Once a year, at a single precise instant, our tilted, spinning planet reaches a state of geometric equilibrium, and the whole living world responds.

Spiders progress through three stages—egg, spiderling, and adult—without metamorphosis, growing instead through moulting, a process that leaves them briefly vulnerable. Spiderlings disperse through remarkable methods like ballooning, while adulthood brings reproduction and, often, death for males. This biological cycle, grounded in real science, offers a fitting metaphor for transformation, briefly echoed in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.