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The Black Cat
Gender	Female
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Origin	Queens, New York
First Appearance	Amazing Spider-Man #194 (July, 1979)
Creator(s)	Marv Wolfman and Keith Pollard
Alter ego	Felicia Hardy
Aliases	Felicity Harmon
Abilities	Black Belt in Judo and Karate, Olympic Level gymnast and acrobat, lock-pick and other criminal skills, increased strength, agility, balance, vision, and retractable claws.
Affiliations	Heroes for Hire

The Black Cat is a fictional comic book anti-hero character owned by Marvel Comics. She has been romantically linked to Spider-Man before he was married to Mary Jane Watson. Due to her relationship with Spider-Man, Felicia is now a reformed cat burglar who tries to use her abilities for good, at least for now.

The Black Cat was originally portrayed as a psychologically damaged personality, obsessed with Spider-Man. She has since developed into an able competitor and sometimes partner for the web-slinger. While she dates other men today, there are some indications that she still has feelings for the web slinger.

Felicia Hardy is a self-trained cat burglar. She was raped as a teen-ager, and decided to improve her fighting skills to kill her rapist. He died before she could get to him, so Felicia was inspired by her father, a famous cat burglar, to follow in his footsteps.

The Black Cat had the ability to unconsciously jinx others by altering the probability of those around her. She gained this ability from the Kingpin when she was trying to acquire super powers to make her less of a liability when working with Spider-Man. She was ashamed of her powers and their source, so she kept them from him. Eventually, the powers seemed to jinx him as well, which was

the Kingpin’s plan all along. Peter took Felicia to see the magician Doctor Strange, who altered her powers, so that now she had increased strength, agility, balance, and vision, as well as retractable claws. She no longer has her “bad luck” powers.

She is currently a member of Heroes for Hire, a group of mostly female super-humans who hire out their skills to help people.