Marvel Heart Breakers Story 1 Placement?

[Aquashark]

Hi all!

It looks like everyone is busy with reviewing X-Men chronology at the moment, but I'd like to see what everyone's thoughts were on Story 1 in the Marvel Heartbreakers Valentine's Day one-shot from this year. Attempt at synopsis below:

Marvel Heartbreakers (M/HB)??
Publishing Date: April 2010
Story #1: "A Chemical Romance"
Written By: Kathryn Immonen
Drawn By: Elena Casagrande

Appearances: Gwen Stacy, Mary-Jane Watson, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, *"Black-Eyed" Susan Monaghan, *"Lazy" Daisy Lynch
*As far as I know, these are one-use characters that we never see again.
Brief Synopsis:
p. 1 - 2: Peter is standing in the middle of an ESU hallway when he sees Gwen approaching from one side and Mary Jane approaching from the other, both looking furious. Peter is frightened that he missed a chemistry lab study session with Gwen. Instead of confronting them, he leaps into the ventilation system. MJ and Gwen collide, and are acting catty towards each other. MJ is attending a drama class in period costume ("Calm down. My drama class is using the E.S.U. theatre for rehearsal. We're doing Hedda Gabler!" Note that she doesn't say she is a student at ESU), while Gwen is searching for her stolen chemistry notes.

p. 3 - 5: Peter crawls through the vents, looking for the chemistry lab. He happens upon two students, "Black-Eyed" Susan Monaghan and "Lazy"-Daisy Lynch (who Peter calls "morons") who have apparently stolen Gwen's chem notes and are trying to reproduce an experiment. He watches, expecting amusement, when he notices that they are inadvertently cooking up a mixture of pre-biotic soup. He opens up the vent grate and calls out to stop them...

p. 6 - 7: But the vent system collapses underneath him and the girls duck for cover. Peter ends up with a purple tablecloth over him and a fishbowl on his head, and the girls run out of the room frightened when he tries to address them. Now wet and disheveled, he decides he's got to dry off his clothes. After closing the blinds on the door window, he disrobes revealing his Spidey costume underneath, and throws the wet clothes in the science lab's centrifuge.

p. 8 - 10: As he puts on his Spider-Man mask to ensure concealment of his identity, we notice that the pre-biotic soup has been sparked. A green blob creature emerges, and Spidey tries to deal with it. He discovers that the girls have accidentally stumbled on a "shear-thickening fluid". He webs up the blob and tosses it into the now-open centrifuge, and quickly shuts the lid and activates the machine. As he does so, he hears voices approaching and escapes through the vents.

p. 11: As Gwen and the two students of ill-repute come to check out the classroom, they trip one of Spider-Man's weblines and end up violently ejecting the green goo across the room (into their faces). Later, Peter is standing outside ESU with MJ. Gwen ended up missing the aforementioned meeting (due to "washing her hair"), and MJ is pleased that she got to meet up with Peter. End.

Notes:
I see a few clues for continuity placement...
#1: Peter is not dating Gwen, probably putting it before their first date in ASM 53. He definitely says he wants to, making references to "swapping electrons" with her. Methinks it may place it after ASM 45/46, when he realized how much he liked her again after being focused on MJ for a while. (Plus Peter isn't wearing a cast in this issue, which he had donned between issue 44 and the end of ASM 46.)
#2: Gwen and MJ's semi-tiff at the beginning of the story. They got introduced to each other back in the beginning of ASM 44, and acted pretty coldly towards one another. Here, they may not be exchanging kind words (MJ - "Hey! Watch it, Blondie!" Gwen, in reference to MJ's costume - "Watch it? I can't take my eyes off it. It's like a car accident." MJ-"Well, you're the expert."), but they are talking to each other voluntarily in the hallway.
#3: In the narrator text on page 1, it says "Recently, gorgeous Gwen Stacy repeatedly offered to help Peter Parker catch up on some college chem lab work... with little success..." Pete tells Gwen he'll "take a rain check on that science review" in ASM 44.

My suggestion is to place it after ASM 46, but before ASM 47 for Peter Parker. (I'm not sure whether it should go before or after FF 61, as I don't have that issue to reference. Don't MJ and Pete make a cameo at a football game? Maybe this story could come before it - MJ is glad she's got Peter to spend time with, so they head off to the game for the afternoon.) It seems to me that starting in ASM 47, Gwen starts to get much less catty towards MJ. She tells Pete he can take her to Flash's going-away party (while snubbing Pete for constantly turning her down for their study meetings).

Proposed Chronologies:
SPIDER-MAN/PETER BENJAMIN PARKER
ASM 44
ASM 45
ASM 46
M/HB
FF 61
ASM 47

WATSON-PARKER, MARY JANE
ASM 44
ASM 45
ASM 46
M/HB
FF 61
ASM 47
ASM 48

STACY, GWEN
ASM 42
ASM 43
ASM 44
ASM 46
M/HB
ASM 47

[Paul Bourcier]

Thanks for the analysis, Aquashark. Great job. Good reasoning for placement.