So MacKay's first Black Cat series got canceled at 12 issues, because that's how Marvel does things. Then it was restarted almost immediately with a new #1. Because that's also how Marvel does things. The second go-round is not as strong. Despite having the culmination of the plot to rob the other-dimensional vault of the NYC Thieves' Guild, the book is mostly bogged down tying in to various larger events.
The first 3 issues are a King in Black tie-in. While I enjoy Felicia dragging Eddie Brock as a loser and psychopath, and briefly wielding an Asgardian artifact of immense mystical power to shred stupid symbiote dragons, the heist part is of the storyline is fairly limited. Though the sight of Felicia riding a Goblin-glider with Dr. Strange's ghost-dog as a passenger, before diving into a writhing ball of symbiotes while wearing an Anti-Venom suit (because the symbiotes are acting as a prison for Strange) looked very cool.
The last three issues, "Infinity Score," are based around Felicia trying to steal or manipulate 3 people who essentially are Infinity Stones now, for a purpose she keeps hidden. The Stones being people is not an idea with much traction for me, and this was right after a terrible "Heroes Reborn" story - no, not the post-Onslaught one, a different terrible one - where reality got rewritten so the Squadron Supreme were the big heroes of the world. That version of Nighthawk is hounding Felicia, trying to get the Stones-people to make the world like that again, and thinks she'll go along with it, because they were a couple in that world. I would have been perfectly content if it was just Felicia running circles around Nick Fury Jr., but here was all this other crap.
I will add, that storyline outlasted this book, actually being wrapped up in Giant-Size Black Cat, which is just obnoxious.
C.F. Villa is artist for the majority of the book, but the issues he draws are the ones I just detailed in those two paragraphs, and I didn't want to highlight those stories. All that stuff about the glider and the ghost-dog, that was Villa. As well as Asgardian-magic-hyped Felicia shredding dragons with a swipe of her claws. His Felicia is very lithe and agile in motion, and that's where she seems to be most confident. It's when she has to stop that any insecurity or anxiety sets into her expressions or body language, which is a nice touch for someone who loves thieving for the excitement of it.
Michael Dowling draws the 3 issues that wrap up Fox's plan. Which is not to rob the vault, but meet with the Gilded Saint to bargain immortality for he and Felicia, with the deed to Manhattan (that Felicia swiped from Strange in the previous volume) as the chip on offer. Felicia, understandably, cannot let the idea of an entire city being dragged into a mystical, other-dimensional vault (that Dowling draws to look a bit like Mars, or maybe the redder parts of Arizona) stand. She fixes the problem, at the cost of Fox's life, and the enmity of her co-apprentice (and past lover) Tamara, as would play out in Iron Cat.
In general though, I find Dowling's work too flat and, for the actual human characters at least, too photo-realistic. Felicia always seems to be viewed through a gauzy filter, like an old movies where they smeared the lens with Vaseline. Stylistically, the look of Dowling's issues doesn't line up with any of the other artists on either volume.
The biggest development in this volume is Felicia and Odessa Drake actually starting up some sort of relationship. I wouldn't call it dating, and I'm not sure Felicia is entirely on solid ground with the Guild. Dealing with Fox cleared some debts, but I can't imagine she's going to play by their rules any more than she did before. Call them semi-antagonistic rivals with benefits?
At any rate, while Tom DeFalco had her in a relationship with a woman in Spider-Girl, I think this is the first, on-page relationship we see Felicia having with another woman in the main Marvel Universe (her past with Tamara is alluded to in these volumes, but not beyond a panel of them holding hands under a table while Black Fox yammers on about misdirection, and her showing up in a collage of Felicia's past lovers.)
This volume lasted 10 issues, so restarting the book and tying in to larger events did nothing to extend its lifespan. What a shock, he said, completely unsurprised. After this, MacKay wrote the aforementioned Giant-Size Black Cat, a one-shot team-up with Mary Jane, the aforementioned Iron Cat, a team-up mini-series with Mary Jane that was a tie in to Dark Web. That last one wasn't very good. Then there was (two-and-a-half years ago?! Cripes) a Jackpot and Black Cat mini-series written by Celeste Bronfman, about Felicia committing crimes on the orders of some AI threatening her girlfriend (not Odessa), and MJ trying to help with the knockoff H-Dial that Paul guy everyone hates built her. I didn't buy it past the first issue, but I read the girlfriend was behind the whole thing. Which doesn't make me feel I missed out, if it took 5 issues to get to that point.
Speaking of 5 issues, G. Willow Wilson is currently writing a Black Cat series I dropped after that amount of time. Wilson wrote Felicia as impulsive, which is fine. Also incompetent, which is not. The particular flavor of humor made it feel like a Harley Quinn pitch Wilson hadn't gotten to use. Since I dropped the book, it's had team-ups with Venom (Mary Jane edition), tie-ins to a symbiote-flavored Spider-event, and the recent solicits have teased stuff about Felicia being a mutant. Which is probably meant to be a clickbait fakeout, but also not the sort of idiocy I put past an increasingly desperate Marvel. None of it makes me regret dumping the book.
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