Death Battle Predictions: Catwoman VS Black Cat

Catwoman, DC’s feline femme fatale.

Black Cat, Marvel’s premier purse-poacher.

Prowling the night and stealing what they please, these two cat burglars are famous beyond compare, the best at their craft - and for the righteous hero they fell in love with, among the greatest of temptations. But though their larceny knows no limit normally, only one of these thieves can steal victory here. Will Selina Kyle sink her claws into the competition, or will Felicia Hardy bring misfortune to her adversary? It’s a cat fight tonight, and it’s time to find out which kitty will have the final meow. It’s time for a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

Catwoman

Like with many DC characters, there is no strong need to differentiate continuities for Catwoman. While the major reboots do change her backstory in ways that cannot coexist with each other, Rebirth comics and onward have made repeated reference to events both Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis, including numerous occurrences from both Earth-1 and Earth-2, as well as her first meeting with Batman after the Crisis. Implying that generally speaking, in spite of reboots, all major events from previous continuities still occurred in the current one and can coexist with each other just fine.

Being a comic character, Selina has also had various one-time power-ups or nonstandard items over the years, ranging from stuff like high-tech armor, to a Purple Lantern Ring, to nine extra lives temporarily granted to her through a combination of Vandal Savage’s meteor and the Egyptian Goddess Bastet. As these are all nonstandard and out of line with her normal capabilities, they will be excluded.

Black Cat

The Black Cat has had a few different power sets over the years; ultimately, however, the effects of her powers - whether natural or technological - end up being pretty indistinguishable from each other in practice. Taken at her best, she’s more or less capable of the same feats, so there’s no need to stress the differences much. Otherwise, obvious one-off abilities or power-ups are going to be disregarded here, like the time she became an Asgardian magic god, or the brief instance wherein she was granted immortality via a contract with an ancient god.

Miscellaneous

It is important to note that this comparison is looking exclusively at the two characters’ respective comic book continuities, with no evaluation of the games, cartoons, novels, and so on that the two characters have appeared in. This is significant because this is a match where a number of small factors have a fairly big influence on the outcome, and through what we have looked through of their secondary media, it is highly possible that the information from these sources would meaningfully change the outcome. As such, consider this to be a “comic-only” evaluation of the matchup, and keep in mind that secondary media has the potential to make a difference.

Secondly, it is worth acknowledging that we had previously announced that we were going to write a fight script for this blog. Due to several factors including time and motivation, we have unfortunately elected to scrap this portion of the blog. We hope this is not too disappointing, and that the extensive content of the blog is enough to make up for it.

Background

Catwoman

• Full Name: Selina Kyle

• Age: >26 years (Post-Crisis) | >23 years (Post-Flashpoint)

• Height: 5’7” | 1.7 m

• Weight: 138 lbs | 63 kg

• Aliases: Catwoman, Queen of Crime, Princess of Plunder, Elva Barr, Belinda, Sadie Kelowski, Nelias, Madame Claudine, Sandra Farmer, Jane Herron, Susan M. Katzen, Cindy Ellsworth, Tabitha D. Katt, Irena Dubrovna, Kitty Smith, Cathy Whippes, Janice Tessworth, Catbird, Cat

• Affiliations: Bat Family, Justice League of America, Feline Furies, Injustice League, Gotham City Sirens, Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad

• Inspired by Batman, Puss in Boots, Cheshire Cat, Dick Whittington’s Cat

• Bi queen & trans ally

• Likes: Money, Batman, cat puns, fireworks, Josie and the Pussycats, smoked salmon, the Joker’s jokes (secretly), adrenaline

• Dislikes: Water, guns, killing, Vicki Vale, Batgirl, smoking (sometimes), D&D, boredom

In his personal mission to drive crime from Gotham City, Batman has faced dozens of foes, each more vile and cunning than the last. From the Joker, to the Riddler, to the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Uma Thurmans, they’ve all tested his mettle in more ways than you can count, but only one can claim to have captured his heart. In some ways his greatest challenge, his greatest temptation, this cat-burglar stalks the night, stealing from the rich and defending those who can’t defend themselves; she’s Gotham’s Queen of Crime and duplicitous Princess of Plunder: the Catwoman.

Catwoman is one of the greatest criminals that Gotham – hell, the world – has ever known, with potentially billions of dollars’ worth of riches and priceless artifacts stolen over her many years. Her thievery has put her at odds with the Batman, with numerous encounters ranging from undercover heists on cruise ships, to street brawls in the seedy back alleys of Gotham, to attempted robberies of high-profile museums. But although Batman put a stop to the Cat’s antics every time, he found himself unwilling to put her away. Something about the woman was intriguing to him, alluring even. And when he eventually uncovered her real identity, he found himself a kindred spirit in Selina Kyle.

Like a cat, Selina is fickle and distrustful of others. She’s worn many masks over the years, gone by many names, and left behind many surrogate families, most of whom found themselves steeped in tragedy by the time she was done with them. Not that it’s her fault; she’s unfortunately just not a very lucky person. It all started, as most people’s stories do, with her mother and father. Some yelling here, some physical abuse there, until a horrible day when her mother just couldn’t take it anymore, and slit her own wrists. A couple years down the line, her father followed suit, drinking himself to death. And it was poor Selina who found both bodies, a traumatizing experience that would define her life in the years to come.

Separated from her sister Maggie and placed into an abusive state home for orphan girls, Selina longed for freedom, and found it soon enough, escaping captivity and bouncing around to numerous new homes. Taken in for a time by the local carnival, trained to steal as a member of a gang of orphans called the Alleytown Kids, spent time learning to fight in a dojo full of world-class martial artists, temporarily romantically involved with professional thief James Stark, and driven to a life of prostitution in which she befriended a girl named Holly, Selina has had more tragic backstories than the comic writers can keep track of, and all of it shaped her into the fierce but guarded woman she would become. But it wasn’t until she saw the Batman waging his war on crime that she was truly inspired to pursue her calling as a cat burglar. Donning the mask and spandex, she set out to become Gotham’s personal Robin Hood, purloining millions of dollars while sticking up for the little guy.

It's only natural, then, that Bruce Wayne would be enamored, in all his emo sad boy misery. An attractive yet tortured vigilante with a tragic anime backstory and emotional issues? She was just like him for real for real. And the feeling was mutual; a natural magnetism quickly developed between Batman and Catwoman, despite the fact that the two were on opposite sides of the law. But although they both had feelings for one another, Batman’s dedication to his mission was almost unshakeable. He could look the other way and let Selina escape sometimes, sure, but having a real relationship with a criminal who had no interest in changing? Unthinkable. Make no mistake, Selina had no grand ambition to be good and seek justice the way Bruce did. Although she does defend others when the situation calls for it, her goal in her thievery is ultimately the thrill and adrenaline that comes with breaking the law and acting freely, not anything altruistic. It was this divide, in addition to Selina’s own fear of becoming attached to others or reliant on anyone, that kept Bruce and Selina apart for years.

Eventually, however, as time went on and both sides were put to the test by many trials and tribulations, it was Selina who changed for the better, rather than Bruce who changed for the worse. As she became a defender of Gotham’s East End and began teaming up with Batman on a more frequent basis, it was clear Catwoman was becoming a real hero, having departed far from the rogue she once was. There was a bit of a road block where it was revealed Zatanna altered her mind a bit, but even in spite of that Identity Crisis, Selina’s shift toward heroism still continued.

…And then Flashpoint happened and that also set her back for a little while, she kind of became a crime boss for a bit, but it’s all good because she still chilled out again eventually.

But it wasn’t only her who had to reevaluate things. As she and Bruce became closer, he too needed to reconsider whether his steadfast refusal to accept the relationship might be getting in the way of his own happiness. Both he and Selina wanted each other, and they both knew it, but Bruce kept himself going as the Batman out of his own misery and loss, relying upon the vow he had made alone to drive himself forward. In realizing this, and understanding how much he had been repressing himself, Bruce chose happiness over his mission, and asked Selina to marry him.

