Kevin Announces His ‘Black Cat’ Comic Book Run At The 2001 San Diego Comic-Con. Jim Mahfood’s ‘ULTIMATE REDESIGN” for Wizard #119. Another BLACK CAT Image.

KEVIN SMITH WRITES ‘BLACK CAT’
And No, That’s Not a Typo

When ya least expect it, expect it.

Comic fan and movie-maker Kevin Smith writing Daredevil for Marvel Comics wasn’t out of the ordinary at all. And Green Arrow at DC? Smith has a lifelong love for the character. So what’s Smith’s next project from a major publisher?

Black Cat.

That’s right — Felicia Hardy, the sometimes-villainess, sometimes-love-interest from Spider-Man’s life is getting ready to claw her way on to the charts. Marvel will launch a new Black Cat ongoing, written by Smith with an artist yet to be determined, in mid-2002.

But why Black Cat, a character who’s never had her own book and has scarcely been seen in years? Smith, who’s made both Daredevil and Green Arrow into major sales sensations, wants a challenge. “[Marvel Editor-in-Chief] Joe Quesada offered me an X-book a while ago before he locked in his final lineup of the current X-Men writing teams,” Smith reveals. “But I was like, ‘The X-books are already a no-brainer. They’ll make it in the top 10 with out without me. That’s too easy.’ If I’m gonna do it, it has to be kind of a challenge. Black Cat? That’s a f—ing challenge to make that book sell.”

Smith’s plan is to write the book for a year, then hand off to another writer. “It worked with Daredevil, it worked with Green Arrow,” he says. “People might jump in ’cause I’m on board, but they get interested in the character. I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘Man, I had no idea Green Arrow was such an interesting cat.’”

The series will be kicked off via a special Spider-Man one-shot that Smith will also write. “The one-shot will re-introduce the Black Cat,” Smith says. “Joe Q. wants to draw a piece of the one-shot, and J. Scott Campbell wants to do a piece. Joe envisions the Spider-Man one-shot as a bunch of different artists.”

This book effectively replaces the long-rumored Spider-Man/Daredevil one-shot Marvel had planned. “Once Marvel did the Spider-Man/Daredevil miniseries by Phil Winslade and Paul Jenkins, I was just like, ‘Well, what’s the point?’ What was I really going to do that was different? I just felt like it had just been done,” Smith says.

Marvel Editor Axel Alonso, who edits the Spider-Man line, will also edit Black Cat, and the pair have been trying to pinpoint an artist for the ongoing series. “Axel is pitching a lot of names at me, but we don’t know who’s going to do it yet,” Smith says.

Smith is also working out his storyline. “I’m going to take a different approach to the character,” he says, “but it won’t be like, ‘Everything you know is wrong!’ It’ll basically be just doing what we did on Daredevil and on Green Arrow: taking the character, keeping all the existing continuity in place, and telling a new story with the character that folks’ll hopefully dig.”

The desire is there on Smith’s part, for multiple reasons. “It appeals to me on a couple of different levels,” he concludes. “It would be great to write a book with a female in the lead for a change. That’ll be different. And it would be great to see if we could take a Black Cat book and put it in the top 10 sellers. That’s a challenge.”

For his part, Quesada is happy to have Smith back at Marvel, where Daredevil launched his comic career. “It’s very simple. Kevin is coming back home and we’re ecstatic,” Quesada says. “Kevin has a track record of taking dead-to-stalled characters and turning them into gold. He’s turned red into gold, he’s turned green into gold. Now it’s time to see if he can turn black into gold.”