Hellcat #2 Review

Written by: Christopher Cantwell
Art by: Alex Lins
Colors by: KJ Díaz
Letters by: VC’s Ariana Maher
Cover art by: Pere Pérez
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: April 19, 2023

Hellcat #2 finds Patsy Walker examing several points in her past in the hopes that a clue will unlock the mystery behind her boyfriend’s murder.

Is It Good?

Not particularly. Frankly, Hellcat #2 is plain boring. Lots of talking, lots of innuendo, lots of second-guessing and self-doubt, but not much movement on anything resembling a plot. In short, Hellcat #2 treads water, which is not a good place to be on a second issue.

When last we left Patsy Walker, she was slowly collecting the clues to her boyfriend’s murder. A crime scene investigation uncovered a Sleepwalker Imaginator, prompting Patsy to pay a visit to Rick Sheridan. Even though he has no memory of doing so, Rick conceded he might have murdered Patsy’s boyfriend because he’s also in love with Patsy.

Now, Rick talks with his ethereal alter-ego to look for clues leading to the killer (if he accepts he isn’t the killer). Patsy talks with her ethereal ex-husband trapped inside a stuffed bunny, which leads to an unexpectedly violent confrontation with her dead boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, Hedy. And that’s about it.

At a macro level, you could say Hellcat #4 is a character-building issue as hints and snatches of dialog appear to unravel forgotten parts of Patsy’s childhood with her separated parents. We already know Patsy comes from a broken home with an aggressively overbearing stage mom of a mother, so it’s not clear how much of her character is actually built versus simply clarified. After a first read, Cantwell seems hyper-focused on giving readers more details about Patsy’s backstory with little concern as to how much of that detail is additive to the plot at hand.

The art is just okay. Lins has a penchant for frumpy anatomy and exaggerated limbs, but that exaggeration is less egregious in this issue when compared to issue #1. Put another way, the art looks a little better in this issue.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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Final Thoughts:

Hellcat #2 is an oddly pointless issue that does little to solve the murder mystery at hand and spends a lot of time fleshing out irrelevant details about Patsy’s past. Hellcat lovers may love this issue for the richness of details you get about Patsy’s broken upbringing, but everyone else may find this issue lacking in substance.