Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The Black Cat Costume History


Marvel's feline-themed thief has worn quite a few costumes while running across the rooftops of New York. Felicia Hardy fist made her debut as Black Cat wearing a a black mask, white fur-collared black bodysuit with white furred boots, and  matching furry steel-clawed gloves. She played to people's superstitions by setting "bad luck" traps near her crime scenes. After she met Spider-Man, she gave up crime to be his partner, and even underwent a dangerous procedure to acquire powers of her own so she could help him more. However her new powers to alter probability and cause bad luck were secretly a trap by Spider-Man's enemy, the Kingpin. Spider-Man had been permanently cursed by Black Cat's powers, and when he had the sorcerer Doctor Strange remove the curse, the counterspell caused Black Cat to lose her powers right in the middle of a mission and she was severely beaten by her enemies.
Black Cat created a new costume to hide her injuries; a special black mask to hide her broken nose along with a black-and-gold jacket over a white bodysuit. She blamed Spider-Man for her injuries and dissolved their partnership, only to discover that Doctor Strange's magic hadn't removed her powers, but had slowly altered them. Black Cat now had superhuman strength and speed, infrared night vision, and the power to shift her fingernails into long talons. To celebrate her new powers Black Cat donned a dark blue catsuit with white gloves, a gold belt, and a sharply-pointed black cat mask. However, when she saved Spider-Man from a device designed to steal his powers, she was affected by the machine and lost her abilities instead.
Even though she lost her powers for the second time, Black Cat landed on her feet. She had the criminal inventor, the Tinkerer, design a suit for her that would replace her lost abilities. He gave her a suit that was inspired by her original costume, only with a plunging neckline instead of a fur collar. Her new suit was created with microservos embedded in the fabric to boost her strength and speed, grapple hook launchers hidden in the fur cuffs of her gloves, and her gloves were made of polarized mesh that, when she flexed her fingers a certain way, would morph into magnetically-charged metal talons. She also had night vision contact lenses and balance enhancing earrings. Black Cat would later upgrade her suit to a more streamlined solid black suit with white fur accents. When she was asked to break the Green Goblin out of prison, Black Cat donned a solid black armored version of her suit.
When Black Cat decided to try being a superhero, she wore a new costume with elements from her previous suits, with a plunging neckline, thigh holsters, and white furred boots. But her luck would change when she decided to steal again, and ran into a Doctor Octopus-possessed Spider-Man. Doc Ock/Spider-Man beat her savagely and turned her over to the police. Blaming Spider-Man, Black Cat escaped and fully embraced her criminal nature, and donned a solid black catsuit with black fur accents, a silver belt, and gold cat's eye emblems on her collarbone.
In another reality, Black Cat wore a specialized cat-eared version of her original suit to fight alongside Wolverine. In the Ultimate universe, Black Cat still had her bad luck powers and wore a feline-themed black bodysuit with white fur accents and white gloves and a black cat mask with gold night vision lenses. And in the Supernaturals' universe, Black Cat possesses both her original bad luck ability and her cat-like physical powers and wears an open-toed black leather bodysuit with a spiked collar and a purple hair stylized into cat ears.
In the year 2099, Felicia's clone is the future Black Cat, genetically altered to have the feline abilities  of Tigra and the teleportation powers of Vanisher. She wears a black bodysuit with open toed boots and neon blue lights, and flowing blue plasma "fur" accents.
In the Spider-Man PS4 game, Black Cat wears a high-tech black bodysuit with white accents and mask-like googles with night vision lenses.