Joe Kelly writes the first Brand New Day story arc to feature Black Cat. We just had the big “return of Mary Jane” storyline so it makes sense that Peter’s hotter, leather-bound love interest also makes her first BND appearance.
She used to know Peter’s identity, but doesn’t anymore.
But it starts with the Brand New Day arrival of an older (but still kinda hot in an old lady way) woman: Madame Web. She’s being held prisoner and Ana Kravinoff’s young daughter is one of her captors, who forces her to eat an “Anansi spider” as a form of torture to force Web to tell her captor what she foresees for Spider-Man. It’s a brief scene.
Black Cat returns as Spidey is catching a routine street criminal. Her bad luck powers cause his web shooters to fail, so that he and the robber have a hard fall on to the streets below.
Or, as she calls them, her “hilarity” powers.
She’s still looking hot, and there’s no explanation for how her powers returned. She then gets Spider-Man to accompany her while she robs Dexter Bennet, who is now Peter Parker’s boss and the owner of what was once the Daily Bugle. Cat is there to steal a ledger, which she does, but also in the apartment is a dead body whose guts have been turned to concrete and the villain Diablo.
Can we briefly consider why people would still write shit down in a ledger given the digital alternatives that even existed in the mid-aughts?
Cat and Spider-Man escape, Cat kisses Spider-Man, and their kiss is captured on the Times Square cam.
Felicia and Mary Jane’s rivalry over Peter is legendary. It’s great to see it return–especially since it hasn’t been entirely clear whether MJ is still romantically interested in Peter.
After the kiss, Spider-Man and Black Cat do the wild thing in a hotel room, with Spider-Man maskless. I have to say, for a guy who wiped out his life to get a brand new start, he’s sure casual with his newly regained secret identity. Cat also assures him that she didn’t see his face when he unmasked in the dark of the hotel room. I’m hoping it’s because his face was busy, knowhutimean?
Cat and Spider-Man get their rematch against Diablo, all the while flirting rather explicitly, and it’s revealed that the dead guy in Bennett’s apartment was working a construction deal with Bennett and Diablo, with Diablo “manufacturing” defective steel, and blah blah blah. Somehow Diablo is connected with Kravinoff.
None of that matters when Cat and Spidey are back together. In the end, Cat and Spidey agree to be f-buddies–a “no strings attached” arrangement.
English (US) · 