Other (Spider-Totem)'s History
Origin
The Other is a powerful totemic spider-deity linked to the Web of Life and Destiny and though its exact purpose is unknown it bestows its receptacles with greatly augmented powers and can transform them into a humanoid spider-monster when they are in mortal danger or enraged.
The Spider-Man of Earth-616 was chosen by the Great Weaver to be the receptacle of the Other when he became Spider-Man. However, Spider-Man subconsciously rejected and suppressed the spider side of himself until he encountered the Inheritor Morlun, who fed on the essence of totemic avatars. After vanquishing Morlun and becoming aware of his totemic abilities for the first time, Peter Parker began to weaken - discovering he was dying of an unknown mystical affliction - and concurrently had prophetic visions of his death at the hands of the Morlun, who had returned from death. When Morlun finally made his move and mortally wounded Peter, the Other took over Peter's body and killed the Inheritor. After Peter seemingly died from his injuries, the Other transported his body to the Brooklyn Bridge and spun a cocoon.
The Other confronted Peter's psyche within his mindscape, claiming to be the manifestation of his totemic spider-powers and telling him that his human side had died, but that he could return to life if he embraced his spider side. Peter reluctantly agreed, and emerged from the cocoon completely healed of his prior wounds and with enhanced powers - thereby "conquering" death.
Shortly after Peter's resurrection, the Other manifested as a swarm of pirate spiders and attacked Stark Tower to eat Peter's old shed skin, cocooning the top of Stark Tower in webbing. When he arrived, Spider-Man discovered that the spiders had used his shed skin to form a humanoid body similar to the Gatekeeper, albeit being distinctly female in shape. Spider-Man attempted to fight her using his augmented powers, but the Other's manifestation retreated, easily ripping through a vibranium-reinforced wall. Declaring herself to be Spider-Man's "Other," the entity explained to Peter that Morlun should have killed him, but the Great Weaver had resurrected him. The female entity stated that another spider-totem had opposed this and sent her to kill Peter and restore the natural order. Calling herself "Ero" after the genus of spider comprising her body, the female creature claimed she was Peter's opposite, his nemesis and his significant other; warning him to "evolve or die" before escaping down a drain. Ero retreated to an old church across the street from Stark Tower, where she spun a cocoon and took on a human form that was the opposite of Peter in every way: female to his male, dark-skinned to his light, and blonde to his brown hair. Sometime later, Spider-Man met up with Beast at the old church, where they discovered Ero's empty cocoon.
Miss Arrow
Having taken on human form, Ero assumed the name "Miss Arrow" and became the school nurse at Midtown High School in order to monitor and test Peter.[3] Arrow quickly became infatuated with Flash Thompson, choosing him for mating because he had been in a coma for months and the fact he hadn't "had his oats" in all that time meant he had built up a tremendous amount of tantric energy. Once Ero shoved her egg sac down his throat, Flash would give birth to thousands of Ero's children, but die in the process as they ate him from the inside out.
Civil War
When Midtown High was attacked by three Mysterios, Miss Arrow found herself in contact with Quentin Beck. Beck implied that she was more than an innocent bystander, mentioning that he knew about Miss Arrow's "superiors," and that he could easily see through her charade. He told her that she must work to keep Peter at the school because his superiors wanted it, and so did hers; though Arrow claimed to not know what he was talking about. Beck vanished, although Arrow later found herself face-to-face with Francis Klum. Klum attempted to take her hostage, telling that she was to become a pawn in a much larger game. Angered, Arrow revealed her true nature to him by extending large stingers from her wrists. Telling Klum she was no one's pawn, she plunged one of them into his chest. Before she could finish him off, he teleported. Arrow later convinced Spider-Man to stay at the school, a task which was complicated when Peter became a fugitive for going against the Registration Act, as he had to use an image distorter to disguise himself as "Ben Reilly" to continue his career at the school.When Debra Whitman got into an altercation with Flash, Arrow moved to attack her with her stingers but was distracted when Betty Brant remarked that she and Flash used to date. Despite being tempted to attack Betty as well, Arrow shook her hand instead, making the veiled threat to eat her.
