Stomping on a Box that I Thought was Empty 07 – Black Cat #14

It wouldn’t be an event without a proper tie-in. In that, Black Cat #14 is something of a unicorn in Queen in Black. The sole issue of an ongoing series that doesn’t have to be a part of the event. In the 17 issues that make up Queen in Black, 13 are (co-)written by Al Ewing, three are the Venom Unchained mini that seeks to bridge Charles Soule’s Carnage and Venom runs, and, then, there’s Black Cat #14, an issue of an ongoing series given over to this event. The only other ongoing series that ties into it is Venom, which is both written by Al Ewing and obviously a key book in this big Symbiotes invading Earth event. While Black Cat is related to Venom/Symbiotes via Spider-Man, you’ll note that there are no titles bearing his name in the lineup. Black Cat #14 being part of this event is nothing that seems like it should happen and, in fact, in the first version of Queen in Black’s checklist of titles, it wasn’t present. I imagine the motivation is some mixture of it seeming like a fun thing to do and efforts to get some more eyeballs on the book, a particular cocktail that Ewing has been known to indulge in himself.

(I was going to say that this also bears the distinction of the only comic in the event not edited by Jordan White, but the Hela and Thor one-shots were overseen by Will Moss, Ewing’s editor on Thor, if that gives a clue as to which side of things those issues fall.)

As a tie-in, I’ll admit that I was expecting more, particularly since this is an issue that’s been referenced no fewer than three times in the event thus far. As someone who rather likes Josemaria Casanovas’s painted cover, I’ll admit that I was a little let down that nothing approximating it occurs in the issue. We do get Felicia Hardy in a similar-ish spacesuit and on a mission to help strike a blow to Hela’s Symbiote army, but at no point does she actually come face to face with any Symbiotes. Instead, it’s your basic ‘get Black Cat to steal something’ issue, which makes sense – in this case, one of the seeds that grow into a Supreme Intelligence to help stop the Symbiote Intelligence. It is probably the most inessential issue in a rather tightly-orchestrated event, approximating one of those three-to-five page bits in the core series where some random heroes take out a unique Symbiote/alien combination, except expanded to a full issue.

That feeling that this issue was entirely skippable is normally a common one in big superhero events, except it’s a half-dozen to dozen issues like that. Here, it stands out. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that G. Willow Wilson and Gleb Melnikov produced a poor comic by any means; I’m not entirely convinced that it’s the sort of comic that I’m particularly interested in, but I like to think I’ve developed enough sense to recognise the difference between ‘good and not for me’ and ‘bad,’ and this isn’t bad (even if it’s framed with my most hated cliché of “I bet you’re wondering how I got here” before a flashback explains how the character got there). It happens to be a comic that’s set up to look worse because of its unique position as the only inessential tie-in issue. Unless the Symbiote Intelligence being reverted to your regular Supreme Intelligence is a key element in the rest of the event, this is an issue that was referenced numerous times and had a plot that skirts around the edges of the event.

Which, normally, is fine. That’s what tie-in issues of mostly unrelated ongoing series are meant to be. Honest efforts by the creative team to find a hook that allows their book to tell a story that doesn’t seem like a complete departure from what the series is normally but also factors into the larger event enough to feel like it’s part of the bigger picture. That’s precisely what Black Cat #14 does and does fairly well. It’s light, it’s entertaining, there’s character and charm, and it addresses one of the threats introduced earlier in Queen in Black – and, like I said, unless something comes of this issue, if you skipped it, you wouldn’t really miss anything. I imagine when Queen in Black is finished, we won’t be wondering what happened to every specific Symbiote we saw. There will probably be some general explanation of the defeat of Hela and her army that will cover all of that. So, Black Cat #14 looks fairly skippable.

Except it’s the only tie-in of its kind in a really small, contained event. If there were even two or three other comics like it, it wouldn’t seem so strange. As it is, it stands out as something of an anomaly. From a structural standpoint, it doesn’t fit and that bothers me. I’m struggling to think of an event like this that has one single issue that doesn’t fit in the same way. And I’m completely overthinking it, because the logic behind this issue is that series are usually free to jump in on the event fun and it just happened that this was the only one to do so outside of Al Ewing’s little bubble of titles. It’s a bit fitting because you can almost see Felicia finding herself in a situation where she’s out there, all by herself, and should be self-conscious but walks proudly. In that way, this issue is entirely appropriate in the larger Queen in Black event.

Next week, it’s back to the core series with issue four of Queen in Black and the third (and final) issue of Defenders of Light and Dark.