What I Bought 7/13/2019

It's a cool, rainy day, which is nice, because from Wednesday on it's going to be an inferno. And I'm going to be running from one side of the state to another during it. Wheeeee.

Black Cat #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer) - Just smashing the cases open is a little sloppy for Felicia.

Felicia and her crew enlist the aid of Xander the Merciless, former foe of Dr. Strange, to infiltrate Strange's Sanctum and steal the original deed to Manhattan. Xander isn't exactly in the clearest mental state at the start, but gets better the deeper they go. He's really feeling good when he finds his Star-Stone, so Felicia and her crew are probably in trouble. In other developments, Ms. Drake, the head of the Thieves Guild, has hired the security guy from the first issue to hunt Felicia down. Lacking job prospects as an ex-con who just got fired, Sonny accepts. Which I'm sure will totally not backfire on him at all.

Apparently Bruno and Boris are pre-existing characters. There's actual an editor's note that they tangled with Spider-Man in Amazing #196. Go figure. Xander is the same way, he has tangled with Strange before. Which is fine. The Marvel Universe is already full of strange stuff one person has that someone else might want (I'm not clear on why Dr. Strange would have the original land deed to the island of Manhattan, but sure, why not.) That's why you need a thief. In that regard, at least, this is pretty much what I hoped for out of this book.

Foreman's work continues to mostly impress. The facial expressions are good. The whole conversation about Spider-Man is a good example. The disgusted looks Bruno and Boris make when Felicia refers to her relationship (I'm glad she and Spidey are on good terms again). Felicia actually got offended when they suggest he has a 'spider-face.' Maybe she's just insulted they think she would make out with a guy with a 'spider-face.'

(I'm curious what the Black Fox was going to say about Spider-Man before they interrupted them. They fought a couple times, worked together a couple times, Spidey saved his butt from Dr. Doom. That has to count for something.)

And there's a spot in the double-page spread of them in the room of stairs where he gives Xander much larger pupils than up to that point, right as Felicia's internal narration is starting to get concerned about him. It gives Xander this much more intense look than he's had up to that point, which has mostly been gentle, eyes only part open or shadowed.

That said, I have no idea if I'm reading the "Stairs" pages in the proper sequence. I can't tell if you just read one page first, then the next, or if I'm supposed to be following the stairs. If it's the latter, there's a couple of places where I'm not sure which panel comes next. The good news is that the dialogue isn't set-up so that you really need to read them in particular order. It's most giving the impression they've been on the stairs for a long time, and are just discussing random shit to pass the time as they do.