Backing up: In 1962, Stan Lee was a successful writer of comic books, with The Fantastic Four already on his list of greatest hits at Marvel Comics, when he started thinking of creating something new. That turned out to be the New York City crime fighter Spider-Man, and while this column has traditionally hewed fast to actual crimes committed by real people, this departure seemed worthwhile.

Spider-Man’s secret identity was a teenager, Peter Parker, orphaned as a boy and living with his aunt in Forest Hills, Queens, across the East River from Mr. Lee’s Manhattan office.

His first appearance took place in Amazing Fantasy No. 15, in 1962. He would go on to greater heights, with countless spinoff comic books, toys, television shows and blockbuster movies in the decades that followed.

A girl named Phyllis grew up without a thought in her head about Spider-Man, and enough to deal with otherwise. She was born in 1968 with Blount’s disease, and struggled to walk with bowed legs. She grew up and became a mother of five, and Jamel is her baby. Along the way, she suffered from kidney failure, knocking her out of the work force — she had been a beautician, among other jobs — and into a motorized wheelchair she uses to leave the building.

Jamel has autism, his early years like a movie about childhood, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes fast-forward, a hyper blur, but never the right speed, and always on mute. He did not speak until he was in preschool, when he began working with the Kennedy Child Study Center, which helps children with intellectual disabilities. He wandered away from parties, uncomfortable with the noise.