Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #50 – “Black Cat”! We made it to #50, boys and girls, now there’s still like 100 to go! HA HA HA. In the previous installment, J. Jonah Jameson almost gets killed so he has a change of heart about firing the poor Peter Parker lad. Apparently, Jameson’s son blew up on a space shuttle! Fancy that. And he says his son was a hero. Spider-Man ain’t no hero, and he’s tired of people saying that Spider-Man is a hero.

Meanwhile, Wilson Fisk is fat.

Ultimate Spider-Man (Vol. 1), Issue #50 [February, 2004]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“Black Cat”

A superhero-garbed woman stands atop a tall, tall, tall building. Her leather suit is so tight you can see her full buttcrack. She spies on a man in an office with a scantily-clad woman. They walk away from the window and the lights go off. The costumed crusader checks her watch. 7:30pm. She smiles WRYLY.

A crossbow to the building across the street creates a tight-ass tightrope for her to traverse. Building security’s rooftop alarm goes off. Is it the wind? A bird? A place? Superdouche?

One of the guards demands it’s the wind. Call it in and the cops will be like “ha ha ha ha, idiots”. So let’s not do that. “Think they’re all better than us,” says the white guy. The black guy is like “yeah, yeah, they do, don’t they??” And then the white guy suggests that the black guy goes up to the roof to check it out himself. What could go wrong? A nice disemboweling never hurt nobody.

And since the white guy has seniority over the black guy, the black guy has to go to the roof to get killed. “Condescend to me?” he grumbles as he approaches the roof. “You’re the one condescening to everyone, man…”

He opens the door to the roof and waves at the security camera. The superVILLIAN, perhaps, garbed woman is perched right above his head… ready to pounce… and then the guy’s security guard hat gets taken in the wind. He chases it, and the woman runs through the door. It closes behind her, locking the security guard on the roof.

Come up and get me while the woman fucks up the whole building. Runs around it like she owns the place. Pulls fire alarms and moons the streets through the windows.

I’m just going to call her “Black Cat” since that’s the name of the issue. A janitor moves through the hallways, blissfully closing her eyes and listening on her earbuds. Black Cat stares at the woman, and suddenly the bucket of soapy water dumps all over her! Take that, you minimum wage-making harpy!

When the woman walks away, hands rubbing her eyes, Black Cat sprays paint on the security cameras. Then she tries to hack into a electronically-locked room to no avail. She frowns. Then she stares at the lock. The lock approves the systems override. She smiles.

In the office where the man left with the floozy, there’s a Jackson Pollock-looking painting behind the desk. She sprays the air, revealing a criss-cross of security lasers. I can’t tell what she does – maybe uses a mirror? — but the lasers disappear and she grabs the painting. There’s a vault behind it, which surprises her! Maybe she just wanted the painting, but this now looks promising!

She rummages through the desk and pulls out a file with a secret latch attached for some reason! She pulls up the file, the latch catches, and the vault opens.

An ancient pizza menu!

Black Cat pulls out a Rosetta Stone of sorts. She looks bewildered at first, then sees the word in the middle that vaguely resembles “PIZZA” and then she smiles. Black cats love extra anchovies!

The security guards are back and they AIN’T HAVIN’ IT. They sound scared, like “oh shit, there’s a door open, we actually have to do our jobs and we don’t really know how”.

Black Cat grips onto the wall above the doorway, unseen. The white guy trips on a rug and his gun goes off. The bullet ricochets off the window, sets off a fire sprinkler, and sprays the room with gushes of water. Black Cat slips away while the two dudes blub and glub.

Up on the roof again, Black Cat almost starts traversing the tightrope when A SPIDER-LIKE BOY IN RED PAJAMAS EMERGES FROM THE SHADOWS. “Hey, uh… what exactly are you doing?” he asks. She turns around and stares at him silently, brandishing hella cleavage and causing Spidey to put some semen into his pants. He calls her a step up from the usual riff-raff he deals with, and she responds with a WRY smile. Then she leaps off of the roof!

Of course, she’s clinging to the side. Spidey leaps off the roof himself and plummets to the streets below like an idiot doofus. He webs the roof and climbs back up. He says some witty Spider-Man things while she continues running. “You know, if I didn’t know any better I would think you’re trying to avoid me,” he says. She kicks him in the chest with a FUMP. He blocks the next kick with a FUNK. “Lady!!” he yells while she continues doing her Judo moves. She grabs Spidey and flips him to the floor. She steps on his head and pushes his face into the cement. “Crossed a black cat…” she says. “Seven years bad luck.”

WHAT AN EXCITING ISSUE! I LOVE WRITING ABOUT 25 PAGES OF ACTION SEQUENCES!

He chases her and falls on his face. She looks back and grins.

Then she’s gone.

Whew, that was fun. Let’s move onto some good ol’ boyfriend/girlfriend dialogue. Parker and MJ are hanging out in Parker’s room studying for midterms. He’s preoccupied by the Black Cat events. MJ knows he’s thinking ‘bout bein’ Spider-Man. She’s playing with a can of web jism and sends a squirt in Parker’s direction. It splats behind his head.

Money shot!

“Honestly, I was thinking… Maybe… I should put the costume away for awhile and just be a normal guy.”

