Ultimate Spider-Man: Black Cat
Issue: #50
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Mark Bagley
Inker: Art Thibert
Colors: Transparency Digital

A feminine figure in tight clothing and flowing hair stands on a ledge on the Chrysler Building. She’s watching two people argue in a room below. Eventually they leave, turning out the lights. The woman smiles. She fires a barb into part of the building across the way; the barb is attached to a rope, which the woman slides down, landing on a roof below. Two security guards notice a rooftop alarm going off. The older guard sends the younger one up to investigate. The younger guard steps onto the roof, waving at the camera to reassure his colleague. The wind blows his hat off, and as he chases it, the woman enters the building through the roof door, closing it behind her. The younger guard calls his partner, distracting him from the hallway monitor showing the woman running by.

The woman is almost discovered by a custodian, but distracts her by tipping over a bucket and darting away behind the custodian’s back. The woman spray-paints the lenses of two security cameras. Finally she reaches her destination and breaks into an office. Spraying a mist into the room, she disables light sensors in front of a picture on the wall. The picture hides a safe, but the safe has no keyhole or handle. Searching the desk in the office, the woman pulls a red file folder out of a drawer, which releases the safe’s lock. The woman pulls a bundle out of the safe, and unwraps it to reveal a stone tablet with strange markings on it. This is what she’s looking for.

The two security guards enter the room and find the safe open. One of them trips on the carpet and his gun goes off, activating the sprinkler system. The woman escapes in the confusion – only to run into Spider-Man on the roof. She dives over the edge and Spider-Man dives after her, falling several stories before catching himself. The woman has been hanging onto the building with the claws on the fingers of her suit. She jumps back onto the roof and makes a break for it, only to have Spider-Man jump in front of her again. She and Spider-Man scuffle briefly, and she identifies herself as the Black Cat before fleeing. Spider-Man trips as he follower her. She throws him a smile over her shoulder and disappears into the night.

Later, Peter and Mary Jane are sitting in Peter’s basement. They begin to discuss the idea of Peter putting the Spider-Man costume away for a while and just being Peter. MJ is all right with the idea, and Peter finds it appealing. He turns the conversation to MJ’s relationship with her father. Her mother had caught him cheating on her, but he won’t leave. Peter promises he would never cheat on MJ, and the two kiss. Aunt May appears at the top of the stairs and asks them to come up.

MJ’s father is sitting in the Parkers’ kitchen. He’s been reading MJ’s diary, and some of the entries sound suspicious. After MJ storms out of the house in anger, her father reads an entry that talks about an incident at a bridge. It’s a description of her near murder by Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin, but her father doesn’t know that and confronts Peter about it, since he’s mentioned in the entry. Craig Watson forbids Peter from seeing or talking to MJ again. Aunt May demands that Watson leave. When she asks Peter about the entry, he tells her that MJ slipped and he caught her. Aunt May asks Gwen to come with her as she takes a walk past the Watson house to make sure things are all right there.

In the meantime, Peter catches a televised news report: amateur video recording shows Spider-Man and the Black Cat running across a rooftop. The newscaster is linking both of them to a series of robberies in Manhattan.

Submitted By: Seldes Katne