A Little Guilty

New supervillains continued to emerge, but they were mostly small-time troublemakers. At most, they caused limited panic in certain parts of the city before being easily stopped by the superheroes who arrived in time, becoming dinner-table gossip for the public.

Richard had agents keeping watch on several of New York's most prominent and suspicious potential supervillains. Though he was usually too lazy to deliberately concern himself with such matters, it would naturally be best if they could prevent the casualties and sacrifices these supervillains might cause.

Hydra agents had infiltrated the Osborn Group to keep a close eye on Norman Osborn's every move. Richard felt that if anyone was likely to turn evil and make a serious mess of things, Osborn would definitely be the first choice.

Yet before he could wait for Osborn to go dark, Doctor Otto Octavius—better known as Doctor Octopus—who had been quietly doing research at home, was the first to come out and cause trouble.

It was the same old Marvel story, nothing particularly new. In short, it was another laboratory accident. Doctor Octavius had devoted himself daily to developing new energy sources, using four mechanical arms connected to his nervous system to assist with his work.

Then an accident occurred during an experiment. His new energy source went out of control and erupted, causing the cores of the mechanical arms to fuse with his spine, making them impossible to remove. The doctor's personality was also drastically altered by the machinery. He became crazed and reckless, and in a moment of madness, decided to rob a bank to raise funds to continue his experiments.

That might have been one thing anywhere else in the world, but doing it in New York City, where superheroes were everywhere, was practically suicide.

Sure enough, Little Spider and Gwen