Ultimate March may be over, but oxidizing showers bring rusty flowers, because it's Iron Spring!
Iron Cat was part of Jed MacKay's seeming attempt to keep writing stories about Felicia Hardy, which is A-OK by me. It brings together several points from the two volumes of Black Cat he wrote.
One, that while the Black Fox was teaching Felicia how to be a thief, he had another apprentice, a young woman named Tamara, who was Felicia's girlfriend for at least part of that time. Two, that Felicia ultimately betrayed the Black Fox after he tricked her into handing over Manhattan to the Gilded Saint in exchange for immortality. Third, that Felicia borrowed Tony Stark's facilities to build a suit of armor to intimidate Odessa Drake with during her war with the Thieves' Guild. A suit Stark ultimately got back and then upgraded, and which Tamara subsequently stole to kill Felicia.
Stark's technology being stolen and abused is enough to drag him in to even up the firepower disparity, but MacKay throws in a plot about the digitized intelligence of Stark's enemies helping Tamara as part of its own plan to destroy Stark's name and legacy forever. I mean, good luck. if Stark himself hasn't managed that by now. . .
There are inevitable betrayals, plus Tamara and Felicia both trying to pull misdirection ploys on each other before joining forces against the greater threat. Watching Felicia try to banter with her ex and actually somewhat succeed despite Tamara's best efforts is kind of cute, but the further into the mini-series you get, the more the story becomes an Iron Man story Black Cat happens to be mixed up in, which is not ideal from my perspective.
Pere Perez' art is solid, able to keep things clear when there's a whole mess of Iron Man suits zipping around firing repulsors at each other. He draws the Iron Cat armor different from how C.F. Villa did, though, and I'm not a fan of the changes. Took a lot of the individuality out of it by shrinking the ears, making the claws more like physical claws rather than some sort of laser/plasma projection, and removing the glowing ponytail thing on the helmet. Guess in-story that could be chalked up to Stark, though.
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