of high school, though, he shoved Peter forcibly out of his former friends-group with his strong personality and bullying tendencies, quickly convincing Peter's old friends to ostracize and mock him.

Peter was more hurt than he was angry. On a freshman class trip to M.I.T. to watch a nuclear exhibition, Flash Thompson tripped Peter directly into Otto Octavius, who helped Peter find his glasses but expressed enough bitter anger over the bullies that Peter left quickly, unnerved.

1967-1968: Origin Story (Amazing Fantasy #15)
While Peter's main scientific passions were in chemistry and technology, he did develop an interest in atomic and nuclear physics as well, stemming from that very trip. When, three years later, he attended a more local science exhibit on experiments in radioactivity, a series of unlikely coincidences irradiated a small spider that panic-bit Peter while it was dying; while he didn't realize it at first, that spider bite likewise irradiated his blood. Over the next few days, Peter Parker was very sick, which at first he as well as his aunt and uncle put down to the 'flu.

Fortunately for Peter, the radiation didn't kill him. On the contrary, he recovered stronger than ever, waking up on the third morning able to see clearly without his glasses. Not sure what was going on but amazed and alarmed, he snuck out to visit the library, but near-miss by a car prompted him to leap out of the way and incredibly distance, sticking to the side of a building. Peter soon realized he was able to stick to surfaces, that he could move much more quickly and that his strength and agility greatly increased. Realizing what must have happened, Peter was incredibly excited, nearly telling his aunt and uncle before deciding against it -- not wanting to worry them until he understood the situation entirely, and realizing that if anyone else found out he might be experimented on.

Deciding to test his new abilities -- as well as have a little fun and make a little money in the process -- Peter fashioned himself a quick mask and went to a wrestling match with a $100 prize that he saw advertised in the paper his Uncle Ben was reading. He won the match handily, and attracted the attention of a television agent in the process, who gave him his card and promised to make him a star. Bowled over by being treated differently than he had his whole life and excited by the prospect of money and fame, Peter agreed, going home and making himself a showy costume and inventing his webspinners and webfluid right then and there (or rather, over the course of that weekend!), giving himself more maneuverability than even his new spider-powers gave him.

Unfortunately, after only a few weeks of TV appearances, Peter did something that would come back to haunt him -- as a thief was stealing from the TV studio, Spider-Man allowed him to just run past, not wanting to get involved in something potentially dangerous that wasn't his problem. A week after that, Peter's Uncle Ben was dead -- shot by a man who had tried robbing their house, and when a furious, grieving Spider-Man hunted the man down, he realized that it was the thief that he had neglected to stop.

1968: After Uncle Ben (Amazing Fantasy #16-17, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, The Amazing Spider-Man (2014) #1.1, Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #2)
This was incredibly impactful for Peter, and messed him up for a little while. At first, he refused to put the Spider-Man costume on ever again, blaming his selfish decision to be Spider-Man for Uncle Ben's death. Then his Aunt May was targeted by a predatory scammer, lying about Uncle Ben having ordered a present for her and looking for money, and that was something Peter couldn't allow. Following the man to a warehouse, he uncovered a huge network of scams and criminal activity, including assassinations, provided by a man calling himself the Undertaker. Despite being overwhelmed by being shot at and experiencing his spider-sense for the first time (alarming all by itself), Spider-Man took down the criminals and called in the police, vowing that this was what he'd continue doing to make things up to Uncle Ben, to honor his memory.

Even still, loneliness and a crushing sense of responsibility threatened to overwhelm Peter even as he guiltily began to find his time as Spider-Man satisfying and even fun. And their money troubles weren't getting any better. He even considered dropping out of school and getting a job, but his Aunt May talked him out of it, urging him that he had to follow his dreams of going to college and becoming a scientist.

Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, Peter gave in and went back to the studio, contacting his agent and saying he was ready to go back on TV. Unfortunately, juggling crimefighting and schoolwork left Peter unexpectedly unable to practice his stunt choreography, and since his agent asked their special effects expert, Quentin Beck, to set up actually dangerous stunts, a slip-up on Spider-Man's part left him having to save several audience member's lives, and the near-disaster resulted in him being blacklisted from the studio, putting him back at square one. (He didn't realize that he had just inspired one Otto Octavius to create the metal arms that Doctor Octopus would become known for.)

Needing another source of money, Peter was at first excited to see the Daily Bugle advertising that they would pay good money for pictures of Spider-Man fighting crime, despite the scathing article that one J. Jonah Jameson had written about Spider-Man's carelessness during his final television appearance and the danger his act had put the audience in. Despite feeling discouraged when Jameson used the photographs alongside articles about what a menace Spider-Man was, talking about him "taking the law into his own hands" and risking inspiring civilians and children into dangerous vigilantism, Peter decided to continue to sell photographs of Spider-Man to the Bugle as a freelance photographer, which would give his household a much-needed income while allowing him time for both schoolwork and crime-fighting. He also began to make friends with his former classmate Betty Brant, who had quit school after her mother's death to take her place as the Bugle's secretary.

1968-1969: Supervillains Arrive (The Amazing Spider-Man #9, The Amazing Spider-Man #16/17, Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #2, The Amazing Spider-Man #2/18)
Then supervillains began to hit the scene. First there was Electro, a former electric lineman by the name of Max Dillon. As the idea of anyone with superpowers was so new, and Electro could scale walls using magnetism, Jameson quickly assumed that Electro and Spider-Man must be the same person, and Electro accidentally nearly killing Spider-Man left him with no ability to clear his name for a short time until he was able to stop a jailbreak Electro was attempting using a new form of insulated webbing and a fire hose.

