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It had been one of those days. Shocker decided to rob a bank dressed as a giant walking amp—don’t ask—and some low-rent thugs calling themselves the “Circuit Breakers” tried to overload the power grid. Just another Tuesday.

I webbed the last of them to a conveniently placed streetlight, leaving a note for the cops. “Handle with care! Batteries not included. – Spidey.” I shot a web-line and swung off, the city lights blurring beneath me. I had somewhere to be.

The little off-Broadway theater was packed. I slipped in through a skylight, clinging to the shadows of the rafters like the friendly neighborhood spider I am. Below, the stage was set with minimalist elegance. And there she was.

Mary Jane.

She was mid-monologue as a 19th-century queen, her voice ringing with regal authority, her posture impossibly straight. The audience was spellbound. I watched, my heart swelling with a pride so fierce it almost hurt.

Then came the first change. She stepped behind a simple Japanese-style screen for a mere second. There was no sound, no fuss. When she emerged, she was a gritty 1940s gumshoe, a trench coat draped over her shoulders, a fedora pulled low. She barked a line about a dame and a missing necklace. The crowd gasped, then burst into applause. They thought it was stage magic. The quickest costume change in history.

I knew better. I saw the subtle, almost imperceptible shimmer around the edges of the screen. I saw the way the very air seemed to flex for her.

She cycled through a dozen characters. A flamenco dancer whose heels clicked with fiery passion. A sci-fi android whose skin glinted metallic under the lights. A weeping opera singer whose tragic aria left not a single dry eye in the house.

Each transformation was flawless. Instantaneous. She didn’t just change clothes; she changed her essence. Her height, her build, the color of her eyes. She became each woman wholly, completely. And through it all, she never missed a beat, never flubbed a line. It was the performance of a lifetime, and only I knew the incredible truth behind the magic.

The final curtain call was a riot of applause. She took her bow—as herself, Mary Jane Watson, my wife—her human face flushed with exertion and triumph, beaming out at the adoring crowd. She’d done it. She’d used her impossible power to create pure art, and no …