Waiting for the Trade – Spider-man & Black Cat

 

Why I Bought This: Black
Cat is my favorite character in Spider-man’s corner of the Marvel Universe and she
features prominently in this story. Plus it is from the Mark Bagley era, who is
probably my all-time favorite Spider-man artist, so while I probably read this
back in the day I didn’t recall much of it and grabbed it cheap off Amazon.

The Plot: Spider-man
finds himself under attack from a variety of robots while engaging in otherwise
routine crime-fighting missions against foes like Electro and Scorpion.

Chapter 1 – Spidey is attacked by a robot with a lot of
claws. He eventually decapitates it. Black Cat stops by to check on Pete, whose
parents recently turned up alive. Speaking of which Pete and MJ join them for
dinner at Aunt May’s house then afterwards Pete stumbles across an FBI agent
watching them. Later Spidey is chasing down a purse snatcher when he gets
attacked by bat-like robot. He defeats this one too but begins to realize he has
a problem on his hands. We are shown the face of the unnamed villain behind the
attacks.

Chapter 2 – Pete confides in Flash that he’s not sure his
parents are on the level. A news report interrupts that Electro is on the loose
so Spidey heads into action, while Felicia wishes she could join him. While
Spidey fights Electro an Iron Man looking robot attacks him. In fact Pete
assumes this is some new super villain in a suit. He only discovers it’s a
robot when Electro accidentally blows it up. Electro escapes, while Spidey
suspects the Tinkerer is behind the recent robot attacks. We cut to the Tinker,
who is secretly meeting with Felicia.

Chapter 3 – Scorpion also visits the Tinkerer and gets
upgrades to his suit including a stinger on his tail and an electric attack. (Due
to Bagley’s art it is probably Scorpion’s best look: very sleek and dangerous
looking). Meanwhile Peter’s parents are finding the modern world hard to adjust
to (they were in a Russian prison camp all the years they were presumed dead)
before they run into FBI dude from last issue. They don’t recognize him causing
him to ponder if his secret is safe. Spidey finds Felicia hanging out at the
Tinker’s headquarters and wonders if she’s behind the robot menace, but instead
she was there purchasing  some crime
fighting gear to simulate the cat-like super powers she had lost about a year
(real time) prior to this. Scorpion spots Spidey and attacks him. His new
weapons have Spidey on the defensive and then an amoeba robot attacks too.
Felicia jumps into the fray to save the day and together she and Spidey get
Scorpion and the robot to take each other out. Spidey meanwhile recognizes this
robot design as belonging to Mendel Stromm, who’s been dead since the early
Stan Lee days on the title.

Chapter 4 – Felicia shows off her new costume and weapons to
Pete and MJ. When Pete and MJ have an afternoon at the park with his parents,
Pete freaks out when his parents don’t remember the name of the dog he had as a
child. His parents claim spotty memories due to their years in prison camp and
wonder if they should track down FBI dude since he seemed to know them. Pete
and Felicia in their civilian identities visit an insane asylum where Stromm’s former
assistant recently escaped along with several other inmates. Once outside
Felicia is able to spot a tiny spider-like robot that functions as a camera.
Spidey realizes this how the various robots find him whenever he dons his costume.
Sure enough another robot arrives: this one a large humanoid with a
three-headed faceplate. The two heroes fight it for a bit until Spidey manages
gets the heads to argue with each other and the robot commits suicide. The head
of the sanitarium was in danger during the melee so in gratitude he tells
Spidey the leader of the escape was Spencer Smythe, son of a deceased Stan
Lee-era mad scientist that used to build “Spider Slayer” robots for J. Jonah
Jameson. Meanwhile Peter’s parents find FBI dude and he pulls a gun on them.

Chapter 5 – Smythe kills one his fellow escapees. Pete sees
his parents getting into a limo with FBI dude and spider-tracers the car.
Spidey and Black Cat then fight a Black Widow shaped robot, followed by a
scorpion and ant robot. The bug robots morph together Voltron style but Spidey
takes it out using a live electric wire; however Felicia gets jolted as well
and needs a breather. Spidey follows his parents alone and switches into Peter.
He overhears FBI dude planning to kill them because he was double agent for the
Red Skull when they died the first time. Pete goes to intervene but falls from
the rafters having temporarily lost his powers due to some gas in the
warehouse. FBI dude then throws Pete on a conveyor belt leading towards a fiery
demise.

Chapter 6 – Pete’s dad makes a move but gets taken hostage
but it gives Pete time to get off the conveyor belt and use his web shooter to
trip FBI dude up. He then KO’s him with a punch as his powers return. The
incident also makes Pete believe his parents are who they say they are. Spidey
then tracks Smythe down to his headquarters but is electrocuted by trick
wheelchairs that the other mental inmates are chained to. Smythe then reveals
he has made himself into a cyborg and dubs himself the Ultimate Spider Slayer.
He now has super strength, spikes and webbing as he pounds Peter pretty
one-sidedly. One of the inmates tries to help and gets murdered for it. This
causes Pete to lose his temper and three punches later the fight is over.

Critical Thoughts:
This is a fairly simple straight-forward story. It’s not great, but it is also not
terrible. In a lot of ways it’s just good clean comic-book fun with a couple
classic villains, some robots and a few old school cliffhangers. Plus it really
looks excellent thanks to Bagley’s art.

As a Felicia fan there is a nice symmetry in her first fight
back being against Scorpion because she lost her powers fighting him. This was
a weird era for Felicia since they couldn’t play up the characters’ usual
romantic tension with Peter being married to MJ. Their first attempt to remake
her character and keep her in the book was to take her powers away and have her
date Flash Thompson, which was a terrible character choice I never bought into.
Here she artificial super powers so she isn’t as strong or all that helpful to
Spidey but is competent enough that she can go on the occasional adventure with
him; the main goal of which was to transition her into Spider-man’s one super
hero friend he could confide in, which as one of only two superheroes that knew
Spidey’s secret identity in this era was a role she was somewhat suited for.

Grade: Story is
probably a standard C but the art bumps it to C+