For a time, as their wedding approached, the two were happy together, the deep love Selina felt toward Bruce overruling nearly everything else. But it was that care for him that ultimately forced the two apart once again. As their marriage drew nearer, Selina realized that the imperfections that she had come to love about Bruce were no longer visible in his eyes - that she was making him happy, and thus destroying the great misery that had been his drive for so long. In marrying Bruce Wayne, she was in essence killing the Batman, and that was something that, as someone who loved both, she couldn’t tolerate. So, as she did so many times before, she ran away. Leaving Bruce heartbroken at the altar, returning to her life of crime, and bringing things back to the ever-dreaded comic book status quo.

One could debate whether Selina made the right decision or not. She and Bruce certainly are no happier now than they were, and the idea that a superhero needs to suffer in order to be a hero is perhaps a bit reductive. But maybe that was just an excuse from the beginning. Selina has always been afraid of getting attached to anyone, of falling in love and becoming reliant on them, in fear that the rug will end up pulled out from under her feet. Afraid that they’ll die like her parents, or the carnival owner who took her in, or James Stark, or her fence, Lola. Afraid they’ll suffer because of her and come to resent her like Maggie, or like her closest friend from the Alleytown Kids, Sylvia Sinclair. Afraid that in the end, if she lets herself get weak or comfortable even for a moment, she’ll only end up getting hurt. It’s speculation, of course, but perhaps that’s the real reason she didn’t want to marry Bruce, in the end.

Whatever the reason, though, Batman is back to prowling the streets of Gotham City, and Catwoman is back to doing what she does best: stealing and thieving by moonlight, with no amount of wealth being safe from her claws. The thrill of the hunt is as intoxicating as ever, and she loves every second of it, but pleasure and happiness aren’t the same thing, and it’s clear that whether she likes it or not, what might have been has changed her. It’s hard to say if Selina will ever escape her bad habits for good, but no matter how many times she stumbles and falls, she’ll always manage to keep going. After all, a cat always lands on its feet.

Black Cat

• Real name: Felicia Sara Hardy

• Height: 5’10” / 1.77m

• Weight: 120lbs / 54.43kg

• Bi Queen

• Often mistaken for Silver Sable or Black Widow

• Likes: Spider-Man, the Knicks, Rick James, Punch Out!!, cheeseburgers, 60’s TV and 80’s music

• Dislikes: Lemonade, trees, water, bugs, movies with subtitles, metal machine music, mushrooms, experimental theater

• Named herself after her pet cat, Onyx

In a world filled with gods, super-soldiers, and armored avengers, it’s easy to underestimate the good old fashioned art of thievery. As the daughter of legendary burglar Walter Hardy, young Felicia’s life was scarcely normal from the onset. At just 13 years of age, Felicia learned from her mother that her oft-absent father was dead… but it didn’t take her long to discover she had been lied to. Walter was, instead, busted in a heist gone wrong, and subsequently incarcerated, making headlines across the world. This shocking truth wound up many complex emotions in Walter’s daughter. She resented her father for being absent in her life, yet the tales of his exploits as the greatest burglar of his time enchanted Felicia. If nothing else, she couldn’t help but respect his skill. It wouldn’t be long before she began training herself to follow in his footsteps.

Felicia honed both her body and mind, mimicking Walter’s skills and know-how; though her lack of real experience in the field meant she soon ended up locked away sometime after enrolling in college. To her surprise, Felicia was bailed out by the notorious Black Fox; one of the best thieves in the world, and her father’s own mentor. The Black Fox took the budding cat burglar under his wing, teaching her everything he knew whilst traveling across the globe, just as he did to Walter years ago. In time, Felicia donned a mask and suit, dubbing herself the one and only Black Cat. Having surpassed all of the Fox’s former students, she left behind his tutelage to pursue her own goals back home.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for Felicia to run into the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man whilst out on a prison-break mission. Assuming the worst, Spidey tried to take her down, but Felicia’s quick thinking and resourcefulness allowed her to not just evade the web-slinger, but succeed  at her goal. In truth, the man Felicia broke out of jail was none other than Walter Hardy, who had been diagnosed with cancer. Upon learning of her dad’s condition, Felicia swore to give him the freedom to pass in his own home, and ultimately, she succeeded in doing exactly that. 

The death of Felicia’s father understandably took a toll on her mental health, but with the alluring wallcrawler in her life, the Black Cat found an escape from her troubles. Their escapades and chases excited Felicia, and she soon found herself smitten for Spider-Man. In a surprisingly short amount of time, Spider-Man even convinced the Black Cat to fight crime alongside him, rather than cause it. 

For a time, Spider-Man found himself accompanied by a new partner in more ways than one. Their misadventures were frantic, wacky, horny, and completely thrilling for both Spidey and Black Cat. Things were looking up for the two as their relationship progressed at a rapid rate. Eventually, in a moment of ultimate trust, Spider-Man unmasked himself before the Black Cat in the hopes of moving things to the next level. 

Unfortunately for him, Felicia truly loved the costumed-crimefighter, Spider-Man, but couldn’t stand the thought of settling for ordinary, mundane Peter Parker. Spider-Man was bold, fearless, thrilling, spectacular, even. Felicia had to ask herself if it was the man or the idea she was truly captivated by; the first crack in what seemed to be a perfect companionship led to a spiral of secrets, lies, and compromises. Ultimately, their relationship could not endure the strain of conflicting motivations and lost trust, and they went their separate ways.

The two would cross paths many times from then on as just friends, as Felicia continued to put her skills to use for good. Eventually, she even started an unlikely friendship with Peter’s wife, Mary Jane Watson - a friendship that would surprisingly persist to this day. It took time, but Felicia began to make a new name for herself; not just as Black Cat, the thief, but as Black Cat, Hero for Hire and head investigator for the mayor of New York City. With her life having taken an unexpected turn for the heroic, perhaps her father’s dying wish - for her to not follow in his footsteps - came true, in a sense, after all.

One More Day later.

The indescribable memory loss of the man under the Spider-mask wracked Felicia’s brain in ways she couldn’t quite understand. Something inside her was… missing, but she tried her best to put it aside. After all, she could always depend on Spider-Man to be there for her as a friend. With time, perhaps she’d come to understand what ailed her. Or maybe Spider-Man would randomly attack her one day, leading to her incarceration. (Even after going straight, Felicia kept all her stolen assets. Whoops.) Felicia fell down a dark path, shattered by the Spider’s seeming betrayal. In light of this, the Black Cat resolved to become the bad guy so many big wig superheroes assumed she always was, and always would be. No, not just the bad guy - the Kingpin of them all. In her time ruling over the criminal underworld, Felicia fought former allies and commanded her enemies in equal measure, proving to everyone just how capable she really was. Eventually, however, Spider-Man and Felicia reconciled, mending their relationship with a single familiar act: Spidey once again shared his secret identity with her. 

That might not sound important, but for Felicia, it was as though a deeply intimate and important part of her life vanished into thin air. For as much as she pushed Peter Parker away all those years ago, in truth, he meant so much more to her than she ever realized. Throughout her life, Felicia had been lied to. Lied to by her father, her mother, ex-lovers; even her mentor and father-figure, Black Fox (that’s a whole other can of worms tho). Every person she had ever looked up to, for one reason or another, had kept Felicia at arms’ length about the dirty truths they didn’t want her to know. It’s no wonder Felicia fell into a solitary life of cheap thrills and thievery; to do otherwise would require her to actually trust someone again, to believe that she meant enough to someone that they would take that leap of faith just for her sake. To believe she wouldn’t be taken advantage of or abused by another romantic partner. Perhaps Felicia took for herself because she simply couldn’t believe someone would give back to her a truly unconditional love. 

