| HistoryText | - Origin
The Spider was, in reality, playboy Tom Hallaway. Hallaway had tired of seeing criminals have their own way harassing and murdering honest citizens, so he adopted the guise of The Spider to settle the score. Some say, however, that he did not become the Spider out of an altruistic motive, but rather because he was a nasty person in general - a smuggler, a kidnapper and a murderer - and used the guise of a superhero as a cover to help him eliminate the competition.
Though originally based in St. Louis, he was a member of the Ludlow clan from New England. The family inadvertently ran up against the Shade. The family had a history of ill-gotten gains, having originally amassed their vast wealth by killing off their partners in a business enterprise.
Freedom Fighters & Seven Soldiers of Victory
He was a member of both the Freedom Fighters and the Seven Soldiers of Victory. The final case of the Seven Soldiers had the Spider betraying them to their old enemy, the Iron Hand . The Spider killed the Vigilante's friend Billy Gunn, but was stopped by the Crimson Avenger's partner Wing, who went on to save the day against the Nebula Man .
Shade
With the only people who knew him to be a criminal gone, the Spider continued his heroic facade. He became the hero-in-residence of Keystone City after the Flash retired. Unfortunately, his Ludlow heritage caught up with him, as did The Shade. The Spider had been planning to face the Shade for quite a while and had a plan to defeat the immortal. He had saved fragments and shreds of The Shade's shadow substance with the intention to plant them on the scene of a double murder, that of Jay Garrick and his wife Joan. The Spider hoped to lessen The Shade's power by keeping him captive near a roaring fireplace, but the added light only increased the shadows, and The Shade created arrow-casting monsters that quickly turned The Spider into a pincushion of black arrows. The Shade got out in time to prevent the Garricks' murders, and even convinced his old enemy, The Flash, to leave him out of the spotlight on the case.
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