Thanks for clicking, this is top 10 nerd and I’m your host Mary Jane Watson [title card
with aka Amanda McKnight below MJ] and I have a question for you, who would win a catfight
Black Cat or Catwoman?
Let me know in the comments below.
In this video, we will be counting down the top 10 surprising facts about Black Cat.
For those who don’t know, Felicia Hardy is the Black Cat a famed Marvel cat burglar.
Capital E-X, Ex-girlfriend of my bae, Peter Parker.
Black Cat is known for being a master thief and a skilled acrobat and fighter.
And fun fact, according to Marvel she is a natural platinum blonde.
Interesting.
Black Cat is also known as the long time on and off again paramour to Spiderman.
Now let’s get counting, tiger.
10 Owns the Bar with no Name.
After her rise as a crime lord, Felicia Hardy became the owner of the famous Bar with no
Name in New York.
We learn more about they way she runs hers establishment in 2017 Star Lord series.
Yeah, she runs it like a pretty scary stealthy crime boss.
9 Powers.
Although we may have become familiar with Black Cat’s bad luck powers, did you know
that Felicia Hardy actually started out as just your average girl?
Yup!
In fact it was her relationship with Spiderman that inspired her to get powers in the first
place.
She never felt like her and Peter were equals and worried about putting himself in harm’s
way in order to protect her.
In an attempt to fix these problems, she tried to get herself some super powers.
Not an easy task.
When Felicia did finally manage to acquire super powers, it was revealed that they were
designed by Kingpin.
Does not sound good.
As such her powers, which influenced others bad luck were both a blessing and curse as
they originally only targeted those she fought or those that had feelings for her.
Now, that’s some bad luck.
In the comics, Black Cat has lost and gained back these powers multiple times and has had
different levels of control over them.
She also at one point had cat-like powers but also lost those.
To compensate for the loss of her cat powers, she built a suit that mimicked them with accessories
to boot such equilibrium earrings and electromagnetic contact lenses.
Snazzy.
8 Maniac.
There is a time when Black Cat is actually attached to a symbiote.
Sort of.
She never goes so far as to bond with Venom or anything so extravagant unfortunately,
but she does become a part of Maniac’s Inklings.
Unwillingly, of course.
Lee Price, a small-time criminal with a hunger for power, ends up getting his hands on and
bonding with the Mania symbiote and become Maniac.
Using little parts of the symbiote, Maniac is able to latch onto and take control of
the minds of supervillains.
He calls these supervillains his Inklings.
It is in this way, Maniac manages to gain control of Black Cat’s mind, wanting to
use her connections to get in with the biggest crime families in the world.
Fortunately Black Cat ends up getting free and with the help of Agent Anti-Venom, aka
Flash Thompson; Venom, aka Eddie Brock; Spiderman, and Andrea Benton, she manages to help stop
Maniac’s dastardly plans.
7 First appearance.
In the 1963 the Amazing Spider-Man issue 194, the first thing Black Cat does upon acquiring
her suit is free her Dad from prison.
This is the first time we see Felicia in the comics and although she has already become
a criminal at this point in her life, I think it is very becoming that this is the first
heist she plans upon having her suit.
Felicia’s dad is Walter Hardy, a famous thief and cat burglar himself.
Felicia rescues her dad from prison as she knows he is sick and doesn’t want him dying
all alone.
She does this despite the fact that her father was absent for her entire life and does not
even recognize her upon being rescued.
As someone who is close to my Dad, this story really resonates with me and I think it speaks
volumes of Felicia’s character.
6 Mary Jane.
Although Black Cat and I, MJ, haven’t always seen eye to eye, in fact there were times
she physically assaulted me, we are on good terms now.
It took a while for Black Cat to rise up above her obsession of Peter Parker and her envy
of MJ.
In fact the two even teamed up in the 2009 Web of Spider-Man series.
At the end of their adventure together, Black Cat compliments MJ, confessing to Peter if
someone had to replace herself as his love interest, than Mary Jane was a pretty good
pick.
