That title took longer to come up with than it really should have considering I don't have any outstanding mental defect. I spent a little while trying to be clever by tying it into the Noir theme, but in the end you have to give it up to giving the audience a clue regarding what the Hell you're talking about.
On the cover, we see our hero. Now, if you played Spider Man Shattered Dimensions, you may not realize that Noir Spidey has a gun. I can imagine they didn't include that in the game because it would've been too difficult to balance (it probably wasn't a ratings dispute; the X Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games have characters with guns, after all). Anyway, he's clad head-to-toe in black leather, has creepy goggles and stitches on his mask, and he's brandishing his revolver. Just to give you some indication of the over-arching tone of the story.
Personally, I find it interesting that despite being the only character in any of the Noir books (well, of the ones I've read) to possess actual superpowers, Pete looks more Sam Fischer than Superfly.
Anyway. The year is January, 1933. Police rush into the Daily Bugle building, demanding to be shown J. Jonah Jameson's office. Why? He just called the precinct saying he'd been shot. They burst into the office, discovering Jameson dead from a gunshot and Spider-Man crouched on his desk, holding a gun. As if to further drive home the point that this ain't yo daddy's Spider-Man, this is our title page.
Spider-Man is quick to note that this isn't what it looks like, but the cops aren't hearing it. One warns the others to be wary, because he heard talk that Spider-Man could do some weird stuff. He's right; Spidey shoots a black web-like net out of his wrist, binding the poor guy to the floor. He tries to make the most out of their momentary distraction by running for it, but one cop keeps firing at him until he's out of sight. One of them remarks that it looks like Jameson was right about that freak. He must've been tickled pink to know it.
Our narrator, Ben Urich, takes us back to three weeks previous. Jameson had sent him to a local shantytown to get heartbreaking photos of the downtrodden, ostensibly to raise awareness regarding their plight. One of the first things he notices (besides an old bum using the Bugle to keep himself warm by strapping it to his body) is May Parker spewing anti-government rhetoric. Urich says he'd heard of her, but this is the first time he's seen her in the flesh. She's really something.
May's quite literal soapboxing is interrupted by "The Goblin's muscle", the Enforcers: Montana, Fancy Dan, and the Ox (These guys are probably the only characters to whom no changes needed to be made at all for them to fit in the noir setting, as it happens). Fancy Dan tells Ox to get her down, but May's nephew Peter takes exception to that. Ox starts roughing him up and Montana snares May in his trusty lasso. Urich sees a golden opportunity, and snaps a photo of the scene. He uses this as a bargaining chip - if the Enforcers don't want to be plastered all over the front page of the Bugle tomorrow, they better back off. Ox proposes an alternate arrangement wherein he smashes Urich's camera and breaks his fingers so he can't type up the story, but Fancy Dan reminds him that he's off limits. The Enforcers ease up, begrudgingly.
Urich helps young Peter off the ground and gives him and May a ride home. Watching, the Enforcers confer on their plan from this point. Are they going to give Urich what he deserves? Fancy Dan certainly thinks so. "Soon enough, Ox... soon enough.", he says as he opens up a fold-out knife.
Peter and May run the Bowery Welfare Center, a place that gives the homeless a hot meal and a place to come in from the cold. Peter says that's a little too much like socialism for some people. He points to the chain link fences around the building, telling Urich they had to put them there after the Goblin's mob killed his Uncle Ben. May says he doesn't know that's what happened, but Peter's positive of it. May goes inside to go to bed for the night, leaving Peter to talk with Urich alone. Peter moans about the gangsters coming after them a little more. In his narration, Urich says there was something about Peter... his sheer, stubborn, righteous anger. He asks if Peter's allowed out past midnight. Narrator Urich theorizes that he wanted to show Pete reality for a change and watch the fire in his eyes fade away.
In any case, he takes Pete to "the hottest speakeasy in town": The Black Cat. HOTCHIMAMA I forgot about the fetish gear catgirl waitresses. Anyway, as they enter they're greeted by Felicia Hardy, the owner of the place and the only woman Urich ever asked to marry him. "She turned me down. God knows why." She opens up a table for them and they order their drinks. Pete gets bold and orders a whiskey. Felicia speaks up about his age, but he says he'll show her his birth certificate if she shows him her liquor license. He's got quite a mouth on him. Urich says he gets it from his aunt.
