Panel(s) of the Day #566 (Caturday!)

4 Comments

1. As someone who lived through the Spidey/Black Cat relationship as it was happening, I really enjoyed it, but the writing made it clear that this was not going to be a permanent thing for Peter. When he was in the costume their relationship made perfect sense. But unfortunately for Felicia, Peter is not in his costume all the time.

   It soon became obvious that either there were never any relationship scenes when he wasn’t in costume, or as this panel shows, anytime there were scenes out him out of costume Felicia was either uninterested in him or couldn’t wait for him to put his costume back on.

   She eventually learns to love Peter too, but that’s later after they break up, and at the time it felt more like she just wanted Spidey back.

2. I personally just dislike Felicia during this era, where they’d made her a much more shallow character than she had been before, or would be later on. I also feel like MJ’s conflict over Peter’s duel identity is handled a lot better generally. To be fair, Symbiote Spider-Man helped reverse that a little, but during the actual period, I felt like the writers just really hated her.

3. It’s part of Felicia’s character development and why I believe she is considerably more interesting than MJ. Even in Symbiote Spider-Man, she is making a concerted effort to get to know and embrace Peter’s personal and civilian life. Unfortunately, Peter isn’t particularly stable during this time and rudely shuts Felicia out. I’m tired of debates over who is the better girlfriend, because no one will ever supplant this nostalgic idealisation everyone seems to have created for MJ.

4. It was hilarious reading online comments when the PS4 DLC The Heist came out and so many people were saying that, in general, Black Cat made a much better girlfriend for Spidey than MJ. I wanted to remind all of them of scenes like this, where Felicia was *only* interested in Spider-Man, and was literally disgusted by Peter Parker.

   Also you should’ve Photoshopped some of the captions to mention Spidey’s recent battle with a symbiote-infused Mysterio!