You know, I really do enjoy the stories appearing in Ultimate and Amazing Spider-Man these days but, to me, continuity seems to have just faded away. Ultimate has it's own continuity, I guess, but it's not THE continuity IMHO. Amazing and Spectacular seem to just hang there "continuity-less" with almost no supporting characters and no history. Story by story they can be great but they don't hang together, they seem to float by as insubstantial as clouds.
So, I really have come to think of Spidey continuity as ending sometime around the clone saga or during the Gathering of the Five or at the reboot, which I think is why I like Spider-Girl so much now. Tom DeFalco seems to think the same way and he actually uses the past in ways that all other writers are averse to. This latest issue is a gem in that regard. Not only do we get Kaine (Imagine! Tom D. actually uses clone saga characters!) but we get Richard Fisk in his Schemer and Rose outfits and actually LOOKING like Richard Fisk. (Much as I love Bendis' work on Daredevil, his Richard Fisk never really felt like Richard Fisk.) We get Vanessa looking like Vanessa. We get Norman and Harry and Liz. We get Foggy Nelson. We get a short Kingpin origin that looks like it will contradict what we're getting in the Kingpin series but that feels more likely.
For example, I see that Tom is obviously paving the way for the return of the Black Tarantula.. a character I couldn't stand when he first appeared but whom I am now ready to welcome back to the fold like an old friend! I'm just THAT thrilled to see a broken storyline picked up again.
Taken all together, I now find that I think of THIS book as being the real continuity and ASM, Spec, etc. as being the "What If?" stuff. For which I say, "Bless you" to Tom D. for doing it right. Now let's cut this periodic "cancel" nonsense and keep this book around for the next couple dozen years.