Anyway, they sit down and get to business. Pete asks about that "off limits" thing back at the shantytown, but Urich brushes it off as "power of the press, I guess." Then he asks why he brought him here. Urich says he likes Peter and his Aunt May, and he doesn't want them to get hurt. So he figured he'd show Pete reality. He shows him the mayor of New York City two-timing his wife, the chief of the Vice Squad hobnobbing with the guy who runs half the brothels in the city, and an industrialist whose sweatshops were a frequent target of Uncle Ben's protests... Peter's lucky to see this next one, because he just came in: Norman Osborn. The Goblin. Accompanied by Fancy Dan, Sergei Kravinoff (wearing a tiger-striped suit with a monkey perched on his shoulder!), and the Vulture, Osborn mixes with the crowd.
Peter wanted to know why Osborn was gunning for his family? He's freelance. He works for the highest bidder. The police don't want to be seen suppressing free speech, so they hire local thugs to do their dirty work for them. The brothel guy made the deal, the industrialist put up the fee, the Vice Squad chief made sure the cops were looking the other way, and the mayor just sat back and took his percentage. "It's a tangled web, Peter."
Pete asks why they call him the Goblin. Nobody knows - he's a man of many mysteries. Like why he recruited his inner circle from circuses and freak shows. The Enforcers were all carnies, Kraven was an animal trainer... the Vulture was a geek. You don't ever want to cross the Vulture. Fancy Dan notices Urich, and Osborn comes to their table to socialize. He mocks Peter about Uncle Ben's death. Peter shouts at him and throws his drink in his face. The Vulture freaks out and bares his teeth, but the Goblin calms him. Urich thinks it's time to leave.
Felicia chews Urich out for bringing a fight into her place, and says Pete can come back when he's grown up. Urich, in turn, chastises Peter for "the stupidest single thing I have ever witnessed." Peter says it was worth it just for the look on Osborn's face. Urich is furious. Narrator Urich especially so; doesn't Peter get that he's the only reason he's still alive? He offers to take Peter home, but Pete's got something to say. He's not going to run away from his convictions just because somebody tells him he can't win. Urich asks if he really wants to do something.
Cut to the office of J. Jonah Jameson, where the esteemed editor in chief of the Daily Bugle is offering young Peter a job. Peter says what he really wants to do is study science, but he can't afford college fees. Jameson isn't having it. Do you know there's a married couple living in a cave in Central Park because they have nowhere else to go? That there are children starving in the middle of the richest nation to ever exist in the history of this planet? "There's a million sob stories out there, Parker. None of them are special until we make them special." That's where Peter comes in. He's to assist Urich in getting those certain pictures guaranteed to "make 'em weep." Toting his gear, setting up lights, getting his coffee, that sort of thing.
Narrator Urich says the fire, the anger he saw in Peter's eyes intensified with every injustice they witnessed. Peter reminded him of himself, really, when he was younger. Still full of idealism and the arrogance of youth... back when he thought he could change the world. At one point, Peter nearly vomits when they snap a pic of a recent suicide, still hanging from the ceiling, his wife weeping while clutching the note he left. This one was based on a tip off from a cop - the guy owed money to the Goblin and they were threatening his family. The note assured his wife that with him gone they'll leave them alone. But you know about the best intentions.
Peter opened up to Urich after that. He rants about how one day, someone's gonna talk and the Goblin's going to get what's coming to him. Then he talks about his uncle Ben's murder. They tied him up so he couldn't fight back and set wild dogs on him. Urich knew all about this, but he didn't know that Peter was the one who found the body. Back at home, Urich narrates about how some people are strong, and some are terribly weak as he shoots himself full of heroin. He says Peter had every reason to become a bitter asshole who didn't care about anything, but still he didn't. Urich, meanwhile, did, despite not going through half the hardship Peter's experienced in the last few months alone. This is intercut with scenes of Uncle Ben's vicious beating.
Urich says Peter was wrong about one thing. It wasn't dogs that tore up Uncle Ben. It was the Vulture. All those years of being locked in a cage and treated like an animal turned him into one. Somewhere along the line he developed a taste for human flesh. You may ask, how does Urich know this? "Because... God help me... I was there."
The first issue of Spider-Man Noir ends there, but the adventure and my continued embarrassment are only beginning! Tune in next time, blah blah I'm doing a really bad job of coming up with era-appropriate references.
