Peter Parker

Origin
It all starts with a seventeen year old high school junior named Peter Parker. A student at Midtown High, Peter had been living with his uncle Ben Parker and his aunt May Parker since before he could remember, as his parents had died in a plane crash when he was very young. Very intelligent but something of a shy wallflower he had only two real friends--Gwen Stacy, the daughter of the police chief and also something of a loner, and Harry Osborn, the awkward son of the wealthy industrialist Norman Osborn, CEO of the chemical manufacturing company Oscorp. A common target of bullying by the head jock Flash Thompson and his buddies, Peter was content to quietly finish out high school with high marks and go on to better things in college. Of course, that's not what happens at all!

In the last weeks of the school year Peter's chemistry class takes a field trip to one of Oscorp's main facilities in the city. While on the final leg of the tour to see a demonstration from Otto Octavius and his mechanical arm harness a spider silently creeps up onto Peter's hand and gives him a painful bite. Peter yelps in pain loud enough for everyone to hear him, which some of the other meaner kids in the class give him shit about, but the school and Oscorp staff rush to his aid. In the commotion the spider is stepped on. The staff asks if he's okay, to which Peter says he's fine. He goes home with a big welt on his hand.

Octavius didn't say anything at the time, but he knew what that spider was--it was a test spider. Some time ago Oscorp had bid on a government contract for the creation of human performance enhancers, and they were given a vial of "perfect DNA" from Mendel Stromm in order to do it. Norman Osborn was personally involved in this project, and had his scientists create something from the sample DNA. There were many attempts, but the latest and most promising of these attempts was something called "Oz." While not yet ready for human testing they had begun testing the Oz formula on various animals, one of these, under the suggestion of Stromm, being spiders. And that spider that bit Peter Parker was an Oz test subject that had escaped. When Octavius let Osborn know what had transpired during the field trip Osborn sensed an opportunity--it was possible the Parker kid may have been the first human Oz test. Peter on the other hand has a rough night full of aches, pains, fevers, chills, and throwing up. Ben and May decide to take Peter to the hospital, but almost as fast as he was sick he was suddenly much better. The nurses take his blood for testing, but the tests come back all normal--but that wasn't Peter's blood they had tested. Secretly, a covert man known as MacDonald Gargan, had stolen Peter's blood sample and replaced it, and then gave the blood to his boss, Norman Osborn, back at Oscorp. Hearing that Peter had ended up in the hospital had Osborn worried, so he had Gargan steal his blood sample to see if it was related to the Oz. When Octavius had a look at it, it confirmed Osborn's fears--the Oz formula had successfully transferred from the spider into Parker, and the Oz was now killing him. Worried that it might be traced back to Oscorp, Osborn gives Gargan the green light to take the Parker kid out.

On the other hand, Peter was now feeling much better. The welt had subsided, and he wasn't sick at all. In fact, he seemed to be feeling better than ever. While walking home on his last day of school for the year he was minding his own business when a black car suddenly jumped the curb onto the sidewalk Peter was on. Before he could even realize what was happening Peter jumped straight over the car and landed behind it. The dark car then sped off into the distance, not that Peter was even concerned with the car anymore--he had just jumped over it!

The car, of course, was being driven by Gargan, under orders to kill Peter Parker. When Gargan reported back to Osborn what Peter had done Osborn called the hit off entirely. Something was going on here that needed further investigation.

Over the next few weeks of summer vacation Peter started to test his new abilities--he found his strength, durability, agility, and speed were all greatly enhanced. He couldn't just jump over cars, he could lift cars if he wanted to. And that wasn't all, his fingers and toes could now perfectly stick to any surface he chose, allowing him to climb anything. And last of all he found he had something of an extra sense--he could sense things before they happened, greatly increasing his reaction time. Putting it all together, it almost seemed like he had the proportional abilities of a spider, and reasoned there must have been something about that spider that bit him.

And as Peter's power grew, so too did his self-confidence and arrogance. He started shirking on his chores more, avoiding his aunt and uncle, and flaking on his two friends to test his new abilities. The one thing Gwen and Harry got them to do was to visit a Midtown High color guard summer practice--Gwen had joined the school paper as an extra-curricular summer activity, and was covering the color guard's practice. Liz Allan was a member of the color guard, and her current boyfriend, Flash Thompson, was also in attendance. Peter was restless and didn't really want to be there, and ended up saying something to Liz that bothered Flash. When Flash called him out, Peter rebuffed him, and Flash finally got angry enough to go to blows. He was unable to land a hit on Peter, of course, and Peter lands a single blow on Flash that ends the fight there and then--not enough to seriously hurt Flash, but enough to put him off fighting Peter.

This is enough for Peter to get in trouble with his uncle and aunt, to which Peter responds to shutting himself off from the world more. Feeling like he should be doing something with his new abilities he caught that a reality TV show was going to be filming in the city in a month, called "So You Think You Can Wrestle?", where contestants could test their mettle against current and former professional wrestlers for a monetary reward. Seeing an opportunity for profit Peter spent the next month coming up with his wrestling persona. Still cagey about revealing his abilities to the world he elected to go with a masked look with a spider motif--he would be the amazing Human Spider!

He also got back to work on a side project he had been working on before the spider bite. His father had been a brilliant scientist in life, and one of the things he had been working on at the time of his death had been passed on to Peter--a type of synthetic adhesive that could be stored in a liquid form but converted to a solid form in normal air pressure. In the month preparing for his wrestling debut Peter managed to finish the formula and create a pair of mechanical firing devices attached to his wrists that could fire the adhesive in a long strand--now he had webs.

