Amazing Spider-Man #194-195

Amazing Spider-Man #194 (1979)
by Marv Wolfman & Keith Pollard
cover by Al Milgrom

As an epilogue to the Anniversary Countdown, since its ending relied a lot on Black Cat, let’s take a look at her first appearance.

And speaking of our titular cat, she gets a splash page as her introduction.

As well as the first scenes, starting with her stealing some documents…

…and then recruiting her own henchmen: the bruiser Bruno…

…and the demolition expert Boris Korpse, who SOMEHOW is not a supervillain despite that name.

I’m convinced that Black Cat is the only contribution to the Spider-Man universe introduced in the Marv Wolfman run that actually sticks and resonates with fans.
Just to give you an idea of what else is going on at the time: there’s the subplot about The Burglar (the guy who killed Uncle Ben) that will be resolved in the disappointing #200, in parallel to a Mysterio plot…

…there’s Ned Leeds being jealous that Betty is spending more time with Peter Parker than with her husband, there’s Peter working for a different newspaper, there’s Spidey believing JJJ has discovered his identity (he hasn’t)… none of this goes anywhere in the long run.

No wonder Spidey ends up following the Black Cat plot. Officially because she triggered his Spider-Sense, but it’s mostly because she’s hot and he’s currently single.

But he dismisses the possibility of something happening between the two when he catches her buying guns from a criminal.

Spider-Man must be hard to write: you have a character that mostly fights regular humans and has the explicit power of being nearly impossible to be taken by surprise from normal humans… and yet they regularly do it anyway.

Well maybe if he concentrated on his Spider-Sense more than on her butt maybe it would be an easier fight.

He’s also taken by surprise by her mysterious ability to bring bad luck. It’s too bad he doesn’t have the proportional agility and reflexes of an animal that could allow him to get out of the way faster than he can describe the panel.

And then she manages to escape by making his webshooter tingle.

See what I meant about the other plots not going anywhere?

Then again, Peter is not doing well in this period… well, even worse than normally does.

He would probably be stumped if it wasn’t for a superhero’s best friend.

 Plot Convenient News, it beats writing plot
 

One of the things about the Wolfman run that really don’t work is that he’s trying to put away Spider-Man’s classic cast of supporting characters while introducing new ones… which isn’t a bad idea, but everyone he introduces is incredibly generic and boring.

If you haven’t read this story but you have even the slightest familiarity with Black Cat, you already know where this is going.

Spider-Man and Black Cat have their second fight…

…while her henchmen take care of the rest of the job.

So the explosion they cause ends up knocking out Spider-Man.

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Amazing Spider-Man #195 (1979)
by Marv Wolfman & Keith Pollard
cover by Al Milgrom

The second part of the story has lots of other subplots, but I will concentrate on the Black Cat stuff.

Trust me, you’re not missing anything.

Black Cat managed to take the burglar out of prison.

It’s kind of ridiculous that he doesn’t recognize her…

…considering she’s his daughter and wasn’t even trying to disguise her voice!
Granted we don’t know how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other, but it doesn’t look like he abandoned her when she was a child.

Her mother also doesn’t know she’s the Black Cat. I kind of wonder what her mother thinks she does for a living, I’m pretty sure we’ve never been told.

She then leaves her parents alone to say goodbye to each other, after which Spider-Man shows up.

I know he’s (probably) joking, but imagine if Spidey really DID deliver to the authorities while making out!

I like how Black Cat is already a more complex character you’d expect (especially since in this run Wolfman tends to get REALLY hammy with characterization); you can easily see how Spider-Man would sympathize with her situation.

It’s also a bit more believable that he’d have trouble dealing with her NOW, since after he was caught in the explosion at the end of the previous issue he broke his arm.

I also appreciate how Black Cat isn’t into Spider-Man because she thinks he’s hot, but she was also attracted by this “loner who works outside the system” vibe.

Say what you will about “fighting the woman by pulling her hair”, but it’s VERY effective!

What do you mean by “what did I do to her”? YOU THREW HER AGAINST A WALL!!!

But no, she was just faking it.

Throughout the various encounters, Spider-Man was slowed down by several small things caused by bad luck. Considering it’s Spider-Man we’re talking about, it’s incredible he noticed those in addition to his REGULAR bad luck!

But the bad luck ends up against her, because she falls down into the nearby river.

It’s a bittersweet ending, with Black Cat presumed dead and her father dying for real.

