Sometimes - too many times, frankly - I cover something in this series that I kept as long as I did specifically to do a Splash Page on it, and then it's excised. Or I sorta like it, but it's not going to force its way onto my list of all-time favorites. Today though, we're looking at a book I loved. Hooray!
The first of Jed MacKay's Black Cat books is a string of heists in service of an even greater heist. Felicia, with a two-person crew of Boris Korpse (tech support/safecracker) and Bruno Grainger (wheelman/muscle), plan to break into the vaults of the New York Branch of the Thieves Guild. No, not "T'ieves", this guild is run by the classy and intense Odessa Drake, not that swamp-rat LeBeau. The woman knows how to properly enunciate, thank you.
This is where some backstory that MacKay adds comes in. Felicia and Odessa are childhood friends, because their fathers both apprenticed under the Black Fox, as Felicia later would (another thing I'm pretty sure Mackay added to those characters' backstories.) The grand heist is Fox's swan song before retirement. It's a tricky job, because the vault is in another dimension, the only known access belonging to the Guild.
Unfortunately, neither Felicia or the Fox are in good graces with the Guild, not they'd hesitate to pull this if they were. Felicia hasn't paid her union dues, essentially, so Odessa is trying (violently) to bar her from work. As for the Fox, Odessa's issue with him is a little more personal.
The book lasted 12 issues, broken into 1 or 2-issue stories focused on different heists. Each heist is about getting something needed to break into the Guild vault. Use the ruined wreck of Xandar the Merciless to infiltrate the Sanctum Sanctorum for the original deed to Manhattan. Arrange an impromptu date with Johnny Storm to swipe a book of Phineas Randall's writings from Reed Richards' bookshelf. Head to Madripoor to steal the second of two paintings with instructions on how to find the right dimension from some guy named "Patch" of all things.
Of course, things never go according to plan. Xandar finds his Star-Stone in Strange's house, which makes him less a ruined wreck and more a Sorcerer Supreme-killing threat. Blastaar drops in from the Negative Zone. Patch is having issues with some little rich psycho. Hovering over it all is Odessa, determined to settle scores with the Fox and collar the Cat, with the raw numbers and resources to make it a viable threat.
MacKay writes Felicia as professional, in the sense she takes pride in being a thief, in following certain codes like watching out for her crew and making sure everyone gets a cut, in not letting anyone steal from her. Who worries whether she can actually keep all her promises to protect them. But she also loves being a thief. Loves the thrill, loves the excitement, loves getting into places no one was supposed to be able to get into and taking things no one was supposed to be able to take.
The last story involves Felicia posing as a tech-writer openly scornful of how Tony Stark refuses to exceed humanity by augmenting himself. That gets her in the front door, because nothing annoys an egoist like Stark like someone publicly disparaging him. She needs a key for an interdimensional lock, and has the specs, but he's got the forge. While Stark's distracted with an old threat she hired, she also makes herself a suit of special armor to pay Odessa a visit, and tangles with Iron Man while she's at it. As she puts it, you steal a sports car, you want to test drive it. You steal a war machine, you want to take it to war.
(As with many decisions made in the heat of the moment, this one backfires. The threat did not dissuade Odessa. If anything, she's more hot for Felicia than ever. And Felicia's ex-girlfriend later got the armor and came after her with it, see Sunday Splash Page #263.)
There's a lot of fun interplay between Felicia, Bruno and Boris. They have certain patterns and routines with each other, like taking turns on who gets to pick music during dinner, or arguing about movies. Boris is the zany one, the mad scientist who knows who Phineas Randall is and thinks Johnny Storm is a phony. Jim Hammond is the one, true Human Torch! Bruno's the loyal meathead, who loves Elvis - music, movies, doesn't matter - and takes a concerning amount of pride in being from Pittsburgh. I mean, what I saw in my one brief visit was nice enough, but at the end of the day, it's just a city.
There's also briefly Sonny Ocampo, ex-con-turned-security guard-turned-investigator for Odessa. Ocampo's determined to get Hardy for costing him his security gig, so Felicia naturally can't help messing with him. But she does advise him to get away from Odessa, and pays him for helping with the Blastaar thing. I thought Sonny was going to be more of a recurring thorn, but MacKay plays it as Odessa just wanting to pressure Felicia from different angles. If that one falters, there's always another.
Because it's a Marvel comic, it cycles through a lot of artists. Travel Foreman is the closest the book has to a regular, covering 6 of the first 7 issues. The heist of the first painting, the Sanctum heist, the FF heist, the issue that explains what Odessa's beef with the Black Fox is. Foreman's work is a lot cleaner than it was on Immortal Iron Fist. Cuts back on the shadows and the excessive cross-hatching, makes it less gritty and dirty. These are classy thieves after all, not some second-rate bunch of window smashers. A couple of times he abandons inking entirely, giving Felicia an almost ethereal look. I'd say it was meant to be when she's most in her element, something beyond a mere thief, but I don't think it's used that consistently.
The other 6 issues are split between Michael Dowling (1 issue), CF Villa (2 issues), Kris Anka (2 issues), and one that's split between Annie Wu and Dike Ruan. Dowling's is sort of an interregnum, where Felicia takes the night off for a date with Batroc, while the Fox is hounded by Odessa's ninjas. (I do wish Foreman, or whoever was responsible, had designed a look for the Guild's warriors not so much like The Hand.)
Villa handles the Stark heist, Anka the Madripoor excursion. Villa draws some really slick armor, while Anka provides Logan with facial expressions I would never have expected. He also makes Felicia's mask more like a couple of "C"s than I've ever seen anyone draw it. Doesn't really make sense as a design. On the other hand, he also draws Felicia a head taller than Logan, and when they decide to bankrupt Kade Kilgore's casino, he draws the hell out of Felicia in a little black dress. Much respect for that; almost went with a splash page of that, but figured it made more sense to go with Foreman, given their respective page counts for the series.
It was the other issue, #8, that might be my favorite. Annie Wu gets the dull, but more emotionally charged, part of the comic to draw, Felicia trying to convince her mother to take a cruise to Europe. So she's not around if Odessa gets really vicious. It's the only time we see Felicia's mother in the series, and it gets into the strain she feels with a daughter that followed her father's footsteps, right down to a mentor she doesn't like.
The fun part is Ruan's half, where Felicia and the Beetle break into Rand Industries to swipe schematics for the Randall Gate, and run afoul of Danny, his apprentice Pei, and her little dragon. Which leads to the Beetle getting smacked around by an aggressive kid who can turn her fist unto like a thing of iron, while Danny enjoys fighting someone not trying to steal his chi or cut off his hands. Even though Felicia gets what she came for, it was funny to see her thrown off her game by someone else having a good time interacting with her, and the comedy of her frustration and Janice's terror were played really well.
I think this book is as close as I'll ever get to exactly what I wanted from a Black Cat series. Even when the book restarts, with MacKay still as writer, it can't catch the same lightning in a bottle, though that may be due to factors outside his control. But we'll discuss that next week.
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