Random Back Issues #135 - Black Cat #4

He could dispense with the bib - is it long enough to be an apron? - if he just wore casual dress. Maybe it's a thief thing, having a quirk. Felicia apparently only drinks champagne, the Fox always dresses in suits.

Black Cat's breaking into the Fantastic Four's current digs, a brownstone on Yancy Street. More accurately, she hit Johnny Storm up about them having dinner at his place. Felicia's out to steal a book Reed Richards owns, a collection of notes on dimensional travel, written by one Phineas Randall.

The Black Fox wants to loot the vault holding all the loot the New York Thieves Guild take as tariff, but the vault is in another dimension. Hence the need for the book, to complete his final job. Of course, the Fox is actually after something else entirely, as we (and Felicia) learned when we looked at an issue from the next volume.

Still, there's a journal to be lifted, and while Felicia is very wary of crossing Susan Storm-Richards, Johnny's the only one home now, so no big deal. Johnny gives her a tour, lingering over the Fantasticar, which he insists he designed and built, not Reed. The plan is for Bruno and Doctor Korpse, her crew, to pretend to be sushi delivery guys and when they hand over the food, she slips the journal to them. In the meantime, Korpse is boring Bruno with his, "Johnny Storm's not my Human Torch," takes.

Enter Sonny Ocampo. He was head of security on a heist Felicia's crew pulled in the first issue, which got him shitcanned. So he took a job from Odessa Drake, current head of the NYC T'ieves Guild to hunt down Felicia. At a dead end, he's staking the Tinkerer's storefront when the fact the Black Cat knocked on the FF's door pops up on social media. He's only two blocks away, so he rushes there and starts banging on the door and yelling into the intercom. Johnny, naturally, doesn't listen to what the guy is saying and remotely opens the door, thinking it's the sushi guys, who are in fact chasing Ocampo. They neglected to bring the sushi, though.

At least it's enough of a distraction for Felicia to swipe the book. The alarm is not about the book. Nor is it about Bruno and the Doc brutalizing Ocampo in the hallway. Nope, someone is opening the Negative Zone gate from the other side. With their bare hands. Uh-oh. If it's the Negative Zone, it can only be one of two guys, and it's not the one Richard Rider pulled inside-out.

{2nd longbox, 128th comic. Black Cat (vol. 3) #4, by Jed MacKay (writer), Travel Foreman (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)}