Oh and the story ends with the off-panel death of Aunt May.

That’s just a Mysterio plot. Aunt May will be back five issues later, because as we all know she’s immortal.

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Historical significance: 10 /
Needless to say, the Black Cat ends up being VERY important for Spider-Man.

Silver Age-ness: 6 /
On the Marvel scale, but since this story doesn’t explain all those little accidents… are we supposed to believe it’s LITERALLY just bad luck?

Does it stand the test of time? 7 /
One of the very few bright spots of the Wolfman run. Black Cat brings a nice new dynamic with Spider-Man, who has a serious lack of female villains; but she’s also a fun and sympathetic character with a lot of nuances. You can easily see why they brought her back.
If the Black Cat plot was the only thing going on, I would bump this up to an 8/10 or possibly even a 9/10. But the other plots really drag the whole thing down… Peter’s scenes with his supporting cast are honestly just unpleasant.

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How close is this to the modern character? 8 /
Before we move to the history of Black Cat, some notes about her creation.

She wasn’t even supposed to be connected to Spider-Man: Wolfman initially wanted her to show up on Spider-Woman.

I didn’t plan Black Cat to be in Spidey. I created her for Spider-Woman (look at the letter column of the first B.C. story and you’ll see). I then decided to leave Spider-Woman and moved her over. So, I never even thought of Catwoman when I did her. I got the idea for her from a Tex Avery cartoon, Bad Luck Blackie.
MARV WOLFMAN

As mentioned by Wolfman, the letters page of Amazing Spider-Man #194 does show the cover of the Spider-Woman issue where Black Cat was supposed to appear (and that was never published).
Also worth mentioning is that she was designed by Dave Cockrum.

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Black Cat shows up again in Amazing Spider-Man #204 and #205.
She dropped the henchmen for this one (in fact, they wouldn’t be seen again for a looooong time) and Wolfman is seriously upping the tension between her and Spidey.

And it also makes her completely crazy, with an unhealthy obsession over Spider-Man.

Also, while it doesn’t have anything to do with Black Cat, in issue #205 Spider-Man basically threatens one of Peter Parker’s students (he’s teaching in this period) for trying to cheat an exam.
It’s amazing (pun intended) how much Wolfman constantly gets Spider-Man wrong at every possible turn.

Thankfully we’re now out of the Wolfman run, and Roger Stern brings back Black Cat in issues #226-227. This undoes the revelation that she’s crazy, and dials back her daddy issues, and focuses on her being Black Cat for the fun of it.

And it also introduces a believable reason why Spider-Man would be into her (besides her being hot): it’s his chance to indulge in the part of being Spider-Man that is not about crushing emotional damage.

But even if she does make a serious effort of going straight, she ends up committing crimes again.

She ends up falling into the river AGAIN, and Spider-Man believes she dies AGAIN.

But, as we saw last time:

Once the two become a couple, however, the differences between the two start to open cracks in their relationship. Starting from the fact that she’s in love with Spider-Man, not with the man beneath the mask.

And there’s the problem in her not having superpowers. It’s only in Spectactular Spider-Man #85 that we learn that her “bad luck powers” from the first appearances are just tricks.

He eventually reveals his identity to her in Spectactular Spider-Man #87, which is A BIG DEAL considering he never shared it with his previous love interests.

It… doesn’t end well.

The lack of superpowers is what really gets to Black Cat, to the point that she pesters superheroes to give her powers. It… doesn’t end well either.

But after many experiments, which for scientific reasons must be carried out as she’s in a bikini…

…she’s given ACTUAL bad luck powers by Kingpin.

Eventually all the problems… her not loving Peter Parker, her having trouble staying on the right side of the law, and the fact that her bad luck powers ALSO bring bad luck to HIM and not just her enemies… leads the two to split up in Spectacular Spider-Man #100.
Which, if you consider Spectacular #75 to be the beginning of their relationship (I do), it means Spider-Man and Black Cat were a couple from November 1982 to December 1984.

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With the relationship over, Black Cat would be a thorn in Spidey’s side for a while.
First by becoming the partner of the Foreigner (who interesingly is Silver Sable’s ex-husband, so he definitely has a type) and later becoming Flash Thompson’s girlfriend with the goal of tormenting Peter… only to later fall in love with Flash anyway.

She eventually loses her bad luck powers, but she eventually gets several cat-themed gadgets from the Thinkerer and I’m guessing lots and lots of double-sided tape.

