Black Cat (Marvel Comics)
| Black Cat | |
|---|---|
 Black Cat Art by Terry Dodson. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Amazing Spider-Man #194 (July 1979) |
| Created by | Marv Wolfman Keith Pollard |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Felicia Hardy |
| Team affiliations | Spider-Man, The Owl, Kingpin |
| Notable aliases | "Party Hardy" (informal) |
| Abilities | An experienced gymnast and acrobat; swings across the environment with her cat whip, which she can use to attack opponents; a powerful hand-to-hand combatant, (occasional) ability to affect probability fields (jinxing her enemies) |
The Black Cat (real name Felicia Hardy) is a fictional character who appears in the Spider-Man comics published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man Volume 1 #194 (July, 1979). She was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Keith Pollard.
Character biography
The Black Cat is a costumed cat burglar and occasional crimefighter who has been romantically involved with Spider-Man in the past. Although the character started out as a Catwoman homage, she has since evolved in a different direction than her inspiration. The character has been the occasional star of miniseries, though she most frequently appears as a supporting character in the cast of various Spider-Man comics and other titles set in the Marvel Universe.
The Black Cat was raised by her father, who encouraged her to set her sights high. When playing basketball with him, she would ask him if she could be a cheerleader for the New York Knicks, and he responded that she should try becoming a basketball player. Later in college, she was raped by her boyfriend Ryan, and decided to train to learn how to fight in various fighting styles, lifting weights, rope climbing, etc., in order to kill him. Not caring if she got caught or prosecuted, she set out one night to kill Ryan, but discovered that Ryan has been killed in a drunk driving accident. Furious that she could not steal the life of the man who had stolen hers, and feeling reckless, Hardy decided to utilize her new skills as a cat burglar. She first donned the Black Cat identity in order to break her father out of prison, and on the same night, she met Spider-Man. Despite her antipathy towards men, Spider-Man was the first man she felt she could trust, and grew to love him, continuing with the Black Cat persona as a misguided attempt to attract his attentions. Spider-Man returned her affections, and when he grew to feel that he was in love with her too, he revealed his civilian identity of Peter Parker to her.
Initially, Felicia's abilities were natural, with the "accidents" which seemed to befall those who crossed her path being merely well-planned stunts and traps. After her near-death at the hands of The Owl and Doctor Octopus in Spectacular Spider-Man #72, Felicia feared that her lack of powers made her a vulnerability to Spider-Man, and that she would lose him. While Spider-Man was away in the "Secret Wars", Felicia turned to the Kingpin, and made a pact with him in return for his scientists giving her super-powers. She kept the secret from Peter for quite some time. What she didn't realize was that her newly-gained genuine 'bad luck' power was infectious, and that it began to permanently jinx Spider-Man, which had been the Kingpin's intent.
Spider-Man broke up with her when he found out about her powers, and enlisted the aid of Doctor Strange to remove the "hex" on him. In so doing, Strange also affected it at its source, changing the Black Cat's powers in the process, giving her instead cat-like powers of heightened strength, agility, balance, vision, and retractable claws. She then settled into a life of her own, albeit one which regularly intertwined with Spider-Man's. After finding out that Peter Parker had married Mary Jane Watson, the Black Cat, angered and jealous, began threatening and physically assaulting Mary Jane, and even began dating Peter's friend Flash Thompson in order to irritate him, though she eventually came to sincerely care for Thompson. Thompson broke up with her when he found out her secret. The Black Cat eventually moved past her feelings of anger and jealousy, and became friends with Spider-Man and Mary Jane. After Spider-Man used a device to remove his superhuman abilities, the Black Cat aided him in finding the device again in order to restore them, but in the process, the Black Cat's cat-like abilities were erased. She subsequently purchased equipment from the Tinkerer to incorporate into her costume in order to compensate for her lost abilities, and occasionally teams up with Spider-Man.
More recently Marvel has announced that the Black Cat will be a member of the new Heroes For Hire.