Peter reveals that he and MJ are actually currently broken up and the two Spiderman
ex-girlfriends decide to hang out afterwards, much to Peter’s dismay.
5 Savage Land.
Black Cat was kidnapped and forced to participate in a Battle Royal type game where herself
and Wolverine were released and hunted on Savage Island.
Of course the duo make short work of the team of hunters and leave the orchestrators of
this morbid game, Arcade and White Rabbit, stranded on Savage Island.
Watching the two team up is hilarious and fun.
You can check out the full adventure in the 2006 series Claws.
If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend checking it out.
4 Training.
In 1963 we knew Felicia became Black Cat because she wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps.
In 2002 more was added to Felicia’s backstory to explain the motivation behind her training
as a fighter and an acrobat.
In the series Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil that Men Do, written by Kevin Smith, we discover
that Felicia Hardy was a victim of sexual assault.
She was assaulted by her friend Ryan while in college and sought revenge.
It was for this reason that she initially started her physical training.
Though Felicia never did get revenge on Ryan, it is this experience that set her on the
path which eventually left her following in the footsteps of her father.
3 Romance.
We all know Black Cat has had an on and off again romance with Spiderman himself, but
who else has garnered the affections of the bad-luck Cat?
Although she has been known to have been in relationships with other super-heroes and
villians like Puma and the Foreigner, she also dated Peter Parker’s best friend, Flash
Thompson at one point.
Though the relationship was originally most likely an attempt by Black Cat at making Peter
jealous, she did eventually fall for him.
However once he found out her identity and the proverbial and literal cat was out of
the bag, the two eventually broke it off.
Black Cat also once flirted with Doc Oc!
Well not really Doc Oc, Doc Oc’s mind in Spiderman’s body really.
Still Doc Oc did not take kindly to the flirt or approve of the relationship between Spiderman
and the criminal so he beat Black Cat up, knocking out one of her teeth.
He then wrapped her up in web and left her for the police to find.
Black Cat then swore revenge on Spiderman and I think you can guess how the rest of
that romantic story went.
Black Cat never seems to catch a break when it comes to dating as was highlighted by her
being a main character in the limited series, Divas.
A sort of super-hero take on Sex in the City, if you will.
2 Venom.
Black Cat and Venom have a had a long standing feud in the comics, starting in issue 316
of Amazing Spider-Man in 1989 when Venom actually almost killed Black Cat while trying to find
Spider-Man.
After beating her up pretty badly, Venom also offhandedly lets Black Cat know that Spiderman
got married while she was away.
Which appears to hurt Black Cat even more than any physical pain.
The two were off to a rough start.
They have always been on opposite sides of the fight, with Black Cat being a good guy
and Venom being a bad guy.
Now with tables have turned by the two are still opposed with Black Cat being the new
Kingpin in New York, and Venom is trying to reform himself and become a hero.
And even though they still consistently team up to take down superbaddies as is recently
seen in Venom Inc, it seems these two will never see eye to eye.
1 Stolen Goods.
Black Cat has stolen many good and many hearts over the years but did you also know that
she stole a vial of Peter Parker’s blood?
Don’t worry, nothing creepy or weird.
She didn’t, like, steal it out of Peter while he was asleep or while he wasn’t looking.
During the events of the Gauntlet, the vial of blood was in the possession of Mr Negative
and Spiderman was actually trying to track it down and get it back but Black Cat beat
him to the punch and sold the vial to Morbius before Peter could get his hands on it.
You know what they say the early cat always gets the vial of blood…?
And that was our top 10 surprising facts about Black Cat.
I hope you enjoyed learning more about my occasional gal-pal, Felicia.
If you have the Black Cat fever and you want to see more of this masked master criminal,
you can check out the new downloadable content for PS4s Spiderman entitled the Heist and
let us know what you think of the new game and DLC in the comments below.
This is top 10 nerd and I’m your host, MJ, asking you pretty please to stay tuned, click
that thumbs up, tap that subscribe and stay nerdy, tiger.