Waiting for the Trade   Amazing Spider-man: Flying Blind Written by Dan Slott & Mark Waid Illustrated by Humberto Ramos, Emma Rios, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Kano Collects Amazing Spiderman 674-677 and Daredevil 8   Why I Bought This: It features Black Cat, who is my favorite character in the Spider-verse. Interestingly it took me two years to track this thing down. Twice I went to several stores on Free Comic Book Day and none of them carried this trade. I finally bought it on Amazon a few weeks ago for about $7.   The Plot: The Black Cat story sees her accused of a crime and Spidey getting DD to defend her. There are also stories involving the Vulture running a teen gang and the Sinister Six battling the Intelligentsia.   (spoilers below)

Waiting for the Trade X-Factor: Scar Tissue By Peter David, art by Valentine DeLandro and Emanuela Lupacchino Collects X-Factor 213-219   Why I Bought This: It guest stars the Black Cat who is perhaps my favorite Marvel character. It is also written by Peter David, who is one of the all-time great Spider-man writers and who wrote Felicia particularly well back in the day.   The Plot: The main arc is about an assassination attempt on J. Jonah Jameson. He hires both Black Cat and X-Factor for protection. There are also a few single issue character studies on some of the regular cast.   (spoilers below)

Waiting for the Trade By Bill Miller   Spider-man: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers By David Micheline & Mark Bagley Collects Amazing Spider-man 368-373   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.  

Waiting for the Trade By Bill Miller Sensation Spider-man: Feral by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Angel Medina and Clayton Crain Collects Sensational Spider-man 23 – 27. Why I bought this: It is exactly the kind of timeless high concept super hero story that appeals to me; in this case a meteor affects several characters with animal-based powers causing them to run amok in New York . Also among those characters are both Black Cat and Lizard, who are two of my favorites.