Review by Ian Keogh

I’ll Take Manhattan is yet another really slim Black Cat collection. Honestly, you’d be better off just investing in Black Cat by Jed MacKay Omnibus, which collects almost all his work on the character.

This has nothing to do with the detour of Queen in Black, but picks up MacKay’s ongoing plot of Felicia working with the Fox to break into the legendary Guild vault. However, as Black Cat and allies have accumulated the necessary equipment there’s been a greatly pertinent detail that the Fox has neglected to mention.

Deception is a good writer’s stock in trade, yet even with what MacKay has shown us to date he pulls off a first class plot bomb with the revelation of what the Fox really wants and then tops it with how things play out from there. As the culmination of what MacKay’s been building toward for four previous volumes it’s somewhat the left turn, and may be too quiet and downbeat for some tastes, yet it’s true to the plot that’s been constructed and to the main characters. Unfortunately it’s rather undermined at the end by a loving kiss between Felicia and frenemy Odessa that doesn’t transmit as the natural resolution of a complicated relationship, but as gratuitous titillation for teenage boys.

Michael Dowling’s art is ornately decorative, but at its best when the characters don’t have to move. A powerful new force is introduced, well designed by Dowling around a skull motif, and although the backgrounds are sparse, they’re well considered. It’s very reminiscent of the work Jae Lee was producing around the millennium.

The final story teams Black Cat with Korean superhero team Tiger Division. One of their number has been compromised. There’s a clever solution, but it can’t compensate for a by the numbers story not drawn with any great imagination by Joey Vasquez.

Next up is Infinity Score.