Aside from Spider-Man, one of her earliest solo stories is Marvel Comics Presents #57.
It’s a fairly standard Black Cat story which would be unremarkable…

…if it wasn’t for an INSANE anecdote told by writer Dwight Jon Zimmerman in a 2025 interview.

The story should’ve been published earlier, but when Zimmerman asked to editor Terry Kavanaugh what happened to it… turns out that the inker of the story had murdered his wife (!!!), spilling blood on the pages (!!!) and that the artwork was therefore evidence for the murder trial (!!!).
Zimmerman had saved photocopies of the artwork though, which was eventually re-inked by Josef Rubenstein and published.
That interview is the only reference I could find to the story, so it’s entirely possible Kavanaugh was just bulls##tting Zimmerman, but that’s COMPLETELY INSANE if that really happened!!!

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In 2002, she was the co-star of the limited series “Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do” written by Kevin Smith, which is both important and infamous for several reasons.
The first is the fact that it ended THREE YEARS LATE.
The second is that the first issue casually hints at her being bisexual, something that wouldn’t really come up properly until 2020.

The third is that the series starts as a fun romp…

…but then it gets a VERY jarring tonal shift, including the revelation that Black Cat was raped in college.

She got REALLY screwed over by One More Day (in case you thought Spider-Man was the only one to suffer), because making her forget Spidey’s identity SOMEHOW made her go back to crime so hard that for a while she was a mob boss!!!

After re-learning Spider-Man’s identity, she was thankfully rescued from that character assassination from the two AMAZING series she had in 2019 and 2021.
Beginning from rescuing her original henchmen, who had completely disappeared since 1979.

But also linking her to the Black Fox, a minor Spider-Man villain we once saw meet Doctor Doom. His bumbling persona was shown to be just an act, as he was the one who trained Black Cat’s father and now revealed to have trainer her as well.

I can’t recommend these two series enough. It showcases Black Cat as the only thief who can consistently tackle with superheroes, exploring her complex character, and bringing up a compelling mystery involving her father and Black Fox that I won’t spoil.

I’m just going to say that when the Black Cat of this series boasts that she’s going to steal from Doctor Strange… BELIEVE HER.

Unfortunately good things don’t last, so after those two series (seriously, READ THEM) she’s been stuck in team-up books with Mary Jane (who has powers now for some reason).
They’re just fanservice with nothing of substance.

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Speaking of Mary Jane, I have to address a complain you sometime read from people who don’t understand Spider-Man: why can’t he just have Black Cat as his regular love interest?
Sometimes paired with the idiotic notion that kids can’t relate to a married Spider-Man.

Look… I became Spider-Man’s regular reader when he got together with Black Cat. I was eight years old at the time and I already figured out they couldn’t possibly last together!
Which is kind of the fun with them. They work together in a story BECAUSE it can’t turn into something that lasts.
Also, I wasn’t that much older when Spidey married Mary Jane and it STILL didn’t do anything to make me think he wasn’t interesting!!!

Which isn’t to say I don’t want more Black Cat comics. She probably won’t show up much in my other retrospectives, but I had to use just one word to describe her most significant contribution to the Marvel Universe… it would probably be FUN.

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In terms of adaptations, she makes her first appearance in the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, in the first episode.
She was voiced by Morgan Lofting, who also voiced Firestar in the series, and is probably most known for voicing the Baroness on G.I.Joe.

So that was pretty normal, although kind of interesting considering that in 1981 Black Cat wasn’t THAT prominent in comics.

But then the 1995 animated series made the truly baffling decision of making her civilian identity a recurring character, as just a rich heiress who ended up as the love interest of both Morbius and the mercenary that would later become Hobgoblin.
She was voiced by voice actress legend Jennifer Hale (who has voiced almost every single badass woman from cartoons and video games).

It would take her until season 4 in 1997 to become the Black Cat, thanks to the Super Soldier Serum of all things.

Black Cat has naturally showed up in other Spider-Man cartoons. The other significant one I have to mention is Spectactular Spider-Man in 2008, which makes two strange decisions abot her.
One is making her older than Spider-Man (who is still in high school in this period).
The other one is dropping the revelation that her father was the burglar who killed Uncle Ben!

I’m surprised more adaptations don’t make this obvious move: the killer is almost universally called The Burglar, and Black Cat’s father is supposed to have been the world’s greatest burglar!