Personality
Originally portrayed as an unstable obsessive, Felicia Hardy evolved into a strong-willed and clever foil to Spider-Man. While pursuing a life of crime, she very occasionally threw caution to the winds when her greed got the better of her. She could be similarly reckless when it came to her relationships. (When pursuing Spider-Man's affections, she once set him up so that he would be caught with her in the commission of a crime -- hoping he'd then be forced to turn outlaw and they could then be together.) She could also be quite superficial (when Peter Parker revealed his identity to Felicia, she begged him to put his mask back on -- she couldn't deal with the thought of Spider-Man as an average guy) and, appropriately enough, catty. Again, she has grown considerably since then. She is the only character in Marvel who refers Spider-Man by the nickname 'Spider'.
Felicia is a fun-loving, vivacious, thrill seeker who enjoys being the Black Cat for the adventure it provides. She is quite sensual, a bit of a flirt, and enjoys companionship. She is also a loyal friend.
Associates and antagonists
Virtually all of Felicia Hardy's enemies and acquaintances are also those of Spider-Man.
- Peter Parker/Spider-Man - Originally antagonists, Peter and Felicia fell into an intense (and primarily physical) romance when she reformed. However, since her attraction was more towards Spider-Man than Peter Parker, their relationship was doomed to failure. They are currently good friends and gladly help each other out of tight spots. Felicia realizes now that breaking up with Peter was a mistake -- she is still "crushing" on Spider-Man and Peter Parker.
- Mary Jane Watson-Parker - Peter's wife and erstwhile rival for his affections. Surprisingly, the two women are quite close and friendly, similar to Veronica Lodge and Betty Cooper in the Archie Comics.
- Flash Thompson - Friend of the Parkers, Felicia began a relationship with him in order to dump him in order to get back at Peter for marrying someone else. Ironically, she actually came to love Flash and was dumped by him instead.
- Tinkerer-A friend of Cat's.
Powers and abilities
Initially, the Black Cat had no superhuman abilities. It was later revealed that she had a latent mutant ability to affect probability fields. This ability was activated through artificial means. It entails that under stress she is subconsciously able to cause anyone in her immediate vicinity that she perceives as a threat to be susceptible to freak accidents, like guns jamming and exploding, or tripping on objects, etc. This ability also had the side effect of eventually causing problems for anyone spending long periods of time around her. Doctor Strange eventually tampered with her powers removing that unwanted side-effect. However this magical tampering temporarily endowed her with cat-like abilities, giving her retractable talons in her fingetips, superhuman speed and strength, and infra-red vision. She lost these abilities as the magic faded.
The Black Cat has reflexes, agility, and stamina of an Olympic level acrobat. She is physically very strong and athletic and has great physical endurance. She is an excellent street fighter capable of taking on several armed male assailants and incapacitating them without being injured herself.
The Black Cat has also acquired several devices from the Tinkerer that increase her agility and heighten her strength. She wears ear rings that interact with the balance centers of her brain to grant her enhanced agility. She has contact lenses that let her see in various spectrums of light, such as infra-red and ultraviolet. Her costume contains micro-servos that enhances her strength above normal human levels, but apparently not quite to a superhuman degree. The gloves of her costume contain steel micro-filaments, which form retractable claws at the fingertips when she flexes her fingers (triggering a magnetic surge which condenses the filaments into polarized talons) which enable her to tear through most surfaces and easily scale walls. In addition to this the costume is extremely distracting and provocative, making it difficult for a male assailant to concentrate on what he is doing. Using this equipment the Black Cat has been able to successfully best enemies who have superhuman abilities.
The Black Cat has a miniature grappling hook device hidden in the "fur" of each glove, which enables her to swing from buildings in a manner similar to Spider-Man, though not quite as fast.
Publication history
Writer/director Kevin Smith began writing the Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do miniseries in 2002. After the third issue the series went on a hiatus until 2005, when Smith revealed he had finally finished writing the scripts. [1]. Smith has stated "While I have zero defense for my lateness (particularly when folks like Bendis turn out great stories in multiple books on a monthly basis), I will say this: it's a much better story now that it would've been had I completed it back in '02."
Notable stories
- Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do - a six-part series by Kevin Smith. This series had a famously delayed publication schedule. The first issue was published in 2002 and the last issue was published in January 2006.
