Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)

Black Cat
Name	Felicia Sara Hardy
Current Alias	Black Cat
Aliases	Agent #060, Cat
Affiliation and Relationships
Affiliation	Formerly Maggia; partner of Spider-Man
Relatives	Walter Hardy (father)
Marital Status	Single
Physical Characteristics
Gender	Female
Eyes	Irises: Blue
Hair	White
Origin and Living Status
Origin	Human
Living Status	Alive
Reality	Earth-1048
Place of Birth	Flushing, New York
Personal Information
Identity	Known to Authorities
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Adventurer, criminal, thief, vigilante
Base of Operations	Paris, France Formerly Freedom Tunnels hideout, Manhattan, New York City, New York
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Jon Paquette, Benjamin Arfmann, Kelsey Beachum, Christos Gage, Dan Slott
First	Marvel's Spider-Man (September 7, 2018)
First	Marvel's Spider-Man (September 7, 2018)

History

Early Life

Felicia Hardy was the daughter of Walter Hardy, a well-known cat burglar and the first to operate under the moniker as Black Cat. Walter was arrested when she was young, and apparently died while trying to escape prison. Unbeknownst to her, he was still alive, and now acting as a detective at the NYPD. She eventually followed her father steps, becoming the second Black Cat, pulling off many difficult heists as the infamous cat burglar.

One night, she decided to break into Fisk Tower to rob Wilson Fisk. During the burglary, Spider-Man intervened, but inadvertently allowed Felicia to escape. He followed her and caught up with her, but she distracted him with her charm and managed to flee the scene.

They met again during Felicia's next heist, but after exchanging a few words and blows, they got romantically involved. The next day, upon reflecting on the affair and the fact that he had revealed his identity to her, Peter felt he had failed and swang away telling Felicia to return everything she'd stolen. This wasn't their last encounter, however, as Felicia showed up to help Spider-Man fight the Shocker during a robbery. When he was neutralized, she revealed that being with him was excited and asked him to teach her how to be a hero. Despite some effort, this lasted only until she got the itch to stealing again from the crooks the two of them took down.

Spider-Man found the stolen loot at her place and, soon after, she eventually left New York with all her equipment locked up as evidence in a police precinct. During her absence, she truly tried to go straight, even attempting to get a job that didn't involve "breaking or entering".

Return of the Black Cat

Years later, she returned and tricked Spider-Man into collecting several cat dolls throughout the city, knowing that he would report them to police captain Yuri Watanabe. Spidey tracked down her hideout within the Freedom Tunnels, finding everything she stole over the years, along with a recorded message where she left him a new dark suit. Together, the dolls shut down the alarms of the police department's evidence lockup, where Felicia recovered her old costume and gear, instead of looting 50 million dollars of stakeouts. This made Spider-Man note that Black Cat had something bigger planned.

The City That Never Sleeps

Now working for Hammerhead, Black Cat sneaked into the MMoCA with her eye on the "Maria" painting, where she came face-to-face with Spider-Man. However to his surprise she broke the "Maria" in half revealing that she was in fact after a data drive hidden within it and made her escape. This caused gang wars between the crime families, one of which she orchestrated to distract Spider-Man as she attempted to steal the second drive from the Cicero family. When Spider-Man arrived at her current location, Black Cat escaped leaving him to deal with the Cicero thugs as she watched. Spider-Man requested to know what was in the drives she was stealing, though Black Cat claimed she didn't know. He then questioned why she would steal them for Hammerhead and she claimed that, if she didn't, Hammerhead would kill her son! Spidey was shocked to hear that she had a child, as she vanished right before his eyes.

Black Cat proceeded to steal more data drivers around the city. Her next target was hidden within a rare book that she then emptied and handed to the Maggia thugs while she kept the drive to hand to Hammerhead. Right after Black Cat stole the forth drive, Spider-Man caught up to her, wanting to talk, but she quickly ran off after throwing an EMP grenade that disabled his Web-Shooters, forcing him to chase after on foot through the streets. Spider-Man tried to convince her that he meant to help but Black Cat insisted on doing it alone, like always. Their scuffle led to a train station where Felicia hopped on a train to get away. but Spidey's shooters rebooted just in time to chase her along the tracks. Cat then plays "harder to get" as she jumps over rooftops with her grapple hook. Spider-Man slows her down by webbing her and finally managing to catch her. He revealed he knew the drives together contained the money that crime families pooled together, and convinced her she couldn't trust Hammerhead as he would still kill her son once she handed him the last drive. Felicia agreed to stall them for a few days max while Spider-Man assisted in finding the child. Spidey then wanted to ask if he might be the father but she postpones the question for when her son is safe and swings off. Sometime later, Black Cat contacted Spider-Man with a vague request for his help and hung up knowing he'd rush on over anyway. As he arrived at the Bar location she sent, Cat explained that an old friend tipped her that Hammerhead was keeping something extremely valuable at the office above. If they were to see Black Cat then her son was as good as dead, so Spider-Man drew out the Maggia goons while she sneaked in without being spotted. As the fight escalated, Cat joined in on the fight to knock every one of them out. While she couldn't find the location of the vault where her son was being held, they'd at least narrowed it down. Spider-Man continually attempted to revisit his earlier question but Cat kept changing the subject as she leaned in, asking him if he ever "missed that". Black Cat then leaves claiming somethings she does better alone and whispers only "some things" to his ear. Felicia assured him that she'd call him when she needed an extra pair of hands before exiting.

