Episode #44 - The Black Cat
Original Airdate - February 15, 1997

Felicia Hardy, now transformed into the Black Cat, is blackmailed into working for Kingpin, until he can replicate more of the "Super Soldier" serum.

Credits
Written By: Marty Isenberg, Robert N. Skir, and Sean Catherine Derek
Story By: John Semper
Guest Voices: Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. as Doctor Octopus, Jack Angel as Nick Fury, John Phillip Law as The Cat, Nita Talbot as Anastasia Hardy, Rachael Davies as Agent X, Neil Ross as Additional Voices

Review: This episode was one of those rare occurrences in a cartoon where everything simply fell neatly into place. All of the plot points were resolved by the end of the episode, and we got a great introduction to Black Cat, who would become one of the major characters in the remaining episodes of the season.

Once again, Doc Ock is nothing more than a lackey, but Kingpin played a more pivotal role, and the plot revolving around his appearance is an interesting one. After testing that the super soldier formula works, he planned to create an army of them to do his bidding.

The real story, however, as the title suggests, is Black Cat. Her first scene was great, as was her fight with Spider-Man. The follow up, in which she uses the spider tracer Spider-Man gave his mother, was another nice little scene. She was a little arrogant, but Black Cat always has been. What I found most interesting about the Spider-Man/Black Cat relationship was that they didn’t know who was under their masks. I’ve often wanted to see what would happen when they found out that they used to date before Peter was married, and how cruel Felicia often was to Peter.

The animation was especially pretty to the eye, and The Cat’s plan for stealing the super soldier formula from Kingpin was great. It was a wonderful surprise for the viewers.

Overall, these 2 episodes were quite easily the best Black Cat episodes from the show. Which admittedly, wasn’t too difficult.