Long-Term Arrangements

At a mansion in Upstate New York, Ana Kravinoff enters the room where they have been keeping Madam Web prisoner for days. Web tries to resists Ana’s questions about the activities of Spider-Man. She forces the elderly precognitive to swallow a drugged spider that forces her to tell them what she sees….[1]

At that moment, Peter Parker has caught his roommate, Michele Gonzales, trying to stuff his things into the garbage disposal after he left them lying around the common areas of the apartment. When he stops her, she explains that she is being difficult after Peter has spent the past few days toying with his emotions.[2] Their current round of squabbling is interrupted by the arrival of Norah Winters who wants Peter’s advice after she quashed the story she was working on about Norman Osborn.[3] Thinking Peter has been two-timing her, Michele begins to pick a fight with Norah. The two are exchanging insults when Mary Jane arrives. Seeing that Peter is in the middle of something she leaves. Peter pleads with Mary Jane to come back, prompting Michele to get even angrier and storm off to her room. Wanting to make an equally big scene, Norah storms off to Peter’s bedroom. If things couldn’t get worse, Peter’s belonging that is stuffed into the garbage disposal catch fire.

Later that evening, Spider-Man is telling all his problems to a purse snatcher he just nabbed as he swings the crook across the city. However, this gabfest is interrupted when the lamp post he grabs onto suddenly breaks loose from the side of the building. Trying to use his web-shooters, Spider-Man is shocked when one falls apart and the other clogs. Luckily for the crook, he lands in the inground pool of a rooftop condo. Spider-Man, on the other hand, lands right beside it. As he recovers from the fall, Spider-Man is greeted by the Black Cat who is glad to see him who tells Spider-Man that her bad-luck powers are back.[4] She then asks Spider-Man how jail was, and he almost forgot that he was in jail after everything that has happened recently, and thanks her for helping him prevent himself from getting unmasked.[5]

When she asks how Spider-Man’s romance life is going, mocking his last relationship, Spider-Man admits that it’s not going very well.[6] As she starts breaking into the condo, she tells him that she is no longer dating the Puma.[7] That’s when Spider-Man asks her what she is doing, and she explains that she is working. Spider-Man is surprised that the Black Cat has gone back to cat burglary, and more so that she is robbing Dexter Bennett.[8] As she slips past the silent alarm, the Cat tells Spider-Man to scram but he refuses to leave. She then opens the safe hidden being Dexter’s portrait and they are shocked to discover a disemboweled man hidden inside. Weirder still, the deadman’s intestines have been turned into stone. When Spider-Man tries to examine the body, the petrified guts explode, spraying the room with ball bearings which Spider-Man narrowly evades. That’s when they are ambushed by the alchemist known as Diablo, who tosses a chemical on Spider-Man that sets his costume on fire. While the Black Cat smothers the flames, Diablo escapes. One the fire is put out, the Black Cat collects the book she came looking for and leaves without answering any of Spider-Man’s questions.

The wall-crawler is annoyed and follows after her and interrupts her call with her employer to give her a piece of his mind. He reminds her that the reason why they broke up is that she didn’t like who he was under the mask and wanted him to be Spider-Man the whole time. Seeing the web-slinger again gets the Cat to admit that she got to thinking about their old relationship and is trying to avoid feeling all the old hurts, but decides to give in to her desires.[9] Pulling up Spider-Man’s mask above his mouth she kisses him. This scene happens in plain view of a television station where one of the cameramen gets a shot for a live news broadcast. Little does Spider-Man know that this kiss is being broadcast live on television, including one of the massive television screens in Times Square. Among the crowd witnessing this moment is Mary Jane Watson who is shocked.

Recurring Characters

Spider-Man, Black Cat, Diablo, Mary Jane Watson, Michele Gonzales, Norah Winters, Ana Kravinoff, Madame Web

Continuity Notes

1. The Kravinoff has been seeking revenge against Spider-Man since Amazing Spider-Man #565. They kidnapped Madam Web in Amazing Spider-Man #600

2. Michele and Peter has had a turbulent relationship since she started living in the apartment. The details:

   • Peter was initially sharing the apartment with Vin Gonzales, a NYPD officer that had Peter move in with him to help pay the rent in Amazing Spider-Man #561.

