by Peter David
The frightened little girl in Gwen Stacy now irrationally wondered where her father was, and if he was going to make good on his promise.
Half a dozen police cars were already on the scene when police captain George Stacy leaped out of his vehicle. He was tall, with an angular face and eyes that alternated between being kind and understanding or fiercely penetrating and threatening, depending upon whether he was dealing with a victim or a suspected criminal.
Now they were filled only with concern.
A police officer, DeFalco, rushed up to him. “They got some kind of short up there, and they can’t shut down the crane.”
“Get Con Ed on the phone,” Captain Stacy ordered. “Have them kill the power to the whole block.”
“Yes, sir!”
“And get me a rescue team up there!” he shouted.
People screamed as debris started hitting the streets. The crowd, pressing forward like curious sheep to get a better look, almost stampeded trying to get back out of the way, as various pieces of office furniture tumbled from high above and either crashed to the pavement or ricocheted off parked cars. Car alarms howled in protest as the vehicles’ roofs and hoods were crushed by plummeting furniture.
The crowd scampered backward. Stacy looked at the falling debris and thought, Dear God, please, no bodies.
Dear God, please, let’s see some bodies.
Fresh-faced, short-cropped-blond Eddie Brock, camera equipment hanging from a strap around his neck, with an expression like a starving dog seeing fresh meat dangled in front of him, came rolling up to the site of the crane emergency in a yellow cab. He’d practically had to throw himself in the taxi’s path to grab it.
Anyone else would have considered it a fluke that Brock, tossing back drinks in a local bar, had seen the unfolding crisis on a news report and realized it was only ten blocks away. But Eddie Brock didn’t believe in luck—he believed in destiny, and he further believed that he was destined for greatness. And no cab with the pathetic excuse of being off duty was going to deter him from getting over to the scene of an accident as fast as humanly possible, camera at the ready.
As he clambered out of the cab, telling the driver to keep the change, he slapped his Daily Bugle identification on his sweater so that the police could tell at a glance that he was not one of the mere masses. He was a man with a job to do, same as they had. With any luck, neither of them would get in each other’s way while they were doing it.
Brock approached the scene with a very different mental attitude from Captain Stacy’s—he was looking for the most dramatic shots. He heard someone shouting, “Get that taxi out of here!” but the cab was already on its way out. Brock sidestepped a police rescue team and brought his camera up, looking for something truly juicy. He fired off several quick shots of the girder flapping around in midair, but he knew even as he did so that it was boring. The almighty newspaper axiom was if it bleeds, it leads. The ideal situation would be to get a shot of someone plummeting to his or her death. That was page-one material. That was the stuff that Pulitzers were made of.
Never once did Eddie Brock question the ethics or morality of his way of thinking. Why should he? It wasn’t as if he had set these events into motion. People were going to die or not as the fates decreed. But there was no escaping that pictures of their plunging demise were going to be incredibly memorable. The most memorable pictures in the world depicted innocent people suffering, like the famous shot of that screaming, naked Vietnamese girl fleeing her burning village. Eddie Brock desperately wanted his own piece of immortality, and if it came at the expense of someone else’s mortality, well… he could live with that.
Scanning the building exterior, he was suddenly certain he saw a tiny form high above. It wasn’t falling, but it was on the verge of doing so. He pulled out his extreme telephoto lens, brought it up to his trained eye, and zoomed in on what now appeared to be a helpless blonde fighting for the last few seconds of her life.
Good. That was good. Dying females were even more compelling than dying males, and this looked to be a gorgeous one too—
He lowered the camera, all the blood draining from his face.
“My God, that’s Gwen!”
Shock pounded through his brain. No longer was this some anonymous woman whose death might, if photographed properly, help make his career. This was Gwen Stacy… his Gwen.
Briefly, he considered not taking the picture.
Then he brought the camera back up to his eye and refocused.