Shortly after, Peter was surprised to learn that his biggest bully, Flash Thompson, also happened to be Spider-Man's biggest fan. Flash formed a Spider-Man fanclub, inviting people to the first meeting, which would double as a charity fundraiser run by his girlfriend Liz Allan's family -- with a promise that Spider-Man himself would be there. Touched by the positive regard and wanting to help with the charity, Peter decided that Spider-Man would show up, and ducked several calls from J. Jonah Jameson under the (correct) assumption that he would want Peter to go there and take photos... which prompted Jameson to go there to cover the event personally.

Things nearly turned disastrous when the event was attacked by the Green Goblin, a supervillain no one had seen or heard of until that moment; realizing that the crowd assumed it was part of the performance, Spider-Man attempted to keep them thinking that, not wanting anyone to panic or get hurt trying to flee. This fell apart, but Spider-Man was able to convince Flash, Liz, and Jameson to help the crowd evacuate safely and the fight soon spread to the city skyline. While Spider-Man was unable to capture the Green Goblin or unmask him, he was able to force him to flee without anyone being injured and personally unharmed. After changing back to Peter Parker, however, he found that he hadn't only missed Jameson trying to get into contact with him; while he had been fighting the Green Goblin, his Aunt May had had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital.

Around this same time, the Vulture entered the news, committing thefts and robberies. For a while, Spider-Man did not make any attempt to catch the Vulture, as Peter was prioritizing caring for his Aunt May and Spider-Man was a complete no-show for several weeks. As supervillains really began to come to the attention of the Defense Department, prompting them to enter into a new arms race in an attempt to unlock further secrets of the atom, Aunt May finally regained much of her strength and scolded Peter for fussing so much over her to the detriment of everything else in his life. Encouraged by her, Peter decided it was time to go back into action as Spider-Man and went out looking for the Vulture... who managed to track him down and catch him by surprise instead and nearly drowned him in a water tower. Spider-Man survived, and managed to use his newly developed spider-tracers and a magnetic power inverter to find the Vulture again and finally apprehend her.

1969: The Dawning of a New Age (The Amazing Spider-Man #2, The Spectacular Spider-Man #51, The Amazing Spider-Man #6, The Amazing Spider-Man #13, The Amazing Spider-Man #20, The Amazing Spider-Man #24, The Amazing Spider-Man #10-11)
Over the course of 1969, it was like every month harbored some new supervillain. What seemed like an ordinary scam turned out to apparently be a genius named the Tinkerer working with an alien invasion force, which then turned out to be a plot to find and sell scientific and military secrets by the Tinkerer, a pre-Mysterio Quentin Beck, and a bunch of actors disguised as aliens. A trip to Florida to face a mysterious creature called the Lizard ended in Spider-Man finding out that it was an unintentional transformation of a scientist with a grieving family, and he helped change the man back. Quentin Beck re-emerged as Mysterio, taking advantage of the public uncertainty about Spider-Man to frame him as a criminal and pose as a hero capable of taking him down; after that failed, J. Jonah Jameson hired a scientist and a private investigator to commission a superhero himself who could take down Spider-Man... unfortunately resulting in the creation of the power-hungry Scorpion instead. Working together, Jameson and Spider-Man managed to evacuate the Daily Bugle and bring the Scorpion down, though Jameson took this as evidence that power would eventually corrupt anyone, even if he wasn't so bad yet (an admission which surprised Peter).

Mysterio re-emerged soon after, posing as the "renowned" (and utterly fake) European psychologist Dr. Ludwig Rinehart and approaching the Bugle with the claim that Spider-Man was mentally ill, delusional, and close to a mental breakdown. The editorial that followed, plus Mysterio using holograms to make Spider-Man see supervillains that weren't there, made Spider-Man approach "Dr. Rinehart" himself to ask for help, and he nearly revealed his secret identity to the disguised supervillain before an angry Jameson (having learned that Dr. Rinehart didn't exist) accidentally interrupted and blew Mysterio's cover.

Then, for a short time, Spider-Man was given a break from having to deal with supervillains; the return to simple organized crime was not a reprieve. After a mysterious figure calling himself the Big Man took over every crime family and syndicate in New York City with the help of his Enforcers, a series of coincidences convinced J. Jonah Jameson that Spider-Man was the Big Man, and made Peter suspicious that Jameson might be the Big Man himself. After catching the Enforcers threatening Betty, she disappeared the next day, and he feared that something had happened to her. Peter decided to make himself a target by claiming he had figured out who the Big Man was, getting himself abducted; he overheard them talking about trying to find Betty Brant, realizing they had nothing to do with her disappearance, and took the Enforcers down as Spider-Man. Though the Big Man temporarily escaped, Peter alerted the police in time for them to track him down and reveal that he was one of the Daily Bugle's reporters, Freddie Foswell.

As the former crime lords took their own leadership back (and took the opportunity to fight over some territory), the Enforcers found a new boss in Blackie Gaxton, a dangerous loan shark, and broke him out of jail with the help of Gaxton's lawyer, Betty's older brother Bennett Brant. Showing up too late to catch Gaxton or the Enforcers, Peter did recognize Bennett, who he met once before, and followed him only to find him and Betty being threatened by Gaxton and the Enforcers; apparently Bennett was deeply in debt to Gaxton and despite his and Betty's best efforts both were unable to dig their way out due to his predatory practices. Spider-Man attempted to help them and managed to take out the Enforcers as well as wrestle a gun away from Gaxton, but not before a stray bullet hit Bennett, killing him. Knowing that his good friend associated Spider-Man with her trauma and feeling intensely guilty over the first person he was unable to save since Uncle Ben, Peter blamed himself, becoming uncertain about his way forward and whether he might be doing more harm than good intervening in situations as Spider-Man.

1969: Doctor Octopus (Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus: Year One #2-5)
...


TO DO: Finish final section of history; add in college information.