Flash and Betty Brant went on a date, which clashed with Arrow's plans for Flash. When Betty had to use the restroom, Ero emerged from the toilet as thousands of spiders, frightening Betty. When Flash and the restaurant manager came to the scene after Betty had left the bathroom, only some cocaine and a straw were found, making the manager think Betty had used the cocaine. Later at Midtown High, Peter Parker was talking to Flash when Arrow walked into the room. Peter barely activated the image inducer in time to conceal his true face from her. Peter found it strange that his spider-sense hadn't warned him of Arrow's approach, since in the past it had always warned him when there was a risk of somebody seeing him and learning his secret identity.
Arrow returned to the church where she had moulted, where she communed with a spider-totem acting as her overseer. The spider-totem warned her that her physical form would perish if she did not reproduce and use her mate as sustenance to sustain herself, and Arrow informed it that she had chosen Flash Thompson. Spying on Flash Thompson during a date, Arrow complained about how easily-attracted women were to him before staggering in pain and remarking that she needed to act quickly. Betty Brant and Peter used a search engine to search for "spider" and "arrow". None of their hits seemed relevant, but Peter noticed that the search engine was asking if they meant to search for "spider" and "ero". Peter remembered the pirate spiders that had eaten his shed skin and came together in a humanoid form. He noted that one type of pirate spider was of the genus "ero", which sounded similar to "Arrow".
Arrow, in the meantime, tracked Flash down at a bowling alley where he has gone with his friend, professional bowler Kelly Kulick, and the bowling team from Midtown High. Arrow insisted that the two of them leave immediately, but Flash was reluctant to simply run off and leave Kelly and his students behind. Desperate to mate and feed on Flash, Arrow attempted to force him to accompany her, and when Kulick became annoyed with her behavior, Arrow gave her a violent shove. Flash, shocked, tried to see if his friend was hurt but Arrow grabbed him and continued to insist that they leave, telling him she was giving him "a singular honor." Flash was surprised that her grip was too strong for him to break free. When Flash expressed his displeasure with her actions and told her to go away, Arrow grabbed him by the throat. Before Arrow could drag him away by force, she was attacked from behind by Kulick, and responded by shooting thousands of spiders from her mouth that swarmed over Kulick. At that point, Spider-Man arrived on the scene and hit her from behind. Then she transformed into a stream of spiders which crawled into one of the gutters and left the building.
The spiders that made up Arrow emerged outside, shooting up like a geyser from beneath the pickup truck Flash and Kelly Kulick had gotten into. The truck was propelled high into the air by the spiders. Flash commanded Arrow to at least let Kelly go, and she obliged by opening the truck's door and causing Kelly to fall toward the ground. Kulick was saved from death by Spider-Man, who then swung over to the truck to deal with Arrow. But by the time he got there, she had escaped into the sewer with Thompson.
Ero took Flash to the church where she emerged from her cocoon and, after webbing him to the ceiling, removed an egg-sack from her stomach. Spider-Man, remembering the cocoon he had witnessed in the church earlier, tracked Ero down before she could impregnate Flash, plucking the egg sac from Ero's hand and sticking into a nearby wall. Ero dove from the ceiling to attack him, stingers shooting from her wrists. Spider-Man leaped to meet her with his own stingers drawn.
As they battled, Ero revealed that Spider-Man's stingers only appeared when he faced someone whose being was rooted in primal forces of chaos and darkness. Ero then managed to stab Spider-Man in the shoulder, drugging him and slowing him down. Having the upper hand, Ero decided to impregnate Spider-Man instead of Flash, her logic being that while his offspring would be considerably less than Flash's, it would in the end ensure her enemy's demise. Just as Ero was about to implant her egg-sack into Spider-Man, Betty Brant arrived and blasted the egg sac with silver bullets fired from a shotgun. Enraged at the loss of her egg, Ero reformed and swore revenge against Betty. As Ero tried to escape, Spider-Man followed. Ero berated him for not leaving her be, but when she taunted Spider-Man by bringing up that Aunt May had been mortally wounded as a result of him unmasking himself he used his stingers to cut her web-line and send her crashing into the Central Park Zoo aviary, where she was devoured alive by birds. Only a single spider remained, which Spider-Man stepped on contemptuously. With its manifestation destroyed, the Other continued to indwell Spider-Man and augment his powers until the day history was rewritten.