Alternate versions
Ultimate Marvel
In Ultimate Spider-Man, the Black Cat is Felicia Hardy, a young woman who blames her father’s death on Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. Seeking revenge, she stole a priceless tablet that he was going to use on his comatose wife. Kingpin hired the assassin Elektra to retrieve it, and when Black Cat threw it into the harbor Elektra threw one of her sais into the Black Cat's chest, sending the thief over the edge. She was presumed dead, though no body was found.
She later returned during a gang war, stopping Hammerhead from shooting Spider-Man in the right temple. She later expressed interest in working for Hammerhead if it would mean getting rid of the Kingpin, which didn't sit that well with the other heroes.
Later, after the crisis was resolved, she passionately kissed Spider-Man through his mask, her previous interest in him having gotten stronger. She had apparently no idea of the age disparity between her and Peter, and mistakenly assumed, after he left in a rush, that he was a married man. When she managed to unmask him and realized how young he really is, she became revulsed and vomited.
In this version, the Black Cat actually has short brunette hair, and wears a white-haired wig in her secret identity. As a side note, this wig has proven itself to stick extremely well to Black Cat's scalp. More than once, Elektra yanked on it with force, and it has stayed in place.
MC2
In the alternate future comics known as MC2, Felicia Hardy married Flash Thompson and had two children, Felicity and Gene, before they divorced. In this continuity, she has apparently retired the identity of the Black Cat and runs a private detective agency. She has begun a romantic relationship with a woman she works with, a fact that has produced much tension between herself and her daughter. (There has been no implication that Felicity has a problem with the lesbian aspect, but instead it appears that she blames her mother for the divorce. The exact chronology of these events has not been established.) Felicity temporarily adopted the identity of the new Scarlet Spider.
Marvel Mangaverse
In this continuity, Black Cat is cybernetically enhanced. She is still Spider-man's old flame, but in the New Mangaverse storyline (with Spider-man having chosen Mary Jane Watson over her) she is trying to move on, and is now showing a romantic interest in Wolverine.
Appearances in other media
Animation
Spider-Man (1994-1998)
In the 1990s animated television series Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Felicia Hardy and her alter ego, the Black Cat, were depicted as the first potential love interests for both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, respectively, rivaled only by Mary Jane Watson. Felicia was the well bred, well-to-do daughter of business woman Anastasia Hardy, and had only vague memories of her father, a career jewel thief known as the Cat, who had been imprisoned for years because he had memorized the World War II super soldier formula. As her civilian identity, Felicia was a slightly petite (unlike her alter ego) but none the less very attractive blonde with a crisp brogue and a sharp mind. She briefly dated Michael Morbius and later Jason Macendale, who was revealed to be the Hobgoblin, and the revelation left her devastated.
In this version of her character, Felicia was experimented on by the Kingpin (Wilson Fisk) with an upgraded type of the super-soldier project used to create Captain America, gifting her with great physical strength agility and dexterity, and the ability to alter her physical appearance i.e. hair color to white and costume change (thus transforming her into the more recognizable "comic" form.) She has the ability to emit some sort of knockout gas from her wrists and an extendable cable and grappling hooks. She appears to have claws but they may only be part of her costume, allowing her to tear/cut through steel and concrete. She was played by Jennifer Hale.
Video games
In the Sony PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo 64 Spider-Man video games, Black Cat usually appears at the first stage giving gaming tips every time the player walked into a question mark. Although not appearing in the subsequent stages, she still takes part in the game backstory.
The Black Cat also makes an appearance in the Spider-Man 2 video game, based on the 2004 film of the same name, as an unusual seductive ally of the web slinger. This version of the Cat has considerably shorter hair. Several missions involve Spider-Man chasing her, and the two race in one of the last levels, either with Spider-Man wanting to question her about a theft or with her guiding him to a situation, such as a robbery or the current hiding place of the Shocker. In the course of the game, she fights alongside Spider-Man against Shocker and some tank mechs, all the while encouraging him to just forget about his civilian life and have fun as Spider-Man 24/7. In the end, Spider-Man decides that he must be both Spider-Man and Peter Parker, and Black Cat accepts his decision, promising Spidey that they will meet again. Her appearances were based loosely on early drafts of the script for the Spider-Man 2 movie, which originally included Black Cat (she was cut out quickly because there simply wasn't enough time to introduce her character).