She was contacted again by Spider-Man, who claimed to know where the Vault keeping her son could be located, pinpointing a harbor on the Hudson River that was used by the Maggia as storage, claiming that Hammerhead could have left her son there. They worked together in taking out all of Hammerhead's goons on the area via stealth attacks, Spider-Man searched for the kid only to find Sable equipment as more Maggia goons arrived with Sable trucks to attack him. He attempted to contact Felicia but got no response. As soon as he took care of them all and made his way to the vault, he discovered that Black Cat was tricking him all along as she locked him up inside, revealing she never had a son and, in fact, only used him to steal the last data drive from inside to obtain all of the wealth for herself as she only handed Hammerhead fake drives. Spider-Man begged her to do the right thing and hand the drives to the police but she chose to keep them, believing she earned them for slowing Hammerhead down a bit. Cat then made her exit as more of Hammerhead's goons approached. As the goons entered the place, noticing the lack of the drive, they were directed by Hammerhead himself to hunt down and kill Black Cat, with Hammerhead planning to bomb her apartment. Spider-Man, who was hidden in the place, overheard the conversation and tried to warn Felicia that the last drive had a tracker and she was about to be killed. She questioned his behavior after having tricked him and he answered that it wasn't about being nice but about just doing the right thing. He quickly tried to warn her of the bomb rigged to explode at her penthouse but she didn't seem to care much. Worried that she could die at any minute, Spider-Man rushed through the city only to reach her apartment just as it was bombed by the Maggia, with Black Cat apparently dying while stepping in. Unbeknownst to Spider-Man, Felicia survived, disappearing in a smokescreen shortly before the explosion, with no corpse being found in the debris.

When Silver Sable returned to New York City to defeat Hammerhead, both she and Spider-Man engaged on a fight against a cyborg-enhanced Hammerhead on one of Sable's hoverjets. During the fight, Hammerhead gained the upper hand against Spider-Man, and was about to kill him by smashing his head on the hoverjet's engine. Suddenly, Black Cat reappeared and saved Spider-Man from death. After a brief reunion, Black Cat gave one of the pen drives to Spider-Man, revealing that it had the information necessary to take Hammerhead down. After saying a final farewell to Spidey, Felicia left the scene, using her grapple hook to ride off in the sunset. After that, she attempted to run off with Hammerhead's stolen loot, but was soon tracked down by Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson. She tried to escape, but was apprehended by the NYPD. Around a year later, Felicia was no longer in custody and had gone into retirement.

Hunted

At some point after retiring, Felicia began a relationship with an unknown woman in Paris. In 2021, Kraven the Hunter began targeting several of Spider-Man's allies and enemies in his "Last Hunt", with Black Cat being one of those targets. After finding out about this, Spider-Man sends the other Spider-Man to warn Felicia about the hunters, but he is too late. The hunters are already after her and follow Felicia to the Sanctum Sanctorum, where she steals the Wand of Watoomb, which allows her to create portals to anywhere. She explains her girlfriend in France is in trouble because of her and needs help. After defeating the hunters, Spider-Man and Black Cat use the artifact to open a portal to Paris, and Felicia leaves New York to help her girlfriend.

Paraphernalia

Equipment

• Black Cat Suit: Black Cat's outfit consists of an all black suit with white accents and black goggles. It is both form-fitting and practical while also armored. The armored gloves of her costume form retractable metal claws at the fingertips, which enable her to tear through most surfaces.

It is equipped with a grappling hook which enables her to swing from buildings in a manner similar to Spider-Man. It also utilizes electromagnetic pulse (EMP) grenades, which upon activation emits a powerful electromagnetic pulse capable of temporarily disabling electronic equipment.

• Smoke Bombs

Weapons

• Claws
• Stun Grenades

Transportation

• Grapple Gun

Notes

• Within her hideout contained:
  • Financial data on the Maggia crime families.
  • A painting she stole from Kingpin.
  • Wine from a Maggia vineyard.
  • A statue from the time Spider-Man first caught her, she eventually managed to come back to steal it.
  • Cat paintings, two of which show a cat dancing with with a spider and then imprisoning it in a jar.
  • Several more cat dolls.

Trivia

• The Dark Suit Black Cat made and offered to Spider-Man is a nod to the comics when she gave him the Black Cloth replica of his Symbiote suit.
• Erica Lindbeck voices Black Cat in Marvel's Spider-Man. She will reprise the role in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
• Jayme Lynn Evans provides Black Cat's facial model in Marvel's Spider-Man. She will reprise the role in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
• Amy Johnston provides the motion capture for Black Cat in Marvel's Spider-Man. She will reprise the role in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

See Also

• 7 appearance(s) of Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)
• 1 minor appearance(s) of Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)
• 1 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)
• 25 image(s) of Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)
• 1 quotation(s) by or about Felicia Hardy (Earth-1048)