   • Since then, Vin got involved in a conspiracy within the NYPD to frame Spider-Man for various murders following the events of Amazing Spider-Man #565-567. He was exposed as being part of this conspiracy in Amazing Spider-Man #584-588.

   • He agreed to testify against his fellow NYPD officers to get a reduced sentence. His sister came to New York to represent him as his lawyer in Amazing Spider-Man Extra #3. While Vin has been in protective custody, Michele has been living in his apartment as Peter learned in Amazing Spider-Man #594.

   • When Peter had no date to his Aunt May’s wedding in Amazing Spider-Man #600, Michele agreed to go with him. The pair got drunk and ended up in bed together as revealed in Amazing Spider-Man #601.

   • Michele was about to kick Peter out of her apartment except the Chameleon had stolen his identity and convinced her to have a relationship with him instead in Amazing Spider-Man #602. Peter tried to explain this mix up last issue, but Michele thought he was being a coward and punched him in the face.

3. Norah was attempting to write an expose on Norman Osborn in Amazing Spider-Man #595-599 until Osborn found out and threatened her life.

4. The Black Cat was once given bad-luck powers by the Kingpin in Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #89. Unfortunately, these powers began to affect Spider-Man which led to their break-up in issue #100 of that same series. Even away from the Black Cat, Spider-Man still had bad luck and so he had Doctor Strange use his magic to free the web-slinger from the bad luck in Spectacular Spider-Man #115. A side effect stripped the Black Cat’s powers.

5. Spider-Man was arrested and went to jail in Amazing Spider-Man #587-588. As revealed in Amazing Spider-Man Extra #1, the Black Cat was among other superhumans where were enlisted by Matt Murdock to dress up as Spider-Man in court to defend his clients right to remain masked until after the trial.

6. Spider-Man asks the Black Cat is still bitter about his relationship after they dated. This is a bit complicated to explain:

   • First of all, while Peter was dating the Black Cat he revealed his secret identity to her in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #87.

   • Shortly after Spider-Man broke up with the Black Cat, Mary Jane re-entered his life and he eventually proposed to her and the pair got married in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21. The Black Cat didn’t find out until Amazing Spider-Man #306 and she wasn’t happy about it. At first she started dating Flash Thompson in Amazing Spider-Man #329 as part of some odd revenge scheme, but she eventually got over it.

   • However, reality was altered by Mephisto in Amazing Spider-Man #545 so that Peter and Mary Jane never got married and everyone forgot Spider-Man’s secret identity. How this affects the above is sort of explained in Amazing Spider-Man #638-641. In the new timeline, Peter and Mary Jane did plan a wedding but Peter was a no show after he was knocked out busting a crook as Spider-Man and the pair decided to cancel the wedding but remain engaged. In altered reality one could assume that the Cat learned that Peter was engaged instead of married. As explained in that same title, those who knew Peter’s secret identity in the past still remember knowing it but can’t remember who he is, thus while the Cat retains memories of knowing Spider-Man’s secret identity and his next girlfriend, she no longer remembers the specifics.

7. The Black Cat dated the Puma for a brief period from Sensational Spider-Man (vol. 2) #26-34.

8. Spider-Man asks the Black Cat if she’s still a private eye. She started her career as a cat burglar and reformed after she started dating Spider-Man. After they broke up she refrained from returning to crime, eventually starting up her own private investigation firm in Felicia Hardy: The Black Cat #1.

9. One of the billboards in the New York City skyline is actually a variant cover for Models, Inc. #1. Another advertisement is for the Marvel Super-Hero Squad which was a cartoon that ran for two seasons from September 2009 to October 2011. While most real-world references are considered topical within the confines of the Marvel Universe, Marvel projects appearing in the modern age actually exist there only having been produced “recently”. Incidentally, the Super Hero Squad show exists as part of the Marvel Multiverse existing in Reality-91119.