And then along came a Spider. Spider-Man - no, Peter Parker - gave a thief a chance. A thief that, to him, could have been no different from any other common crook on the street. Peter saw someone worth saving from their own self-destructive tendencies time and time again. It can hardly be considered surprising that Felicia pushed him away; Peter was the one person she could genuinely trust with anything, and that might as well have been an alien concept to her. His faith in her, though she failed to recognize it at the time, was the catalyst for her life finally achieving some sense of peace and stability after years of repressing trauma and grief. They may never fully reignite that romantic spark they once shared in their youth, but maybe Felicia found something much more precious instead; a dear friend for life, one who has seen her at her lowest, and still offered her a hand when she needed it the most. 

Since then, the Black Cat has continued to put her skills to use on the side of good… mostly. She might rob anyone with a pulse without hesitation, but it’s usually for a good reason, probably! Yeah yeah, that whole spiel about friendship and life is nice and all, but you can’t exactly make a living on the power of friendship, now can you? With such a colorful resume of heroics and villainy under her belt, it’s no wonder the Black Cat has stolen the hearts of heroes, villains, men and women alike. Take it from her: this is one cat whose path you don’t want to cross.

Experience & Skill

Catwoman

Overall Experience

As you might expect from one of Batman’s most consistent and long-running rogues, Catwoman has no shortage of combat experience and incredible skill showings over the course of her 80+ year history. This is something that the comics have even directly alluded to, as although she is only in her 20s, she has stated that the two or three years that she and Batman had been chasing each other “feel like 70”, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to DC’s sliding time scale. Over the course of that time, she has been stated to be:

• The most dreaded female figure in Gotham

• The cleverest, most dangerous, and most beautiful lady of crime in the country

• The greatest woman criminal of all time

• One of Batman’s most deadly enemies

• The deadliest and most formidable woman Batman has encountered in his career (though I can only surmise that the writer forgot Wonder Woman exists)

• The world’s greatest criminal

In fact, she was at one point excluded from a list of history’s greatest rogues, not because she doesn’t deserve to be on it, but because her exploits are so terrific that the list-maker was writing an entire book on her alone. Compounding this, she has directly contested the claim that Talia Al Ghul is the most dangerous woman alive, and has a reputation in-universe for having fought Batman numerous times, “and seldom to her shame.” This is to the point that she was at one point hand-selected for the JLA under the premise that she would be able to take down Batman. She is good enough at what she does to consistently keep Bruce guessing, and almost impossible to catch red-handed. Even Black Canary, one of the top 25 martial artists in the world per Lady Shiva’s ranking, has admitted that Selina is very good at her job.

In terms of specific experience, an exact time-frame is again difficult to lock down due to the fact that it is unclear how much time has passed since the 40’s in-universe, but we know that she has been committing theft since she was a child, becoming more cat burglar than thief by age 18. She has also acted as both a bodyguard and private investigator, and has acted as a member of various super teams, from the JLA to the Suicide Squad to the Gotham City Sirens.

During her tenure as a criminal and occasional vigilante, she has fought a vast variety of foes. This includes countless world-class martial artists like Batman, the various Robins, Black Canary, and more, but also much more various opponents. She has fought unpredictable foes like the Joker and Riddler, taken down crime bosses like Black Mask, and intimidates the Penguin to the point where he’s weary of making any kind of attempt on her life, for fear of being killed himself. She has fought metahumans much more powerful than herself on many occasions, such as Poison Ivy and Killer Croc, and has a fairly good record against them. She has even managed to get the better of powerhouses like Bane on occasion, hold her own against Jean-Paul Valley while he was wearing his Azbat Suit, and has fought the near-indestructible Clayface multiple times.

She has also fought opponents like Cat-Man, whose suit grants him supernatural luck, and gotten the better of him on multiple occasions, figuring out how to disable his powers or just beating him outright. Even when facing overwhelming foes such as Kai the Hellhound or Philo Zeiss, whom she has proven unable to defeat, her ability to train and improve at a rapid rate has allowed her to surpass and overcome them eventually. Even without such training, she has on occasion proven to be capable of defeating opponents too durable for her to hurt, by outmaneuvering them and tricking them into hurting themselves. As she has said herself, she fights the best when backed into a corner, when the stakes are high and the odds are against her.

Burglary & Theft

Befitting the most accomplished cat burglar Gotham has ever known, Selina is a world-class expert in what the kids like to call “stealing shit”. She began her long career as a thief when she was only a child, and as she got older became an expert in silence, stealth, and choosing her marks properly. This was compounded by some formal training in theft from one of her love interests, James Stark, including skills such as what is worth stealing and how to spot trouble. By adulthood, she was reputed as the most skilled thief in Gotham City, and possibly even the world, a claim that she herself has made. 

In terms of specific skills, she is familiar with a vast variety of security measures that various targets might put up. She is familiar with countless different types of sensors, including older and newer models of glass breakage sensors, and also of course knows how to bypass them. She can recognize the exact brand and model of a security system on sight, has expertise with the most state-of-the-art models, and can get past everything from various types of safes, to advanced fingerprint scanners, to high-end user ID authentication systems, the latter of which she has hacked in as little as 56 seconds. She can consistently navigate past laser grids with little difficulty, as well as things like electrified fences, motion detectors, and a company of marines patrolling an area, even all at once. Her skill is so exceptional that she considers setting off an alarm embarrassing, and being caught in a police searchlight downright humiliating.

This has allowed her to pull off heists at countless museums, exhibitions, auctions, and more. At one point, she was arrested and charged with 219 known counts of theft, including from places like the Louvre, which she has successfully robbed. She is known as an international jewel thief, and through her burglaries can cause more loss in a month than five four-alarm fires. Four-alarm fires are a particularly severe type of fire that usually occur only once or twice a year, and individual ones can cause damages in the ballpark of $3 million, making Selina’s monthly average over $15 million. 

Her thievery has also proven useful in combat on various occasions. Museum heists are all the rage of course, but sometimes simple pickpocketing is just as useful a skill, with Selina having managed to steal things off of both Batman and Robin without them noticing. Sometimes, she supplements this with feminine wiles, distracting a man with a kiss to make it easier to pickpocket him. She has on various occasions stolen people’s firearms from them while they are in the middle of shooting at her, or snatched people’s knives when fighting them barehanded. Theft of weaponry was even effective against the likes of Green Arrow, with Selina having stolen his arrows while managing to escape his notice. She even has a couple more absurd showings of this, having managed to steal Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth from her during a combat situation, or snatching Doctor Fate’s helm right off his head with her whip (my GOAT Doctor Strange would never let that happen to him…………).

Lastly, she also knows how to hotwire a car. Lightning McQueen is fucked now.

Infiltration

Focusing in on the “breaking and entering” portion of her burglaries, Selina is of course extremely gifted at infiltrating secure locations. For starters, she’s really good at picking locks. She has numerous examples of doing so, carries equipment specifically designed for such, and has even done so in extremely unfavorable positions, such as underwater from an awkward angle. In the event that the doors are outfitted with alarms, she has also been known to enter through unusual means such as vents, or through a grate at the bottom of an indoor swimming pool, the latter being the means by which she infiltrated a house with better security than the Pentagon. She can easily evade motion sensors and cameras, or take advantage of specific weaknesses in their functionality to bypass them without triggering an alarm.

Her skill is so exceptional that Batman at one point recruited her specifically because only she would be skilled enough to infiltrate an Amazon splinter group. She has also successfully gotten past all of the various security measures in place on the Justice League Watchtower, breaking in and telling them their security sucks, as Batman had enlisted her to determine weaknesses in their defenses.

Stealth

Like any good Batman character, Selina is a master of silence and stealth, frequently using it to her advantage, both in her burglaries and in direct combat. One of her consistent tactics in battle is to take out the lights in an area and go to town on whoever she’s fighting, because she can see in the dark with her goggles and they can’t. This can facilitate sneak attacks, and has allowed her to solo a dozen guys at once. Even without taking down the lights, she has managed to stealth around a security guard and knock him out from behind, disappear from the sight of multiple museum guards and then stealth attack them, and disappear from a man’s eyesight immediately after smashing him through a table. At one point, she was so stealthy that she was able to sneak up on a group of thieves conducting an auction and steal the gavel from the auctioneer before he even noticed her.

