The Amazing Spider-Man #194

Bad luck, by way of Tex Avery

Marv Wolfman took over The Amazing Spider-Man from Len Wein with issue #182, cover-dated July 1978, and wrote it through #204 in 1980. A year into the run he introduced a new kind of foil for Peter Parker: not a monster or a mobster but a flirtatious cat burglar. Wolfman said the idea came from a Tex Avery cartoon, Bad Luck Blackie.

Issue #194 carries a July 1979 cover date and is listed among comics released in April 1979. Its story, "Never Let the Black Cat Cross Your Path!," opens with the Black Cat stealing police files, then recruiting a strongman named Bruno Grainger and a demolitions expert named Boris Korpse for a job.

Spider-Man spots her running across the rooftops and, impressed, follows her hoping she is not a criminal so he can ask her out. When he interrupts her buying weapons from an arms dealer, his luck seems to turn against him: a rack of guns falls on him, and she lifts his mask just far enough to steal a kiss. Her real target is a prison, where her father, the once-famous cat burglar Walter Hardy, is terminally ill. The issue ends with Spider-Man buried under rubble from the jailbreak.

Who made the Black Cat

Marv Wolfman was born in Brooklyn on May 13, 1946. Before Spider-Man he had edited Marvel's black-and-white magazines and then its color line, and with the artist Gene Colan he had written The Tomb of Dracula from 1973, where they introduced Blade. After leaving Marvel he relaunched the Teen Titans at DC with George Perez in 1980 and wrote Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985.

Credit for the character's look is split in the sources. One reference names Wolfman and Dave Cockrum as her creators; another says Wolfman introduced her with the penciler Keith Pollard, who drew the issue's interior with inks by Frank Giacoia. A graded-sales database notes that the issue carries a text illustration of the Black Cat by Cockrum.

The cover is credited to Al Milgrom, with Bob McLeod and Pollard also listed among its cover artists in one database. That cover art is now one of the most valuable pieces of Spider-Man art in existence.

A crowded issue

Wolfman packed the issue with long-running threads. Aunt May is in the Restwell Nursing Home, whose administrator, Doctor Rinehart, is later revealed as the old villain Mysterio. With him is the burglar who killed Uncle Ben in Amazing Fantasy #15, who believes May knows where the riches he was after are hidden; that payoff came in issue #200.

At the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson is furious that Peter has started selling photos to the rival Daily Globe, and Ned Leeds confronts Peter about his wife Betty, Peter's old girlfriend. Peter also blows up at Flash Thompson and Harry Osborn after missing his own graduation party. The Black Cat walked into this soap opera as the one character who seemed to be having fun.

Her later history made her a fixture. She famously preferred the mystery of Spider-Man to the ordinary Peter Parker, and Kevin Smith's miniseries Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do took four years, from 2002 to 2006, to finish.

Newsstand copies and the CGC 9.8 market

In 1979 most comics still reached readers through newsstands rather than comic shops, and collectors now separate newsstand copies from the direct-edition copies sold to specialty stores. This entry is the newsstand edition in CGC 9.8. One graded-sales tracker counted 3,151 recorded sales of graded copies of the issue in all grades by October 2026, 135 of them at 9.8.

Prices climbed with talk of a Black Cat film. In spring 2021 a newsstand CGC 9.8 sold at auction for $4,200 after 36 bids, while a direct-edition copy graded 9.8 by a rival grading company brought $2,617 a few days later; the newsstand copy's consignor later said it had been theirs. Newsstand 9.8s reached $4,494.44 in March 2022 and $4,995.00 in December 2022.

Since then the price has cooled. Newsstand CGC 9.8 copies sold at auction for $2,640.00 in January 2024 and $2,400.00 in July 2025, and online for $1,999.95 in February 2026 before another brought $3,999.99 in September 2026. The highest graded result for the issue on one tracker is $15,860 for a CGC 9.9 on May 9, 2026, a grade above this entry.

The most valuable Spider-Man cover

On January 12, 2025, the original art for the cover of Amazing Spider-Man #194 sold at auction for $1.02 million. It became the most valuable Spider-Man cover ever sold at auction. Milgrom had sold the art long before, but at the consignor's direction a portion of the proceeds went to him. Milgrom said he never expected the cover to become one of the most iconic of the 1970s, and that he had signed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of copies for fans. The auction's executive vice president noted that first appearances of major characters bring some of the strongest prices; a Deadpool story page had sold for $960,000 two months earlier.

On screen the Black Cat has come close more often than she has arrived. Felicity Jones played Felicia Hardy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014; Sony developed a film called Silver & Black from 2017 to 2020 before canceling it; and Li Jun Li plays a version of the character, Cat Hardy, in the series Spider-Noir.

The numbers

Cover date

July 1979 (released April 1979)

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census

No dated census count found in the sources consulted

Recorded graded sales, October 2026

3,151 across all grades; 135 at CGC 9.8

Editions

Newsstand and direct; this entry is the newsstand

Original cover art

Sold for $1.02 million, January 12, 2025

Timeline

1. Jul 1978

   Marv Wolfman begins writing The Amazing Spider-Man with issue #182.

2. Apr 1979

   Amazing Spider-Man #194, cover-dated July 1979, is released, introducing the Black Cat.

3. 1980

   Wolfman's run ends with issue #204.

4. 2002

   Kevin Smith's Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do begins; it finishes in 2006.

5. 2014

   Felicity Jones plays Felicia Hardy in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

6. 2017

   Sony begins developing Silver & Black; it is canceled by 2020.

7. 2021

   A newsstand CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $4,200 after 36 bids.

8. Dec 16, 2022

   A newsstand CGC 9.8 copy sells online for $4,995.00.

9. Jan 26, 2024

   A newsstand CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $2,640.00.

10. Jan 12, 2025

    The original cover art sells at auction for $1.02 million, a record for a Spider-Man cover.

11. Jul 25, 2025

    A newsstand CGC 9.8 copy sells at auction for $2,400.00.

12. May 9, 2026

    A CGC 9.9 copy sells at auction for $15,860, the issue's highest graded result on one tracker.

The world in 1979

• Mar 4, 1979

  Voyager 1 photographs reveal rings around Jupiter.

• Mar 26, 1979

  Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin sign the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty at the White House.

• Apr 1, 1979

  Nickelodeon debuts on cable television.

• May 25, 1979

  American Airlines Flight 191 crashes on takeoff at O'Hare, killing 271 aboard and two on the ground.

• Jul 2, 1979

  The Susan B. Anthony dollar is introduced.

• Jul 11, 1979

  Skylab begins its fall back to Earth.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, The Amazing Spider-Man #194 is number 54 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (99 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Marv Wolfman based the Black Cat on a Tex Avery cartoon called Bad Luck Blackie.
• In her first appearance the Black Cat lifts Spider-Man's mask just far enough to steal a kiss.
• Spider-Man first follows her because he hopes she is not a criminal so he can ask her out.
• The same issue features the burglar who killed Uncle Ben, back to menace Aunt May.
• Kevin Smith's Black Cat miniseries took four years to finish.
• Al Milgrom sold his cover art long ago, but when it brought $1.02 million in 2025 the consignor directed a portion of the proceeds to him.