One More Day
After Mephisto rewrote history, Spider-Man's encounters with Morlun proceeded as they had before, with the Other indwelling Peter and killing the Inheritor. However, when the Other offered to resurrect Peter in exchange for embracing his inner spider, Peter instead rejected it out of fear of what he would become. Nevertheless returned to life, Peter eventually cast it out; losing the augmented powers it had granted him, though he somehow retained his original totemic spider-powers.
Bereft of its intended avatar, the Other instead chose Peter Parker's clone, Kaine, as its new receptacle; resurrecting him after the Kravinoffs killed him and kick starting his metamorphosis into the Man-Spider-like form dubbed "Tarantula" by the Jackal. After being restored to human form, Kaine used the Other's wrist-stingers to tear through the Spider-Queen's head, mortally wounding her.
When Kaine was killed facing Carlos Lobo and his sister, his body was swarmed by thousands of spiders, which wrapped him in a cocoon. In a vision not unlike the one Peter had following his death at Morlun's hands, the Other confronted Kaine - impersonating his loved ones and the Jackal before assuming the form of the Gatekeeper and then Ero. The Other told him that it had been chosen by the Great Weaver to empower Peter Parker and revealed itself as the spider-totem that had previously resurrected Peter, and after he rejected it and cast it out it had resurrected Kaine after his murder at the hands of the Kravinoff family. It offered to resurrect him a second time if he agreed to embrace his inner spider and become its receptacle, paraphrasing its earlier conversation with Peter. Kaine initially refused and attempted to kill the Other, but stopped when he realized that Aracely still needed his help and that he had no choice but to embrace the Other. As a result, Kaine, like Peter before him, was reborn with a more arachnid-like appearance and augmented powers.
The Other prevented telepaths like Aracely from accessing Kaine's mind, manifesting as a Man-Spider-like monster and attacking them.It also granted Kaine immunity to Carrion, violently ejecting him from Kaine's body and mind when he tried to infect him at the behest of the Jackal.When Shathra returned, Kaine was forced to tap into the Other's power to deal with her.
Spider-Verse
When attacked by Daemos of the Inheritors, Kaine retaliated by extending spines from his body, causing Daemos recognized to recognize him as the Other's avatar. During the Inheritors' hunt of spiders, Old Man Spider attempted to explain the nature of the Other to the Superior Spider-Man, but only got as far as it being a unique, extremely powerful totemic entity before Otto dismissed his statement as superstition. After being mortally wounded, Old Man Spider told Peter that the receptacles for the Other, the Bride, and the Scion needed to be protected at all costs.[4] Following Ben Reilly's death, Kaine swore to avenge him and traveled to Loomworld, where he unleashed the Other's full power and transformed into a massive Man-Spider. In this form, he was able to hold his own against Solus, Morlun, and Daemos, easily killing the Inheritors' patriarch. However, this spurred Morlun into a rage and he ripped off one of Kaine's limbs and impaled him through the throat, killing him.
During the ritual to ensure the destruction of the Spider Totems, Morlun made a cut in Kaine's still-transformed body, spilling his blood onto the Web of Life and Destiny. He and the Master Weaver both claimed that in doing so he had severed the Other's connection to the Great Web, making it so that the Other would never again be able to take a host. While Kaine was reborn a third time, the Inheritors' ritual seemingly killed the Other, stripping him of the enhanced powers it had bestowed upon him.
The Other was later revealed to still be alive, and selected the Peter Parker of Earth-982 as its next avatar, resurrecting him in the process.
