Black Cat #3 // Review
Writer Jed MacKay delivers another story of weirdly stylish larceny in the latest issue of Black Cat. Artist Travel Foreman gives the wild energies of an anarchic magical story weight, balance, and impact. He is aided in a couple of pages of light flashback drawn by Michael Dowling. MacKay and company continue to firmly establish Black Cat as a woman able to navigate dangerous chaos and land on her feet in another thoroughly entertaining issue.
Felicia did it. She snuck into what might be the single most secure location in all of Marvel Manhattan. Then managed to get her elegant, little paws on the original deed for the island of Manhattan. Now the magician who helped her sneak-in to Dr. Strange's inner sanctum... has his hands on an artifact, that endangers quite a bit more than just the success of her little burglary. Survival depends on cunning, various shades of luck and the ghost of a Basset Hound in a very wild third issue of Black Cat's new ongoing series.
MacKay mixes genuinely funny comedy with mystery and action. It's a brilliant balancing act. That also manages to be both really satisfying as a standalone story. AND advance ongoing aspects of the story which will, no doubt, continue to be explored as the series continues. The appealingly comic dynamic between Black Cat and her accomplices propels the story through the twists and turns of a heist gone totally sideways. The addition of the glowing green ghost of a Basset Hound gives the comedy of the issue a pleasantly weird edge. The resolution of the installment allows Black Cat to use a tactic that any thief in their right mind (super-powered or not) would typically avoid. MacKay handles this and everything that leads up to it with a very deft narrative.
Foreman embraces the weirdness of the story with a warm radiance. The action and the magic are given an enjoyable weight, Foreman's real accomplishment here is delivering a very distinct mood to the page. All of the weirdness that crawls around in Dr. Strange's home feels vividly alive under Foreman's pen. Foreman os well-paired with Dowling for the flashback scene. Dowling's two-page interlude between Black Cat and her mentor in Paris feels crisp and pristine in contrast to the crazy energies of the rest of the issue, but the style is not so jarringly different as to interrupt the overall flow of the issue.
The first issue of the series was Marvel's best-selling single-issue of the year thus far. It will remain to be seen if the series continues to be as wildly popular as that first issue, but MacKay's writing is so dizzyingly enjoyable that it certainly DESERVES to be Marvel's consistently highest-selling book.