In terms of specific feats versus named characters, it is established that her stealth is so good that Batman can’t hear her coming. She has managed to stealth her way around him for a little while, though he did end up noticing her, and she has also admitted she can’t avoid Batman forever through stealth alone. At one point, though, she was able to disappear without Batman or Flash noticing her, and she has even claimed that stealth is one of her strong suits in a direct comparison between herself and Batman. Outside of Batman, she has managed to hide from Jean-Paul Valley while he was wearing his Azbat Suit, despite the fact that it enhances his senses.

Planning/Problem Solving

Whether theft or combat, Catwoman is also an expert strategist, planner, and problem solver. Starting with her various heists, she typically visits museums she’s about to rob to stake them out, sometimes even casing places for a month before robbing them, studying their schematics and familiarizing herself with guard patrol schedules. Her planning in this regard is so precise that she can keep track of a guard’s movements during patrol down to a tenth of a second. Thanks to this perfectionism, she has managed to devise impossible strategies for burglary, to the point of having at one point figured out how to steal more money than anyone has ever stolen in a single theft.

This also extends to combat, where she has frequently managed to identify gaps and weaknesses in an enemy’s gear and combat style, capitalizing on them to defeat opponents that she would otherwise have difficulty with. For example, she has been known to count gunshots when she goes up against guns, to keep track of when her opponent will need to reload, and will even pickpocket an enemy’s ammunition to prevent them from reloading. Against Philo Zeiss, who was so fast she had trouble tagging him, she was able to recognize that she needed to take out his goggles to beat him, since they’re the source of his enhanced reflexes. Against Spider, who was too tough for her to hurt, she was able to trick him into hurting himself. Against a much stronger opponent wearing a suit from Apokalips, she was able to recognize that he left the power source unprotected and target it, breaking it. Against Cat-Man, whose cowl gives him supernatural luck, she was able to identify the cowl as the source of his powers and remove it from him mid-fight, negating said luck. She has also been known to use an enemy’s equipment against them, such as a cop’s tear gas.

While not as great as her batty boy toy, her detective skills are also first rate, allowing her to do things like narrow down a man’s location over the phone via simply a lack of certain sounds. She was also able to deduce that Superman is Clark Kent, which isn’t exactly an easy task. In terms of more miscellaneous examples, she knows the temperature that paper ignites offhand… for some reason, and was even able to impress Zatanna by correctly guessing her cards every time during a magic trick.

Escape

Though breaking into things is much more her forte, Catwoman has also shown to be skilled in escaping various types of containment, ranging from busting out of Arkham Asylum within 48 hours of her imprisonment, to escaping rope restraints and straightjackets. She is also skilled at escaping capture, as seen by her frequently evading Batman’s attempts to capture her, even in the event that he is genuinely trying.

She also has several more absurd examples. At one point, she escaped being tied up on some train tracks and rigged a villain’s holographic technology to project a fake image of her onto the tracks (to make it look like she was still trapped) in the time it took for said villain to find a diamond. She has also used chemically treated book pages to create a bomb with a fuse to break out of prison, and knew which pages to use based on their correspondence with the letters in the alphabet that spell “cat.”

…Yes, really. Early comics were kind of dumb.

Martial Arts

As you may expect, one of Selina’s most important skills to discuss is her overall martial arts capability and skill at hand-to-hand combat. Being a Batman villain, she naturally is extensively trained in many forms of hand-to-hand combat, to the point of being essentially superhumanly skilled. She has received training from various sources; for example, she learned boxing from Ted Grant, who also trained many other highly skilled streets such as Black Canary. Most notable, however, is her training in the dojo of the Armless Master, a legendary martial artist who also trained the likes of Tim Drake and Hellhound. Selina spent over a year in this dojo, specifically 374 days minus some off days spent away, during which time she was trained to master the blocks, punches, kicks, and stances of all major martial arts disciplines, with knowledge of such being required before students are even allowed to start sparring. Even when she first arrived at the dojo, her natural talent for martial arts and improvisation allowed her to contend with the star student Kai, who had already achieved such mastery of every martial art. Near the end of her time there, after being tested in “every conceivable way” both in hand-to-hand and armed combat, Selina was promoted to the rank of dojo senior, having surpassed Kai by that point.

Much of her improvements can be attributed to her perfect physical memory and natural ability to make large and noticeable leaps in skill even over the course of mere days. It’s been stated that when she sees a move, she learns it for life – and at the dojo, she saw more-or-less every move that exists. Even after leaving the dojo, she improved dramatically through years of practice to the point of defeating Kai easily when they met again down the line. She has on various occasions either demonstrated specific martial arts, or identified martial arts being used by others; for example, Bruce recognized that she knew karate when they first met (though incorrectly assumed she only knew karate). She recognized via sight that Cassandra Cain was using Jeet Kune Do and Thai kickboxing, she is stated to have expertise in boxing and various martial arts disciplines, and she could identify that an opponent was using modified capoeira.

This skill and training have served her well during her frequent encounters with Batman, who has similarly mastered every martial art. Though he has defeated her plenty of times, even when not trying to hurt her, she has also matched him numerous times, and it has been established that her record against him in-universe is largely positive. Tim Drake has commented that Batman respects her abilities in a fight, noting that he can’t allow her the opportunity to get the better of him, and Batman himself has echoed this sentiment, having described her as a world class fighter and one of the smartest people he’s ever met. Throughout their many encounters, Selina has familiarized herself with Bruce’s fighting style, to the point of listing off all of the many small intricacies of how he fights, and has picked up a lot of Batman’s fighting techniques due to having spent a long time fighting him. She has matched Jason Todd while directly acknowledging that he was moving and fighting like Bruce, and can flawlessly coordinate her attacks with Bruce, showing that she is capable of the same speed and technique that he is.

Outside of Batman, Selina has managed to hold her own against various other street tiers, many of whom are expert martial artists as well. Notable examples include but are not limited to: Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Green Arrow, the Joker (and his henchmen), the Riddler, Black Mask, Punchline, Spoiler, Two-Face, Penguin, Talia Al Ghul, Wildcat, Trickster, Huntress, Hush, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, Katana, Reach, Bone, Bane, Headhunter, Magpie, Signal Man, Amygdala, Gorilla Boss, Ten-Eyed Man, King Snake, Werewolf, Copperhead, Condiment King, Red Claw, Thomas Wayne, Vicki Vale, and Eiko Hasigawa, the third Catwoman. She has consistently shown to be capable of taking down Poison Ivy, even claiming to possess more martial arts training than Ivy knows exists. She was able to hold off Cat-Man for minutes, despite Batman losing to Cat-Man in seconds in the same issue. She was able to fight evenly with Killer Croc, wrestling him to the ground and pinning him so that he would admit defeat. She has held her own against Ramon Bracuda, who K.O.’d Robin later in the issue, and in a similar vein managed to take down Lady Vic, who was acknowledged in the issue as a rival to Nightwing.

Omari, chieftain of the Beti-Ma, admitted that he and Selina were evenly matched when Selina didn’t have her gear, and that they could fight all night. Though it may be an outlier for Selina given his substantial superiority to Batman, Jean-Paul Valley has made a similar claim, acknowledging Selina’s skills and reflexes as comparable to his own, with the two of them trading blows and Jean-Paul suggesting that it would be a stalemate until one of them goes for the kill, and that they could end up fighting until dawn. Some time after this point, she was able to land some hits on him again, though in that instance he was able to grab her by the throat and put a stop to the fight more quickly. Black Canary, though a better fighter through feats, statements, and Selina’s own admission, is also someone that Catwoman has managed to fight evenly with on a couple occasions. That said, Selina has been overwhelmed by rivals to Black Canary, such as Lady Shiva, though in fairness Shiva is potentially the most skilled fighter in the world so this is not a substantial anti-feat.

Interestingly, Selina has pretty consistently good showings against Cheetah, despite the fact that Cheetah is a rival to Wonder Woman, something that is directly acknowledged during their fights. Regardless, they have fought several times and all of them either ended in Selina winning or the fight being disrupted by circumstance. Cat-like opponents are no stranger to Selina in general, with her having fought evenly with She-Cat multiple times, a literal copycat who had similar claw weaponry as Selina herself.

