Profile: Black Cat
Felicia Hardy, Black CatFirst appeared: Amazing Spider-Man #194, 1979
Current status: the reformed cat-burglar is keeping on with her since role as a crime-fighter and ally to Spider-Man with a tongue-in-cheek personality.
Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: in Kevin Smith’s Spider-Man: Black Cat miniseries, which took almost two years to complete, Felicia was revealed to have been raped during her college years. Surprise, surprise.
What’s wrong with how this was done? It’s kicking a dead horse in utter aggravation. After more than a ton of dud storylines in a whole shipload of different comics, several that were mentioned here already, in which women are raped either as plot devices, motivations for the male hero or in ways that make it seem as though the heroine only woke up to reality through her own personal victimization, this was really a giant punch in the face to the audience.
The Black Cat miniseries was said to be a lead-in for a potential ongoing series for Felicia, but, partly due to the incredible lateness that kept it from being finished on time, it was not to be. Hopefully, the possibilities of the story’s being in regular continuity are not to be either. Felicia Hardy deserves much better than this.
posted by Avi Green @ 2:27 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
Personally I prefer her being victimized (to a point mind you) over her having a dellusional appreciation for her father. The old origins made it sound sort of incestual in a way. Her loving her father and idolizing him so much she'd become a thief, like him, for the thrill of it. How many girls would REALLY go that far? Not many that I know/heard of. And the extent it set it up before was annoying. Her being victimized THEN her father's "Occupation" help influencing her afterwards...THAT I feel more or less adds something more and better to her origins.
Kevin Smith wrote it best in the start of #6, that while a father is a big influence on a girls future, that to say it was ONLY that that made her a theif would not at all be right nor accurate (not the exact words but I'm paraphrasing)
Now, I understand where you (and others) are coming from in that it was sitll rape...and I respect that. But I look at how it impacted the story/character overall...and I feel the story told and how it was executed was very well done. But again that's just me.
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