7 Uncomfortable Superhero Origins That Sorely Need Updating

5. Black Cat

Kevin Smith has a love/hate relationship with the comics he writes. He loves making them, but the fans hate reading them. Well, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration (unless you're going by the response to The Widening Gyre), but Smith is a pretty divisive figure in most everything he does, and his take on Spider-Man and the Black Cat is no different. In her original origin story, Felicia Hardy is raised by her father who claims to be a travelling salesman but is actually a jewel thief. He encourages her to follow her dreams and is a pretty great role model (except the whole cat burglar thing), but he's soon locked away for his nighttime activities. So Felicia decides to follow in his footsteps and aims to break her dad out of prison, but he dies before she gets a chance. And then she meets Spidey, who up until then is the only man she trusts (except her recently deceased pa). All that's fine. Pretty great, in fact, because Felicia gets to tell her own story and choose who she wants to be. But in Smith's retcon of her origin he makes her a victim of rape at college who doesn't get to have her revenge on her attacker, stealing her agency away from her and redirecting her motivations away from her desires. In the comic Smith tries to assert that she's taking control of her destiny, but all he's done is shackled Felicia to her past in a very, very icky way.