Some may bring up the infamous scan that many people are aware of in which Selina takes down three Flashes back-to-back, but this is made much less noteworthy by context. All three of them were under the control of Poison Ivy at the time, who had spread her mental control worldwide and was extremely strained from trying to command so many people at once. Ergo, the Flashes were substantially weakened and the feat is nothing worth writing home about, in terms of speed nor skill.

Outside of named characters, Selina has defeated eight skilled convicts in a row, taken down and disarmed an armed assailant who was holding her at gunpoint, beaten up multiple armed assailants, beat up a group of four muggers by herself, taken down multiple armed thugs with her arm in a sling, taken out several guards simultaneously, fought a group of ninjas all at once and dodged numerous shuriken, beaten two armed guards while in a wheelchair and with her arms strapped down, soloed a squad of police officers, taken down seven guys in quick succession, beat 12+ guys while surrounded and when they all had guns trained on her, blitzed some guys from across the room and stole all their guns before they could react, and beat up some guys while tied to a chair, stealing one of their guns in the process. She’s also entirely willing to kick people in the balls or spit in their face (give them the hawk tuah) to get the upper hand, and can do a mean split kick. In the event that she is at a strength disadvantage, she can compensate with speed, skill, and ferocity, though she has noted that it’s hard to predict what will happen when fighting someone new, until she can figure them out, see what works and what doesn’t.

Acrobatics/Agility

As far as agility, dexterity, and athleticism go, Selina is an Olympic-level athlete and capable of complex acrobatics, frequently doing flips, swinging around poles, doing parkour, scaling buildings, and leaping massive distances like it’s nothing. For example, she can easily leap over people’s heads, jump from tree branches to rooftops, from a roof onto the top of a car on the street below, and from a roof to a tree branch to the top of a wall to the ground in quick succession. She has even leapt across entire streets, from one rooftop to another in the distance, and reached a boat across water without getting wet by jumping off the heads of sharks swimming around it. She can jump over or even between bullets, as well as dodge automatic fire from multiple sources at once while surrounded. This isn’t limited to only firearms either, as she has also evaded sword slashes, blasts of electricity, telekinetically-thrown cars, and missiles from Cyber-C.A.T., the explosion of which she was able to leap-ride in order to escape. Speaking of explosions, you’d better believe she’s outrun those too, on top of being able to move so fast that she creates afterimages.

It would be no exaggeration to say that speed is oftentimes Selina’s greatest asset in combat. She has been depicted as Batman’s superior in speed on a fairly consistent basis, having directly claimed such, received consistent compliments from him on her speed, and kept up with ever faster street tiers like Nightwing and Jean-Paul Valley. Despite their fairly consistent mutual animosity, Batgirl has even admitted that trying to keep up with Selina is daunting, and that no matter how much she trains she’ll never be able to move as gracefully as her. This has allowed Selina to keep up with Harley Quinn and Deadshot, and outspeed the likes of Poison Ivy and Bane. Harley specifically has even described opponents that Selina has explicitly kept up with to be fast. Conversely, some of Selina’s greatest challenges throughout her history are opponents much faster than her, most notably Zeiss. It’s worth noting however that Selina explicitly gets faster and faster as her history has progressed, for example surpassing Zeiss within a few issues of being initially blitzed by him.

Much of her skill in this area is owed to the time she spent in the circus as a child, where she learned gymnastics, among other skills.

Kinesthetics/Balance

Like a cat, Selina has a superb sense of balance. She can easily do handstands and aerobic exercises on her balcony (for some reason, just to flex I guess), and balance on one hand or even her fingertips. Her “cat-like balance” has allowed her to be a naturally skilled roller skater, and unperturbed by fighting on ice, never losing her footing even on a slippery surface. At one point, after being thrown out of a building, she was able to catch a flag on the way down and swing around the pole, landing in a crouched position on top of it, with the narration implying that she’s had a lot of practice saving herself from falls. Much of this is probably a result of gymnastics and tightrope training that she received during her time in the circus as a child, though she also practices yoga in her spare time.

Weaponry

Though she largely focuses on hand-to-hand combat in addition to her claws and whip, Selina has on several occasions shown to be proficient with other weapons as well. Her training in the Armless Master’s dojo encompassed every conceivable form of armed combat as well, and she has consistently shown to be skilled with swords specifically. She has on two occasions fought trained fencers evenly, one of whom was top of his class in fencing, and outskilled expert swordsmen like Cavalier, even going so far as to put down his sword skills. She has matched Talia Al Ghul in an extended sword fight despite having comparatively much less experience than her with swords, and perhaps most impressively, has matched a depowered Wonder Woman in swordsmanship for a bit, though in complete fairness Diana did not want to kill her.

Marksmanship

Though less frequently touched upon than many of her other talents, Catwoman is also indicated on several occasions to have excellent aim, to the point of claiming that she never misses with her bolas. She has also determined through a simple glance that another man was going to miss his shot with a pistol, as the aim of his gun was slightly off.

At one point she also threatened to shoot a guy in the dick, so she knows how to aim where it really hurts.

Subterfuge

The Catwoman is a skilled liar liar pants on fire, and frequently employs deception and trickery during both theft and combat, to get the better of those who would try to stop her. This ranges from using sensuality to manipulate male opponents, which is so notable it will have its own section, to more specific forms of deceit, such as fooling people into believing she has nine lives, tricking others with acting and crocodile tears, or playing dead to lure Batman in and then surprise attack. In general, she has managed to successfully trick Batman fairly consistently, manipulating and gaslight-gatekeep-girlbossing him on a regular basis (no seriously she literally learns what the word gaslighting means on-panel). She’s also fooled the Joker before, lying to him about having killed Batman to get the last laugh over him. In her own words, “theft is three-quarters theatrics,” and playing others to her whims is a key part in many of her strategies.

Disguise

A pretty frequent tertiary skill that Selina makes use of is disguise, often dressing up as an entirely different person to go undetected by authorities, stake out a potential burglary site, or otherwise acquire intel without being recognized. Her disguises range from an old lady handing out chewing gum, to a maid, to a blonde sunbather, and various others, and have on occasion allowed her to fool even Batman, though in other cases he has managed to recognize her immediately. In actual combat scenarios, she at one point disguised herself as a random woman to fool the Cat-Killer, a notable serial killer at the time. Here is a full album of the notable disguises she has worn.

Medicine

On a couple occasions, Selina has shown to be capable of performing emergency first aid on herself in high-stress situations. This has ranged from surgically removing an implant from her arm with her claws, to resetting her own dislocated shoulder mid-fight.

Animal Control

Especially in early comics, Catwoman is depicted as having an unusual knack for charming and controlling animals, even to the point of “controlling” lions, tigers and leopards as long as they are raised in captivity. She even kept pets like panthers and ocelots, charming them with things like catnip to get them to obey her every order. Additionally, she has shown to be capable of other animal-related skills like horseback riding, and has been known to bring steaks with her during her heists to deal with guard dogs.

Seduction

One of Selina’s more underhanded tactics is to distract, charm, or disorient her adversaries through sensual means rather than physical. Imagine you’re a policeman chasing a criminal, and suddenly she’s kissing you instead of punching you. It would take a moment to reorient to the situation after something like that, right? And those moments of confusion are exactly what Selina is banking on, usually following up with either a less friendly form of attack, pickpocketing, or simply by using the momentary distraction to escape. This has worked on everyone from random museum guards and robbers to Batman himself, and even Superman on one occasion. She’s even done it in the middle of physical fights before, using it to her advantage against Wildcat.

It is worth mentioning that Selina has never attempted a tactic like this against a woman, so whether she would do so in-character is questionable.

