Writer: Jed MacKay

Artist: Travel Foreman

Color Artist: Brian Reber

Letterer: Ferran DeLgado

Yancy St. Shuffle part 2

Black Cat has been partnering with her teacher in the art of lateral acquisitions, Black Fox. At this very moment she is deep inside 4 Yancy Street, the new address for the Fantastic Four, trying to acquire a book they need to gain access to the Thieves Guild Vault. Felicia has finally got her paws on it now all she has to do is get away with it. Which is only made more difficult by the sudden appearance of the Bulldozing Behemoth Blastaar!

We open to Susan Richards making her way home. Which is the last thing Felicia wants. As explained last issue Sue is the real FF member to fear and she is not wrong. As Sue approaches her home she sees the house is on full lock down. No one can get in no one can get out.

Inside 4 Yancy Street a battle rages on. The Negative Zone gate that Blastaar pried open with his bare hands last issue has allowed him and his army entrance and now it’s up to the Human Torch, Black Cat, Bruno, Doc, and Sonny Ocampo to send him back. I better get my Popcorn cause this should be like watching Hobo with a Shotgun and Blastaar is the Hobo.

As expected Felicia and her team do a lot of scrabbling for their lives and hiding except her muscle, Bruno, who gets a couple pretty funny moments to shine in this issue. Johnny Storm does his best though frying all of Blastaar’s army alive, it seems, before getting knocked out.

Once the only person with actual powers is knocked out Felicia and her team have to think quick or Felicia will end up having to hold Blastaar’s pocket lining till death do us part, because he is quite smitten with this little black kitten.

Bruno, being the lovable lug of the team member he is offers to go toe to toe with Blastaar even if this, at first glance, is suicide mission. All he needs to do is distract for a few precious moments. Which he manages by dawning the Thing Suit from back in the day. While Felicia, Doc, and Sonny Ocampo hatch a plan to launch the big blue monster back to the Negative Zone.

I really have to say that Sonny Ocampo’s moments in this issue are just awkward and clunky. I understand forced talking in the middle of battles happen a lot in super hero comics I get it, but when you have a room filling up with an army of monsters from the negative zone and the only super human in the room flies around having two humans just stop in the middle of a room to argue about stupid shit from four issues ago just feels dumb.

With some quick thinking and some quick hot wiring from Doc, Black Cat and team are able to blast Blaastaar back through the portal using the fantasticar. Now the real Bad Butt has access to the house and she is much scarier then Blastaar any day of the week. I bet everyone envies Sue Richard’s powers when they are getting yelled at by her.

Now that Black Fox and Black Cat have the book of making doorways their chances of breaking into the Thieves Guild Vault are looking quite good, but will the Thieves Guild come for them first?

Final Thoughts:

I really like this series, but I think the Sue and Johnny Storm bits of these last two issues out shined Black Cat and her team a bit. I’m left wanting Jed Mackay writing a Fantastic Four book (not completely a bad thing). I had a lot of fun reading this issue and really appreciated the abundance of onomatopeia from Delgado, but I really think the art was a little hurried here. Faces were not as well defined as previously. Just the line work over all didn’t seem as tight as previous issues.

7.5/10