He watched in helpless frustration, but snapping shots the entire time, as bits of metal started flying past Gwen’s head. The rivets that connected the window frame to the building were popping out one by one. Suddenly Gwen opened her mouth and was undoubtedly screaming. Eddie couldn’t hear it, of course, but he saw her mouth open wide as in the famous Munch painting, and then the metal frame tore away from the building. It swung thirty feet outward and left Gwen dangling high above the intersection. There was no way she was going to be able to hold on, and nowhere for her to go even if she managed to do so.
Brock’s mind was blank. He was entirely on autopilot as he continued to make a visual diary of Gwen Stacy’s last moments. He was so absorbed with what he was seeing that when he heard a triumphant whoop of joy from the crowd, he assumed it to be people who were excited over witnessing an imminent death. Sick bastards. I don’t know how people can live with themselves.
All the while he kept shooting.
Gwen’s fingertips slipped from the girder, and with a shriek, she started to fall.
She won’t be alive when she hits the ground. A fall from that height… she’ll be dead long before. It’ll be merciful. Quick. On film forever. You’ll be immortal, Gwen. Even though you’ll be dead, I’ll make sure you’re immortalized.
A flash of red and blue hurtled across Brock’s field of vision, blocking out his shot. Confused, Eddie switched from a tight angle to wide… and was astounded to see that Gwen was in the arms of Spider-Man.
He realized belatedly that the crowd had been responding to the sight of the web slinger hurtling through the air and intercepting Gwen. Spider-Man scooped her up, and she threw her arms around him.
Everything had happened so quickly that it had been barely seconds between the time that Brock had shouted, “My God, that’s Gwen,” and an older-looking, uniformed cop approached him with a strange look on his face. Brock fully expected the cop to try to shoo him away from the scene.
Instead the policeman said, “Gwen?” Not understanding, Brock simply nodded in confirmation, and the cop grabbed the camera from Brock. The strap was still looped around Eddie’s neck, nearly causing him to strangle as the stranger peered through the lens to see for himself. The cop gasped and said in confirmation upon seeing her, “That’s my daughter!”
Brock made a gargling noise, pointing at the strap that was cutting off his air, and the cop promptly released his hold. As Eddie cleared his throat, the officer stared at him in confusion. “Who are you?”
“Eddie Brock Jr., sir,” Brock managed to say. He smoothed the front of his sweater. “I’m dating your daughter.” He forced a smile as Captain Stacy simply stared at him as if he were a new type of fungus. “She’s told me all about you.”
“Really. She hasn’t mentioned you at all,” Captain Stacy said, not sounding particularly condescending. He was simply stating it as fact, attributing nothing to it in his voice. It was still enough to make Eddie feel cut off at the knees.
Apparently giving Brock no further thought, Captain Stacy headed toward where Spider-Man was descending to street level. Spider-Man set Gwen gently down upon the ground. She almost toppled over from a combination of dizziness and, most likely, fear. Not fear of Spider-Man: she was gazing at him with awe and amazement. Certainly the near-death experience itself, however, was enough to make anyone woozy. But before she took a spill, her father was there, catching her by one arm and supporting her. She looked in wonderment at him and said in an almost dre
amlike voice, “I knew you wouldn’t let me fall.”
Suddenly Spider-Man was leaping skyward and began spinning some sort of webbing net directly above the crowd. Brock didn’t understand why, and then a hail of concrete descended upon them from above. Scattered debris from the crumbled floor high overhead continued to rain down, and the hastily spun web held firm as the wreckage fell harmlessly on it. It sagged a bit under the weight but didn’t break. It was impossible to say how many fatalities there would have been if Spider-Man hadn’t adroitly protected the bystanders.
Satisfied that the people on the ground were safe, Spider-Man landed on a lamppost and stared up at the crane, which was still moving out of control. He was actually scratching his head, trying to figure out the best way to approach the problem… when every light on the street suddenly went out. The power shutdown caused a sound that was almost like a body’s great exhalation of relief, and then the runaway crane came to a slow, grinding halt. A ragged cheer arose from the crowd.