Miscellaneous

(shut the fuck up Robin)

Being a comic character, Selina has plenty of instances in which she has pulled out random skills that are never mentioned again, or are so specific they don’t fall into any broad category. For instance, she is established to be skilled in orientation via a compass. She has at one point parachuted from 35,000 feet. She is established to have impressive business skills, having at one point replaced the businessman Peter Randolf as head of his company, and led said company to great success, though this was in part a result of cheating by manipulating the stock exchange. She is also consistently multilingual, having spoken Spanish, Russian, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese, and being capable of recognizing a language as Middle-Eastern, though not identifying it.

She is also a skilled psychoanalyst, for instance she can determine whether a person knows who she is based on their body language. She was also able to psychoanalyze Harley Quinn, providing her with insight on her personal issues that Harley herself was unable to recognize, with Harley notably being a psychiatrist – though naturally it can be harder to recognize one’s own shortcomings than those of others. Selina was also able to give Ivy advice on how to get Harley away from Joker mentally in the same issue; her role in said issue was essentially hyper-analyzing Harley and Ivy’s sex life and basically calling Harley a turbo bottom, it was funny. In any case, it demonstrates that she is capable of picking apart the psychology of other people, though in this case two individuals she knows fairly well.

Perhaps most unusual is her skill at catoptrics, the study of human eyesight and light interaction that deals with reflection. Naturally, since this is a Pre-Crisis comic book, she can use this in very strange sci-fi ways, using reflective tools to distort the light between herself and her attacker to interfere with their aim and the timing of their strikes.

Black Cat

Felicia is, by her own admission, not the best at fighting. Above all else, she is a thief first, everything else second. Despite that, she still trained her body to match that of an Olympian athlete, and managed to earn a black belt in Goju-Ryu karate, as well as judo. Even if she isn’t a master martial artist, she can still keep up with the likes of Nick Fury, Moon Knight, and Star-Lord in a fight, and she held her own against a very un-serious Iron Fist. Her knowledge of pressure points is extensive enough that she can employ neck pinches and nerve jabs quickly and efficiently.

Back to her bread and butter, though. She trained for years in the art of thievery under her mentor, the Black Fox, surpassing all of his previous students. Coincidentally, this includes Felicia’s own father, Walter, who was the previous greatest cat burglar in history. Beyond that, she also trained under master burglars, electronics geniuses, security experts, and circus acrobats. It’s likely because of this experience that, even before gaining superpowers and super-gear, Felicia’s senses were sharpened to their finest, allowing her to easily anticipate and identify traps or sensors in a building. Her years of training have allowed Felicia to pull her weight alongside actual superhumans, such as when she lifted Hellcat’s wallet off her costume, and proved to be acrobatic enough to keep up with Spider-Man.

In the field, Felicia has demonstrated a wealth of knowledge; she can tell if a tree is wired, can anticipate camera placement, and knows how to bypass pressure sensors. Furthermore, she is an expert at disabling power systems and can hack into security systems with ease. No surprise there; she regularly passes time by disassembling and reassembling security locks, all while watching TV. Employing this knowledge in combat, Felicia has disabled Shocker’s gauntlets without him noticing, disabled a Wakandan security surveillance camera, and can easily disarm explosives without breaking a sweat.

Lastly, Felicia has at least a bit of medical knowledge, able to patch up bullet wounds. Being able to quickly pick up on new skills probably helps when you somehow end up fighting literal demons not just once, but twice.

Equipment

Catwoman

Catwoman Costume

Catwoman’s costume itself is largely cosmetic, outside of specific parts of it like her claws or goggles which all have their own dedicated sections. She has worn several suits over the years, ranging from her most well-known black costume, to a purple one with whiskers and a tail, to a white version that she wears to blend into the snow. Most likely, the black coloration is intended to make stealth easier. On occasion, the suit has withstood fire attacks without being burned and has also been stated to be “insanely insulated,” protecting from extremely powerful electrical shocks, though this is somewhat inconsistent as she has been electrocuted successfully on other occasions. It’s also worth mentioning that her costume in the New 52 was made out of a normal awning (page 28), and in all notable continuities it is neither bulletproof nor resistant to stabbing or cutting weapons.

Claws/Gloves

Perhaps the deadliest of Selina’s typical arsenal are the claws built into her gloves, which can be extended or retracted at a moment’s notice. The material that these claws are made out of is inconsistent between continuities, with Pre-Crisis specifying them to be of steel construction (Earth-1 as well), and New 52 establishing them as diamond-tipped (page 28), while Post-Crisis is unspecified. In any case however, they have exceptional cutting power, being capable of slicing through the chest portion of the Batsuit like butter and drawing blood from Batman. They have also been used to gouge out Killer Croc’s eyes, cut through physical monsters like Clayface and Bane, scratch up Jean-Paul Valley’s Azbat Suit, and carve through Poison Ivy’s roots, among numerous other cutting feats like slicing clean through guns and bulletproof glass, or cutting off a cyborg lady’s metal arm.

If being able to slice through pretty much any relevant street tier wasn’t useful enough, the claws (and the gloves they are attached to) have several additional functions and methods of attack that make them incredibly dangerous for pretty much any foe that Selina faces on a day-to-day basis. For starters, her claws are drugged, with even a scratch causing Batman to feel groggy almost immediately, despite Bruce’s extraordinary resistance to sedatives and other toxins. She also has a taser function built into her gloves which can electrocute and stun even Bane with just a touch. And remember when we said her claws are extendable? Midway through Post-Crisis, Selina had the gloves upgraded so that she could extend much longer and sharper blades from her fingers, in the event that her ordinary claws are insufficient. These blades are three inches long, made of reinforced titanium, and most importantly are laser-sharpened to the molecular level, allowing them to cut through almost anything.

The claws have enough grip strength to scale the sides of buildings or cling to the side of a helicopter, and have been used for things other than gouging out eyes and slashing throats, like unscrewing screws, cutting herself out of nets and straightjackets, and performing surgery on herself to remove an implant in her arm. She also has other tools built into her gloves, such as flashlights in the fingers or an extendable drill built into her index finger.

Goggles

To complement her cat-like stealth, Selina has light-intensifier cat goggles built into her cowl which allow her to see in the dark via electronically enhanced “starlight lenses,” which function via magnifying light. These lenses have both x-ray and infrared vision, allowing her to do anything from peer through walls and ceilings to scope out the interior of a building, to detect otherwise invisible laser grids. They also have a zoom function, and can even be used to do things like read in the dark.

Claw Launcher

Attached to Catwoman’s wrist is a gadget from which she can fire a spiked, claw-like projectile attached to a cable. This can be used to break through glass or smack a target really hard, but most commonly serves as a grapple cable, hooking onto pipes, helicopter tails, and more, allowing her to swing or pull herself around, or anchor herself down.

Wrist Communicator

Also on her wrist is a portable communicator, which she has used on a somewhat consistent basis to communicate with her allies, including Holly Robinson, Slam Bradley, and Oracle. It should be noted that she does not have one consistent liaison on the other end of the communicator, and the actual support that these people have provided her is minimal; it more or less starts and ends with communication.

Wrist Scanner

Her wrist device can also detect various environmental factors via a built-in scanner, including radiation levels and the amount of air/oxygen in an area.

Wrist GPS

In the 2011 Catwoman run, Selina gained a waterproof wrist GPS camouflaged to her cuffs, the viewer of which can be switched to her goggles for covert access. It can also access excavation records, train tunnels, missing uranium shipments, old nuclear bunkers, etc., though this is mostly limited to information about Gotham and likely does not include other locales.

Holographic Projector

Lots of wrist thingies. Selina has a holographic device attached to her wrist, which she uses at one point to project an image of the vault door she was breaking into.

Belt

Selina’s belt has several gadgets built into it, such as a repelling cable to help her during her thefts. Much more unusual is a device that emits a frequency which can summon numerous cats, even from far away.

Boots

Similar to her gloves, Selina can extend both claws and blades from her boots. The claws function similarly to the ones on her hands, though have never demonstrated some of the more specific functions like being drugged or sharpened to the molecular level. The blades are spring-action steel climbing pitons, which are longer and thicker than the foot claws, primarily intended to help her climb by stabbing into a wall, but also effective for stabbing people and chopping off their limbs.

