Black Cat #4 - I love the design of the covers for this mini-series. Felicia holding something, and Spider-Man off-screen webbing it to stop her. My first thought is always that she's stealing it, but after this story, I started thinking perhaps she's returning it, or she just needs it to stop a villain, and Spidey is assuming the worst.Felicia rescues her mother from Vasili, and her crew poses as movers to abscond with all the Kravinoffs stolen stuff (plus Felicia's mom). Cat makes Vasili look very bad in the eyes of Mama Kraven, but can't bring herself to let him be killed. She facilitates his escape, and manages her own as well. Vasili's luck keeps getting worse because Ana Kravinoff hunts him down, her father at her side. That surprised me. I'd heard Kraven reacted to his return by deciding he'd better run through the jungle, and don't look back. There's a little chat near the end between Peter and Felicia, then it's back to work for the Marvel Universe's premier cat burglar, and I really love the job she's pulling at the end.
Nitpick: The recap page has it wrong. It says Felicia's friend Tami impersonated her and was captured by Vasili, but in the story, it's Kyoko, another member of Felicia's group. Nitpick over. Even missing a chapter at this point, I love this story. I like Felicia's pride in her work, her bit of cockiness, that even though she's a thief, there's enough of a good person in her she wouldn't let the Kravinoff matriarch kill Vasili right in front of her. Whether that's Peter Parker's influence, or simply who she is, I don't know, but it's nice. I like that Jen van meter gave Felicia a crew, and made the story more than just an offshoot of Spider-Man's stuff with the Kravens. It's tied in, and that bugs Felicia, and worries her, but she's the one Vasili ultimately crossed, and she's the one he has to deal with.
I like that during Felicia's fight with Mama Kraven, when someone is hit, the background goes from the wood-paneled walls to a sort of sickly orange. It gets my attention, makes me notice those panels, the violence in them. Not sure why that particular color, though.
Darkwing Duck #5 - In one issue, Darkwing goes from beloved by the entire city, with announcers proclaiming they want to kiss him right on the mouth, to Public Enemy #1. Even Spider-Man couldn't experience a change of fortune that fast. It's not Darkwing's fault, at least not this Darkwing. NegaDuck and old Scrooge McDuck enemy Magica DeSpell are abducting and brainwashing Darkwings from other dimensions, and sending them on rampages through St. Canard. You know, terrorizing the populace, aiding and abetting fugitives, ruining visits to the Natural History Museum. On the plus side, Darkwing helps his old girlfriend Morgana out of the funk she seems to have gone into after he retired (and broke up with her since he dates her in superhero identity only). She's a witch, so that's some magic on his side now.Until Brill and Silvani brought her up, I'd completely forgotten Darkwing dated a witch. Then I see the panel of them sharing a dinner over a tombstone and it's like "How'd I forget that? I knew that!" The knowledge was lost back there somewhere in the recesses of my mind. On the writing side, I liked the bit where Gosalyn feels the answer to every problem presented in class is "lasers", and a page later, we see the police in pursuit of a crook, desperately wishing they had lasers. Silvani gets to draw Caveman Darkwing, irate spiders, Comissioner Gordon as a dog thing, robots with ties and chefs hats, and rose and chocolate monsters. He does a good job on all of it. I will say Darkwing looks tired a lot. Bags under his eyes and such. Could be age, could be trying to get into the swing of crime-fighting after 18 months in retirement.
Hawkeye and Mockingbird #5 - Hawkeye takes care of Crossfire, and even though it's kind of brutal, I like the arrow with multiple arrowheads connected by a wire for restraining villains. A bolo arrow would be less bloody though, wouldn't it? Meanwhile, Mockingbird tries to keep Evil Phantom Rider busy until good Phantom Rider can exercise all possessing Phantom Rider spirits. Which he does, until he's shot by Crossfire, apparently not restrained well enough, and the jar the spirits were trapped in breaks, and the evil one escapes and Jaime Slade is possessed again, and it's Phantom Rider/Mockingbird again. Mockingbird wins some small victory, and Hawkeye maims Crossfire. Ouch.See ripping out a toll like Crossfire's cybernetic eye is a task better reserved for folks like Deadpool, or Taskmaster, though I'm not surprised Hawkeye did it. He was all "I'm gonna kill lots of Skrulls!" during Secret Invasion. Then it was "I'm gonna kill Osborn!" during Dark Reign. A successful maiming doesn't feel out of line, though at least he found it troubling. Those warm, fuzzy moments of last issue vanished in a hurry. Our heroes seem to be going their separate ways, which I'm not sure is wise. I understand Hawkeye doesn't feel cut out for this type of stuff, but if Mockingbird's going to get away from the loving death stuff Phantom Rider accused her of, it might help to have someone around to help with that. I don't think Dominic Fortune meets those criteria. I suppose she's the only one who can change herself though, so that's what she'll have to do.
I hadn't originally ordered issue 6, but since the book appears to be ending with that issue, I'm debating whether to check it out after all, to see how McCann wraps things up. I'll make that decision when I'm standing in front of the racks.
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