“Really?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Really?”

“You’d be cool with that?”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t understand. Would that make you happy?”

Do we not remember MJ’s anxiety over Peter Parker’s Spider-Man adventures? Do we have the memory of a goldfish? OF COURSE she’d be happy, dingus. It’s what she has always wanted.

“I didn’t know you felt that way,” he says. What a moron.

“Listen… I’m not saying I want you to stop being Spider-Man. You do whatever you have to do,” she says with melancholy in her gravelly smoker’s voice. Wouldn’t that be funny?

Parker is just tired of fighting idiots and getting hurt and failing to catch the bad guy. Wilson Fisk is still out there gorging on donuts. This Black Cat lady gave him the slip gracefully. “Thing is… I’m not that big on fighting. I don’t like it. Punching someone, even someone with metal octopus arms… it’s not a fun thing to do.”

Pussy.

Do you know what Peter Parker would love to do right now (besides eat Pizza Rolls and stroke his schlong)? He would love to go walk in the park with his redheaded girlfriend. “I would love to go, like, on a normal date. Just me and you. That’s what I really want.”

She shoots him in the face with a gun! Never mind, that was Alec Baldwin. My mistake.

Vegas, baby!

He suddenly shifts the topic to MJ’s dad like a complete waste of space. What was a nice conversation suddenly turns hostile and weird. HE CHEATED ON HER MOTHER! SHE HATES HIM! WAH!

Parker says that he’d never cheat on her. She knows. Then they both say “I love you” to each other. “Do you think we’ll get married?” she asks him, and he stammers like “I-I-I-I-I–” and then says “yeah uh I think so”.

Then they kiss and smile at each other and look lovingly in each other’s eyes, and then Aunt May shows up at the top of the stairs checking on any hanky-panky. “Peter? Both of you come up to the kitchen.” She looks sad as the dickens. Is Uncle Ben dead? Say it ain’t so!

Surprise! MJ’s father showed up to the house! He looks mean and gruff, like a J. Jonah Jameson that could kick J. Jonah Jameson’s ass. He has MJ’s diary. Aunt May roughly suggests that, whatever is going to happen right now, it should happen back at the Watson household.

“I would, May, but this involves both Mary and Peter.”

“Fine, but you should do this–”

“May, please.” He waves her off. MJ is beside herself that her dad was reading her diary and runs away screaming “I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! WAH!”

Craig Watson, as he likes to be called, reads a passage from MJ’s flowery, pink thoughts. “I almost died tonight. Oh my God, I almost died. If Peter hadn’t been at the bridge I don’t know what I would have done. What if no one found my body? I have never been so scared in my whole life.”

Mr. Cheating Bastard shuts the book and demands to know what all that means! Was she prepared to jump because she hates her father so much?? “What were you doing on a bridge and what are you doing putting my daughter’s life in danger? I’m waiting for an answer.”

Peter just scowls at him like a rough and tough 15-year-old little boy. Then Craig shakes a finger at the lad and tells him that he and MJ are through! KAPUTT! FINITO! THESE SHENANIGANS AND MONKEYSHINES WILL CEASE! NO MORE COMING AROUND THE WATSON HOUSE! NO MORE SNEAKING AROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! AND IF YOU SO MUCH AS GLANCE IN A DIRECTION THAT MJ IS VAGUELY IN, SHE WILL BE YANKED OUT OF SCHOOL AND THROWN INTO A NUNNERY! AND FURTHERMORE, W–

Burt Reynolds, you’re fired!

May kicks him out of the house. Once Craig T. Nelson Watson storms off, May asks calmly what happened on the bridge. Parker tells May to shove it.

“We were at the park and she slipped on– on– on a thing and she almost fell in. I– I caught her by the wrist.”

“That’s it?” May looks at her with her trademark suspicion.

“That’s it.”

“Why didn’t you just tell him that was it?”

“’Cause he’s a jerk. Can’t believe what a jerk that guy is.”

“He really is. I’m sorry, Peter.”

Well, that settles that. Hormel Chili dinners all around!

“Just stay away from their house for a couple of days. I’ll talk to her mom and see what happens.”

“He’s not going to hurt her, is he?”

“No.” May smiles at him lyingly. Then she has that glint in her eye. The one that says “I’m going to stick a knife in Craig’s eyeball.”

May swings by and grabs Gwen to be a witness. They’re going to go next door and snoop around. If there’s any FUNNY BUSINESS, they’re calling the cops.

Once they leave, Parker thinks about the diary. Eek, is there anything in there about him bein’ Spider-Man? Oh God, that would suck dongs! “Ugh! I wish someone would throw that idiot father of hers off a bridge!”

After musing about marrying MJ just to stick it to him, a breaking news report comes onto the TV. It seems that there is amateur video footage of Spider-Man on the roof robbing an office building with a partner wearing a cat costume! What a horrible plague on the city, this guy!

Should’ve stayed home and played Super Mario Sunshine, kiddo.

Final Thoughts

Pretty boring stuff, actually. I was expecting Issue #50 to knock my dick in the dirt, and instead I get silent action panels and some teenage lovey-dovey shit. I want to see Aunt May literally uppercut a punk. I want to see Aunt May make Craig Watson bite the curb. Now THERE’S an Issue #50.