Eddie Brock quickly made his way over to where Captain Stacy was steadying his daughter. Brock had never seen any man look so relieved in his entire life. The moment he drew within earshot, he called to Gwen,
“Beautiful! Pulitzer Prize!” He tapped his camera. “Wait until you see that shot, Gwen. The light on your hair was golden.”
Gwen gave him that same Who are you? look that her father had given him only moments before. Only then did it occur to Eddie Brock that he had just admitted to snapping shots of Gwen during what had seemed to be her tragic and violent death. Perhaps that wasn’t the smartest thing to be crowing about.
Spider-Man dropped lightly to the ground near them, turned to Gwen and asked, “Are you okay?” Even his voice wasn’t what Brock had anticipated from a bigger-than-life hero. He had thought Spider-Man would have some deep, classic, booming hero voice, like a Shakespearean actor or something. Instead Spider-Man just sounded like… like some guy.
Gwen, however, did not appear to be disappointed by either his voice or his height. Instead, with a look that bordered on adoration, she said, “I’m fine. Thank you, Spider-Man.”
Desperate to insert himself into the moment, Brock called out, “Hold it, Spidey! Smile!”
Spider-Man turned and looked in his direction as Brock snapped away. “Are you smiling?” Brock asked.
Spider-Man continued to stare at him.
“Just kidding,” Brock said, feeling foolish and not knowing why he did. He squared his shoulders and, as he continued to take pictures, said, “Name’s Eddie Brock. I’ll be taking shots of you for the Bugle from now on.”
Spider-Man tilted his head slightly, like a curious dog. “What about that guy, Peter… what’s his name?”
“Strictly amateur,” Brock replied dismissively. “Wouldn’t know an f-stop from a bus stop. His stuff makes you look bloated. Little chunky.”
Spider-Man appeared to consider this, then he fired a webline and swung off across the cityscape. A huge, rousing cheer went up as he departed.
None of them saw Spider-Man, several blocks away, stop on a ledge in front of a window and study his full profile in reflection. He placed his hand flat on his stomach, then sucked in his gut.
“Chunky?” he muttered, and decided right then and there that this Brock guy was not going to be on his Christmas card list.
In the offices of the Daily Bugle, Betty Brant—secretary/ personal assistant to editor and publisher J. Jonah Jameson—was riding herd on a typical day of barely controlled insanity.
Jonah was in one of his moods, which was to be expected since it was a day ending in the letter y. Just to make Betty’s life even more exciting, Jonah’s recent physical had not been a happy experience. Jameson’s wife had provided Betty with a list of things that Jonah should avoid, according to doctor’s orders. The word stress was at the top, triple underlined. Betty had laughed uncontrollably until she realized that Mrs. Jameson was dead serious. Betty pointed out that, in her defense, Jonah’s wife had unwisely chosen to present the list on April 1st and Betty had reasonably concluded it was a joke.
So now Betty was the official and unwilling monitor of Jonah’s food and mood and was starting to think that she should ask for a raise that was commensurate with what was being expected of her… like, say, a million dollars a year.
Ted Hoffman, the much beleaguered head of promotion, strode toward Betty’s desk with the jaunty manner he always exhibited before going in to see Jameson—a direct contrast to the way he typically acted upon departing. “Boss is gonna love this campaign!” he announced as he breezed past.
Betty was always impressed: Hoffman was like that bop ‘im bag she had had as a kid. The four-foot-high, inflatable punching toy with the weighted bottom and the clown face painted on. No matter how hard you slugged it, it would always roll back to standing and have that same determined smile. That was Hoffman. However many times Jameson flattened him, he rolled with it and came right back next time for more abuse.
Moments later, the fast-moving form of Eddie Brock tried to make it past Betty’s desk. He had a portfolio tucked under his arm. As if his going into Jameson’s office were a done deal, he said chipperly, “Hey, Betty-Betty-Bo-Betty…”
Betty generally tried to be as accommodating as possible, but in Brock’s short time with the newspaper he had gotten under Betty’s skin with amazing ease. The most aggravating thing was that he wasn’t even trying; he thought he was being charming. Nor did it help that he kept trying to set her name to various songs. Last time it was “Betty My Love,” and now it was “The Name Game,” of all things. She hated that damn song.