Additionally, her boots have sonic tech built into them which can release high-powered sound waves, strong enough to shatter a glass window.

Gas Mask(s)

Selina has on at least seven occasions been shown to carry gas masks on her person, to deal with gaseous attacks or situations where she needs one to breathe safely. Post-Crisis, she eventually had one installed directly into her suit by Wayne Enterprises, allowing her to quickly employ it in the event of a gas attack. In the event that she is somehow caught without one, she has also been shown to be capable of simply holding her breath to deal with gas attacks.

Suction Cups

Though she uses these much more rarely, she occasionally has been shown to implement suction cups on her gloves and boots to cling to walls. She also has additional wrist attachments with suction cups on them, which can allow her to stick to walls to avoid pressure pads on the floor.

Cat Mask

In her earliest Pre-Crisis appearances from the 1940’s, Selina’s standard costume consisted of a bright orange suit and a mask that was shaped like the realistic head of a cat. There is nothing worth saying about it except that it looked ugly as shit.

Cat O’ Nine Tails

Catwoman’s most consistent and recurring weapon throughout all major continuities is a “utility belt” which, when pulled, turns into a bullwhip called a cat-o-nine-tails. Eight feet long and tipped with steel bearings, this whip is an incredible multi-use tool, capable of slapping, slicing, snaring, tripping and disarming opponents in various ways. Like any whip, its crack comes from a loop traveling along the whip, gaining speed until it reaches the speed of sound – 1100 ft/s – and creates a sonic boom. From a sheer sharpness and impact force perspective, Selina’s whip strikes are strong enough to slice up a man’s fingers, break through metal chains or Poison Ivy’s roots, decapitate a snake, or whip a man’s clothes off without leaving a scratch on him. The whip itself is durable enough to tie down a helicopter… to a cactus, somehow, and restrain strong street tiers like Batman.

In terms of sheer utility, as alluded to it has various uses. One of the most consistent is that Selina frequently uses it to disarm people of their weapons, ranging from guns to swords and more, even multiple with one whip crack. She can also use it to tie people up or snare them by individual body parts, such as their neck, their legs to unbalance them, or their arm to redirect their gunshots or other attacks, or to stop them (or herself) from falling. When she gets a person by the neck, both she and the whip are easily strong enough to break their neck, or hang them if she’s feeling… er, more brutal? I’ll go with more.

The whip is also an effective tool for mobility, with her frequently using it to lash onto things and swing around through the city in a manner not unlike Spider-Man. It can also be used to scale walls, or snare chandeliers to help her get over laser grids. Or pull down said chandelier to drop it on people’s heads. She can also create makeshift ziplines to slide down, if the situation calls for it, or most impressively, use the whip to light a person’s cigarette. 

Grappling Hook

When mobility is needed, Selina has a grappling hook gun which does exactly what you’d expect a grappling hook gun to do. These have ranged from more standard smaller ones, to larger grapple guns that create explosions from the barrel when fired. They’ve come in handy for everything from grabbing stuff through a laser grid, to pulling down a helicopter by the tail, and the cable is strong enough to support the weight of an elevator.

Bolas

A weapon consisting of several balls connected by a strong cord, Selina can throw her bolas with expert accuracy to tie up a person’s legs or knock multiple people’s heads together. The bola has the tensile strength to hang a man, and can also be used for other purposes like creating a zipline.

Crossbow

Though not too functionally distinct from her grappling hook, Selina also has a crossbow that fires a bolt attached to a cable.

Catarangs

Only explicitly identified by name Pre-Crisis, Selina has barbed “Catarangs” which are stated to be even more dangerous than Batman’s Batarangs. In later continuities, she has on a couple occasions pulled out shaped shuriken-like weapons that are presumably Catarangs, but has not explicitly called them such.

Metal Balls

At one point, Selina throws out some metal balls across the floor to make a guy step on them and slip. Terrifying!!

Caltrops

Selina has used caltrops of varying sizes, some more normal and others especially large, to do things like burst tires or impede people from moving through an area safely.

Pistols

Selina has been shown to carry pistols with her a reasonable number of times, at least five throughout her entire history. Though she is established to dislike guns, it has also been stated that she will use them if she has to. The only specified type of pistol that she has used is a lightweight .22, but the exact specifics are not clarified.

Machete

At one point Selina has been shown to carry a machete. She could probably stab a bitch pretty good with it idk.

Hunting Knife

During an underwater diving mission, one of the tools that Selina carried with her was a serrated hunting knife. More stabbing!!!

Taser

During her fight with a shapeshifting flesh serial killer (yikes!) Selina was shown to carry a handheld taser in her glove, electrocuting the guy with it after pulling it out.

Grenades

Selina has been shown to carry grenades on a couple occasions.

…………What more do you want us to say? She pull the pin and it go boom bang pow! Grenade strong.

Button Explosives

More specific and thankfully with more to talk about are a number of custom-made explosives that Selina received during her 1993 run, which are the size and shape of buttons, and individually strong enough to blow any safe on Earth, or erase any wall or fence. She has used them to, as advertised, blow a large hole through a wall and blow up a fence. Though she later got some upgraded versions that were even stronger, they were exclusive to a suit of high-tech armor that she had destroyed by the end of the issue where it was introduced.

Disk Explosives

Selina also carries disk-shaped explosives, which stick to a wall when thrown and then release a large amount of gas and fire after a moment. This is typically used for distractions, and the disk will still remain intact after the gas and fire are cleared up, though it is unclear if it can be reused or not.

Cat Explosives

In a pinch, if she doesn’t have other bombs on-hand, Selina has charming little cat figures on her bracelet that she wears, which can be disconnected and used as throwable explosives.

Remote Explosives

In various instances, Selina has utilized explosives which can be detonated remotely, either through remote control or via her watch. The strongest of these are so powerful that they are stated to be capable of potentially flattening a building.

Timed Explosives

In the event that Selina doesn’t feel like pressing the boom boom button herself, she can also set explosives on a timer, which detonate after a certain period, giving her time to create distance between herself and the blast.

Flashbang Explosives

Selina has also used flashbang-type explosives, including one that she got from Batman, and another, more unusual variant shaped like a marble. They produce large bursts of light to stun and blind opponents, giving Selina a few moments of opportunity to act while they are disoriented.

E.M.P. Grenades

During Futures End, Selina utilizes localized EMP grenades, which are strong enough and have a large enough area of effect to knock out power throughout several stories of a skyscraper. She also used them in combat against Batman, taking out his mechanical suit, frying the onboard tactical field and shutting down the suit’s A.I.

Smoke Explosives

Unsurprisingly, Catwoman also has access to smoke bombs, for all her smoke creating needs. If she’s feeling especially smokey she can shove one of these bombs down someone’s throat, like Clayface for example. Can Clayface get lung cancer? Let’s find out!

Cat-aclysm Grenades

Though the exact functionality of these explosives is a bit vague, Selina had access to “cat-aclysm grenades” Pre-Crisis, one of which was able to cause an earthquake felt across Gotham City after being detonated.

Incendiary Stick

Not too different from a smoke bomb, Selina has some sort of incendiary stick which makes a smokescreen to allow her to escape.

Pepper Spray

Catwoman sometimes carries pepper spray. Primarily made of oleoresin capsicum (OC), an oily resin that comes from chili peppers, this spray is murder on the eyes, and not appreciated by animals either.

Sleeping Gas

Prior to the Crisis, Selina utilized sleeping gas on a few occasions, such as by releasing it from an air vent, or wetting a box with a chemical which caused it to slowly release a sleeping gas after drying out.

Tranquilizing Powder

POOF!!! Tranquilizing powder! It tranquilizes things.

Chloroform

Selina has used chloroform on a couple different occasions to render people temporarily unconscious. Made up of one carbon atom, three chlorine atoms, and one hydrogen atom, chloroform is toxic to the central nervous system, though in real life takes continued exposure to knock someone unconscious, as opposed to the way it is in fiction (and in this case specifically) where momentary exposure can put someone to sleep immediately.