The big day was finally here, and it was time to put his abilities and new webs to the test. He had Uncle Ben drive him into the city under the pretense of going to the library, but his plan was to secretly instead go to the studio where they were filming the reality show. Before heading out, Ben decided to have a talk with Peter about his attitude change and his anti-social actions over the course of the summer, including his fight with Flash. Ben gave him sage advice--with great power there must also come great responsibility. But Peter wasn't listening, and instead just blows him off and leaves.

Under the guise of the Human Spider, Peter goes to the studio and attempts to enter, only to be told that he had to pass tryouts that had been held long ahead of time. Frustrated but not willing to go back home without getting in the studio to prove himself, Peter breaks into the studio mid filming to fight the champ, Crusher Hogan. They first threaten to throw him out, but when Peter shows off his skills and what he can do, the producers and Hogan decide to give Peter a shot. Peter absolutely mops the floor with Crusher Hogan, and "The Amazing Spider-man" is declared the winner.

(...they got his name wrong)

Peter, still under his masked guise, heads back to the studio's offices to ask the producer about the winnings. The producer explains to the Spider-man character that it wasn't really that simple--the producer saw potential in marketing this guy. He told the Spider-man character he could make all the money he wanted if he just revealed who he was and signed an exclusive contract with him. Realizing what a raw deal that was and not in the mood to reveal himself to someone he just met Peter told the producer off, and the producer in turn told him to take a hike. On his way out of the office Peter passes by a grungy looking guy with a bag, who storms into the producer's office and pulls a gun on him, demanding he hand over the prize money. After robbing the producer, the burglar flees the building, and Peter, still feeling ripped off, lets the guy go. He even holds the door for him.

Oops.

Dejected for all that work over the month to amount to nothing, Peter heads back to where Ben had agreed to pick him up later, and finds a large group of people on the sidewalk with some police cars in the area. Peter checks to see what the commotion is, and finds his uncle on the ground, clutching his bloodied chest. Peter identifies himself as his nephew to the police, and they tell him that a carjacker shot him and stole his car as a getaway vehicle. Uncle Ben is conscious when Peter gets to him, but he quickly fades and passes away. Grief-stricken and filled with rage Peter walks away from the scene after hearing the police may have found his killer in a nearby warehouse. He dons his costume and sets off for the warehouse.

Peter swings through the night and finds the warehouse with ease, police cars swarming all around it. The killer had apparently barricaded himself in, but Peter sneaks in through a window with ease. He manages to catch the killer by surprise, disarm him, and knock him out, but before he can do something he'd really regret later Peter gets a good look at the man's face in the light--it was the burglar who robbed the reality show producer, the one Peter had let get away. Instead of taking the responsibility to do the right thing he had thought only of himself and inadvertently gotten his uncle killed. Realizing all too late what a horrible fool he had been to not listen to his uncle Peter webbed the burglar up, left him for the police, and headed back home to his aunt.

Weeks passed, and summer vacation was in its twilight. Ben Parker's funeral was over and the tombstone was up, and Peter Parker had done some long, hard thinking over what to do with his life. When going through his things to get ready for the next school year Peter happened upon his old Spider-man costume, which he hadn't worn since that fateful day and had actually meant to throw it all away. But when he saw the costume he didn't experience the pain in the memories that he thought he would have, he only remembered Uncle Ben's last advice he gave to Peter--with great power there must also come great responsibility. And it was then that Peter knew what he had to do.

And that's how Spider-man came to be.

First Year
"This outfit I designed for him is sort of intended to be a "first year" or beginner outfit.  It's intended to look like something a teenager would have cobbled together.  Design wise it is kind of reminiscent of runners and extreme sports like climbing and parkour, which he obviously partakes.  I really liked the spider symbol I designed." - GM

Black Suit
"A quick and dirty variation of the previous, this is my interpretation of the black suit.  Conceptually, I imagine it similar to how it was in Ultimate Spider-Man again, a suit created by the fathers of Peter Parker and Eddie Brock.  I really wanted it to look both like a suit proper, but also alive.  Alien, but in a way unfamiliar." - GM

Red and Blues
"Remember way back when I uploaded my initial two Spider-man designs?  I said that the initial one was merely a "year one" costume, and that he would eventually replace it with a more traditional outfit?  Well this is it.  My concept is that he keeps his first year "rooftop runner" outfit until he gets the black costume.  As he was wearing his initial Spider-man outfit when the symbiote enveloped him, the symbiote destroyed his initial costume.  When he later rejects the symbiote Peter is left without a costume and has to create a new one for himself.  He designs a newer one that combines his initial red and blue spider design with a more form fitting onesie like the symbiote kind of was, and comes up with this.  So this could be said to be his "year two" costume.  The first major villain he uses it against I'm thinking would probably be Venom, just for the timing sense.  Peter would continue to modify the costume throughout the years, but this is a good start." - GM

Iron Spider
"After the fight with Morlun, Spider-man's costume was trashed.  Right around this time is when the Scarlet Spider becomes Jessica Drew and starts acting as the government agency's "Spider-woman," so the agency decides to give Peter this costume as a replacement.  It's fairly advanced and has a lot of features his standard suit doesn't, including underarm gliding wings like Jessica has on hers (which I didn't depict here).  No extra robot arms though.  But anyway, Peter sticks with this suit for a while post Morlun until he fights the Speed Demon for the first time.  The bizarre energy the Speed Demon gives off scrambles the suit's systems a bit, and it's through this that Peter learns that the government was actually keeping tabs on him through the suit without his knowledge.  So he reverse engineers some of the tech in the suit, including the surveillance gizmos (which flips to spy on the agents), ditches this suit, and makes a new suit for himself." - GM

Trivia

 * The origin is a mix of the Spider-Man (2002) movie origin and the one from the Ultimate Spider-Man comics. Additionally, the formative period takes place over the summer as a nod to the Spectacular Spider-Man show.