Spider-man: Superior Team-Up

[ccm00007]

Spider-Man: Superior Team-up reads as follows:

Spider-Man's card is considered to have the affiliations of all the character cards on your team.

Does this text require Spider-Man to be active? More specifically, does he count as having these affiliations when I have no active Spider-Man dice in my Field Zone?

To illustrate with a concrete example: if I have "Cyclops: Present and Accounted For" active in my Field Zone ("While Cyclops is active, your X-men character dice cost 1 less to purchase and your non-Cyclops X-men character dice get +1A and +1D"), can I purchase Spider-Man dice for 1 less?

Thank you for your time.

[dmrulesteam]

Spider-man's ability is always in play from the beginning of the game. He does not need to be active.