Felicia Hardy has come a long way from being obsessed with Spider-Man. Several issues into a best-selling title character, and she’s a much bigger deal. And she has the distinction of being one. Of the few villains to ever have her own name on a book. So naturally, she’s going to have to acquire her own nemesis. It’s been long enough. Writer Jed MacKay introduces a new arch-enemy for Felicia in Black Cat #4. Casting light on MacKay’s creation are artist Nina Vakueva and colorist Brian Reber. MacKay and company provide a bracing change in direction for the title with a sudden lurch into something new that might prove to be really, really good. 

She had been wealthy. She had been a socialite. Then she had been dead. (Kinda.) Now she’s not. (Sorta.) She’d messed-up her life before, and now she wants to turn it around as a superhero known as the Cat Queen. She’s on the trail of Felicia Hardy. Has been trailing her for quite some time. She’s going to bring her in if it’s the last things she ever does, and seeing as how she’s on the trail of Marvel’s greatest thief, it just might be. The Black Cat always watches her back. The one thing that might save Cat Queen? She’s driven. Felicia can respect that much. 

MacKay has a hell of a lot of guts trying to introduce a brand new arch-nemesis for a long-running character in a single issue. Granted: Cat Queen HAS shown-up before, but this is the first time that she’s really emerged as the driven hero that MacKay seems to be framing her to be. And it’s also a hell of a thing framing the title character of the book largely as a minor supporting character in her own book for the bulk of an issue. (Felicia doesn’t actually have any lines or appear anywhere near the center of the panel until a few pages before the end of the issue.) Black Cat’s charm shines through in the end, but it takes a LONG time for Felicia to saunter into her own issue this month.

Vakueva has a virtually blank slate to work with. Cat Queen is a young hero suffering from global retrograde amnesia. She’s learning how to be a hero in the process of doing so. The artist could frame her in almost any way and make it compelling. There’s confidence drawn into Cat Queen’s posture that also feels weighted-down by her own lack of experience. Vakueva does an outstanding job of carefully weighing-down the hero without compromising an overall sense of heroism about her…and Vakueva’s treatment of Felicia’s style looks like it just slid in from the shadows fully-formed. It’s an impressive treatment of the title character. 

The pulse and pacing of this issue seem to be setting-up Black Cat’s next arc in a very thoughtful way. Black Cat’s willingness to work with a new hero is a powerful way to construct the latest adventures of a villain. MacKay and Vakueva are building something interesting around the edges of a prominent character. It’ll be interesting to see where they’re going with this latest toy for Felicia Hardy to bat around the pages of her own book. 

Grade: B+