“He’s busy,” she said more curtly than she would normally have.
As if he’d always intended to do so, Brock skidded to a halt in front of her desk and said suavely, “Oh, I’m here to talk to you, beautiful.”
Points for effort. She’d give him that much. Nothing fazed the guy. Her nostrils flared, and she frowned. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s called Nice ‘n Easy.” He made as if to sniff the air around her. “What’s on you?”
“It’s called Go Away,” she replied, although not without a small smile.
Brock was undeterred. “Where’ll we go? China?” He made a clicking sound with his tongue that was intended to be suggestive.
Before Betty could tell him where to go, the thoroughly expected bellowing emerged from behind Jameson’s door. The door was thrown open, and a terrified Hoffman scampered backward out of the office. He almost tripped, but Brock caught him. Betty was about to remind Hoffman that he was no longer carrying the easel that he’d brought into the office when Jameson appeared in the doorway, mustache bristling. He tossed Hoffman’s easel after his fleeing form while shouting, “That’s the dumbest idea you’ve ever had! And you’ve had some doozies!”
“Blood pressure!” Betty called out, trying to get her voice over Jonah’s outraged roaring.
Ignoring her, which was certainly nothing new, Jameson turned on his heel and headed back into his office. Seizing the opportunity, Brock headed toward the open door.
“Hey!” Betty shouted, half out of her chair. “Where are you going? I said he’s busy!” She moved so quickly that she banged her knee on the underside of the desk and grabbed it as pain shot through her leg. Just to make things even better, the phone rang. With a moan, she sank back into her chair, picked it up, and said, “J. Jonah Jameson’s office,” through gritted teeth.
The hell with it. If Brock wants to be face-to-face with Jameson that badly, let him. I hope he gets what he deserves.
Brock, buoyed by boundless determination, strode into Jameson’s office armed with his portfolio, displaying the confidence of a lion tamer facing down the big cats with nothing but a chair and a whip. In this case, the big cats were Jameson and city editor Robbie Robertson, who already seemed deep in conversation when Brock walked in. Jameson’s head thrust forward in a manner not unlike a cobra’s, and he glared at Eddie. “Who are you?” he
demanded.
In a low voice, Robbie said, “You hired him last week. Freelance.”
“I did?” Jameson sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“It’s Brock, sir.”
“Stupid name for an aftershave.”
“That’s my name.”
“They named you for an aftershave?” asked Jameson, now hopelessly confused.
Brock took a step back, both mentally and physically, and said, “I’m Edward Brock, Jr.”
“Who?”
Since the introduction seemed to be a lost cause, Brock pulled a photograph out of the portfolio and slid it across the desk. Looking for something to steer the conversation—if one could call it that—away from his name, Brock looked at Jameson and said, “Wow, can I just say I really like that shirt? Here…” He pointed to the photograph. “Crane accident. Check out the light source.”
Jameson slid the photo over to Robbie and glanced at his sleeves. “He likes my shirt,” he said with a touch of wonderment, as if no one had ever complimented his wardrobe… which, Brock had to admit, was probably the case.
Robbie barely had to look at it to recognize the quality of it. “We can use it,” he said firmly.
“How much do you want for it?” demanded Jameson, all business.
“Whatever you think is fair, sir.”
“What? Fair?” Jameson glowered, clearly suspicious that this was a trick response or perhaps the opening salvo of a lengthy negotiation. “What’s your name again?”
“Brock, sir,” sighed Eddie. “Edward Brock, Jr.” He enunciated it slowly, hoping that it would imprint on Jameson’s gray matter this time.
In the brief silence that followed, as Jameson studied the picture and obviously calculated an amount that he believed the picture was worth—and then would no doubt halve—Brock heard a brief exchange on the other side of the office door. A voice said, “Hi, Betty,” followed by Betty quietly replying, “Hi, Pete. You better get in there. New guy.”
