This is from "Spectacular Spider-Man" issue 84. I choose this scene because in the comment section of my last post people were talking about the difference in how Felicia looked in the comics and 90’s series. One person speculated they intended for her to be Gwen. My theory is whoever did the animation designs saw this pic of Felicia and modeled the cartoon version that way. I think she looks like the cartoon here.
Amazing Spider-Man issue 25. Let’s forget about the fact that if Liz and Betty shaved their heads we wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. First Mary Jane from the neck down. Too bad that flower […]
More from Brevoort’s countdown. I remember covering this one recently on “Amazing Spider-Man Classics”.
I decided to post a series of Black Cat memories in anticipation of her return. This is Felicia Hardy’s first meeting with Peter since she left for Europe and he married MJ. She appeared previously behind the […]
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This is exactly what I was talking about. In the ’90’s cartoon, she was yellow blond as Felicia, but platinum blond as the Black Cat. That was explained away as a result of the Super Soldier formula transformation, but I couldn’t find an explanation for that change for the comics… Now I see that it largely depended on who was drawing her. On the bottom panel, she is clearly regular blond, even as Black Cat (and I like how she looks when she is right next to Spidey).
Part of an awesome run in the 80s, good memories, better reading.
To be fair, the Gwen in TSSM is a mish-mash of Lee/Ditko Gwen, Deborah Whitman, and a white Liz Allen, there’s barely anything of the actual Gwen in there, at least from my POV. The FOX Felicia really is just a picture-perfect Lee/Ditko Gwen that Stan intervening THERE didnt seem to make a dent in her characterisation.
A lot about The Black Cat seemed rushed…like they didnt know what to do with her. Tying in with Morbius was a REALLY bad fit. I don’t know if anyone noticed, but wasnt the Darkstalkers cartoon airing around the same time? Felicia with Morbius and the inclusion of Blade may have been to “ape” that series more, it also involved a vampire antagonist and a feline protaganist…though neither got together.
How odd that he met Felicia’s mother and she makes conversation as if he were a normal guy!
Apparently, when the 90’s cartoon was being developed, using Gwen WAS under consideration, but, for the same reason that one of the early Spider-Man movie scripts from the late 80’s/early 90’s used Liz Allan instead of Gwen is because Stan Lee used to protest against using Gwen because anyone who went from the cartoon/movie to the comics would find out that the character had been dead for years, or even decades. Now, whether or not Gwen was the original model in the cartoon series, and then the name of the character was changed to Felicia – or, the change was made before the models were developed – I have no idea. Considering that they adopted the Black Cat appearance as an entirely new look rather than just a costume and mask, maybe it was always intentional that Felicia looked differently than the Black Cat to fool Spidey. And of course, if that’s the case, then how is it that Gwen is being used in the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon? Either Stan no longer cares, or no one listens to him anymore, I guess…
(just a clarification I think I should add; Nightwing had a blue/gold costume before his modern one. The more I think of it, the two’s apparel change is quite similar.)
Whoa, I never knew the “sleek” costume wasn’t the one she had in the comics (I thought that the other, almost Nightwing resembling, one was just a temp.) Interesting…