Black Cat #9 // Review
Being a thief means being able to get things that are difficult for others to get. Often those things are out of reach simply because they’re other people’s property. Sometime, though? Sometimes they’re out of reach for a reason. Sometimes stealing that sort of thing can land a thief in a jail cell. For Felicia, stealing the Siege Perilous means getting sucked into a mind-bending reality in Black Cat #9. Writer G. Willow Wilson continues a deeply enjoyable adventure with the art team of Gleb Melnikov and Andrés Genolet. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brian Reber and Rachelle Rosenberg.
Felicia has been sucked through the Siege Perilous to find herself landing directly into Central Park. In a mini-skirt. And mismatched stockings. And a Taking Back Thursday shirt. The pink and black ensemble looks very college. Which actually makes a lot of sense because she’s...in college. As is her friend Mary Jane...who also happen to be performing Shakespeare in the Park. Something has changed pretty drastically. M.J. has a chance at success. Peter never got bitten by the spider. Everything seems so very...stable. Felicia has a chance at a life outside of super-powered thievery. Will she survive it?
There’s usually a steady, even-tempo to a mainstream superhero comic book. The fundamental nature of the sequential art medium has a tendency to cause everything in an issue to play-out in real time. It takes 20 minutes for you to read. That’s about 20 minutes for the characters too. Wilson’s genius for the 9th issue of Black Cat? The story plays-out over the course of a few decades in a pocket dimension...and not just for a gag. Wilson really allows Felicia a stable life. M.J. too. It’s a charmingly fascinating exercise.
Felicia is cute in college. The look that the art team gives her has an emo charm about it that delivers a bit more of a background on her and who she is. There’s a subtle change in appearance from scene to scene. Clever thought has been put into the way Felicia would dress and carry herself as a mother after yeas of stability. The scenes in the pocket dimension aren’t some silly throw-away moment. It really feels like there’s this whole other world that’s playing out on the page. Through it all, Felicia remains impressively nuanced whether she’s an emo college kid, Black Cat or a mother of a teenage daughter.
Glimpses into other lives of established characters happen on a fairly regular basis. It can be difficult to deliver the concept in a way that feels like it's actually exploring something as opposed to just playing with chance and circumstance in the characters backstory. Wilson and Company have really developed something that feels like it comes from another world which amplify the intensity of the drama all the more. That's not an easy thing to do in a genre that's so often features parallel versions of noted characters from alternate timelines. Quite an accomplishment.