Catnap-Gas Bomb

Hidden in Catwoman’s lapel is a “catnap-gas bomb”, which as it sounds can release gas that puts someone into… well, a cat nap. It’s basically sleeping gas but more specific.

Magician’s Powder

Pre-Crisis, Catwoman at one point used a substance called “Magician’s Powder” to produce a flash-bang effect.

Compact Mirror

Pre-Crisis Catwoman also carried a compact mirror full of knockout powder that she can blow on people, though apparently the knock-out effect only works against thieves… somehow.

Cataphasia Drug

Catwoman once injected a man with a drug that induces cataphasia, the term for constant repetition of the same word. It might be a good time to mention that for some reason, before the Crisis she had a major obsession with cat puns, and only utilized weapons and skills that had the word “cat” somewhere in the name. It was dumb.

Also note that Catwoman’s showings in this issue all take place in a fake testimony she gives to try and take credit for Batman’s murder, so the actual existence of this drug is unclear.

Sneezing Gas Lightbulb

Very random but Catwoman has been known to carry a lightbulb full of sneezing gas, to make a target sneeze uncontrollably.

Antidote for Cocaine

…

…So she’s fighting this guy named Snowflame, right? And this guy Snowflame, he gets his powers from snorting cocaine. So what Catwoman does is, she pulls this powder pouch from her belt, and inside it is the antidote for cocaine! Which she uses to kill Snowflame’s cocaine high and negate his powers.

Not since the shark repellent have we seen a Batman character employ a countermeasure so devious.

Catseye Locket

Yet another weird piece of Pre-Crisis equipment, specifically from Earth-2, this locket contains a gem from Celyon called Catseye, and Selina uses it to hypnotize a prison guard, allowing her to escape her imprisonment.

Cat’s-Eye Ring

Earth-1 Selina, the second Pre-Crisis version, has a Cat’s-Eye Ring that has hypnotic powers similar to the gem from Earth-2. She used it to hypnotize Lois Lane, making her forget who she is and think that she herself is Catwoman. Notably, when the hypnosis is broken, the victim does not remember what they did while hypnotized.

Wand of Circe

…what the fuck-

I mean, uh… Selina has the Wand of Circe, a magic item which the famous sorceress Circe once used to turn Ulysses’ men into swine. Because why not. She found it in Italy, though by the time she got her hands on it, it only had enough magic left for one more transformation. She used it to turn Superman into a cat, and once she did so, he had to follow any orders she gave him as long as they were given in rhyme.

…Because why not!

Regardless, as the wand was one-use, its power was used up by the time the situation was resolved, so it’s not particularly standard. Still, what a random thing for her to just have.

Reflective Bauble

By swinging this reflective bauble, Selina can use catoptrics to distort the light and another person’s vision, throwing off the aim and timing of their strikes. This is not foolproof, however, as Batgirl was able to hit her faster than she could use the bauble to distort her vision.

Dummy Catwoman

At one point, Selina planted a fake dummy version of her on a pier to trick a dude into blowing it up. A classic misdirection!

Flare Gun

She do have a flare gun though. It shoots, gasp, flares!

Baseball Bat

swing batta batta SWING BATTER

Micromagnets

Perfect for heists, Selina has “micromagnets” which she can place on a camera in order to scramble its video recording.

Magnetic Grippers

When her normal claws don’t cut it, Selina has magnetic gripper thingies that she can use to cling to the outside of a train.

Digital Hacker

When faced with high tech combination locks, Selina can get past them easily by using a digital hacking device to run through all possible combinations on the lock - millions of them, which could take as much as an hour to get through, while she sits off to the side and chills. She also has other similar devices, such as a cat-shaped device which auto-hacks a door.

Digital Field-Memory Freeze-Frame Remote

Selina also has a digital field-memory freeze-frame remote, which can cause cameras to continuously transmit the same image, preventing them from picking her up.

Camera-Fooling Device

This is a similar device to temporarily fool cameras, but instead of causing a continuous image to transmit it seems to disrupt the camera’s feed for just a second, allowing her to slip past while anyone observing will assume the disruption was just a momentary sunspot or something of that nature.

Card Reader-Fooling Tool

Yet another means of getting past specific security technology is a tool that can fool a card reader, seemingly bypassing or hoodwinking its scanner in some manner through its unusual shape.

Spying Device

Whenever she needs to spy under a door frame, Selina has a spying device that does just that, peeking under it with a miniature camera, giving her the deets on whatever’s going on on the other side.

Night Vision Glasses

Even while Selina isn’t wearing her costume, she has access to night vision glasses which seem to function similarly to her normal goggles, allowing her to see in the dark with what appears to be infrared vision.

Tracking Devices

When she needs to keep track of someone, Selina has access to tracking devices which she can plant on them, which seem to transmit their location to her goggles.

Glass-Cutting Tool

An essential part of any good thief’s bag are tools that can be used for cutting through windows. Selina has various, ranging from circular cutters that rotate around a central point, or tools that can be used to hold a portion of the glass in place while she cuts around it.

Laser Pointer

If she wants to cut glass but look Cooler™ while doing it, Selina can also bust out the laser pointers and slice that shit with the power of LIGHT. In addition to glass, her laser pointers can also cut through vent grates and shipping containers.

Freezing Device

Selina has some sort of small sticky gadget that she uses to bust safes. After placing the gadget on the safe’s surface, all she has to do is sit back and watch while it freezes the safe solid, producing ice across its surface which breaks open the safe, presumably via causing the metal to expand.

Extendable Claw

When she needs to grab some shit, Selina can bust out a claw grabber gadget to snatch it from a distance, long and thin enough to fit through little holes.

High-Tech Compass

Though the exact specifics of its function are unspecified, Selina is established to possess a high-tech compass which she can use for navigation.

Kevlar Anti-Drone Camouflage Cape

At one point, Selina was given a kevlar anti-drone camouflage cape, made of lightweight metalized fabric which can deflect a drone’s thermal imaging camera and heat signature, essentially making her invisible to heat imaging. 

Drone Jamming Gun

Around the same time as the aforementioned cape, she also gained a special gun which allowed her to jam a drone’s programming, reverting it to homing mode and sending it back to where it was launched from. She really wants to be able to murder drones I guess.

Scuba Gear

Like a cat, Selina isn’t a big fan of water, but when she needs to go full Subnautica she has access to scuba gear which she’s used on several occasions. Good for scuba-ing and all that.

Rebreather

In the event that she doesn’t have scuba gear available, Selina also has a temporary underwater rebreather which can allow her to breathe underwater for a short time.

Rope

Though she typically uses her whip or bolas for rope-related purposes, Selina has occasionally made use of more generic rope as well, for instance tying a woman up and hanging her upside down from a tree.

Net

She has a net. I’m sensing some kind of “theme” here, she has a lot of equipment that ties people up… good for various types of “bondage” so to speak. It’s probably just my imagination though.

Tripwire

At one point Selina planted a trip wire to trip up Black Alice. It does the things that tripwires do.

Crowbar

Good for breaking windows and Jason Todds.

Flashlight

Selina has been shown to carry with her a small flashlight, which she uses at one point to break a light beam without letting the sensor know.

Glowsticks

When flashlights don’t cut it, Selina has also used glowsticks for similar purposes, mainly when diving underwater and in need of a light source.

Screwdrivers

Selina has consistently shown to carry around small screwdrivers with her for when she needs to unscrew things like vents. At times, she’s been shown to carry four at once.

Binoculars

A tool that Selina has been shown using at least five times throughout her history, Selina carries binoculars to help her see things from a distance and help her scope out her marks. Her binoculars have a night vision setting, and at times she has used ones that are more sci-fi than normal binoculars.

Lock-Picking Equipment

Selina carries with her a set of tools for lock-picking, as befits any halfway worthwhile breaker and enterer.

Tungsten Alloy Wire

If she doesn’t have her lock pickers on hand, she also carries with her a tungsten alloy wire, which is tough but pliable, and has been used to pick a lock underwater and from an awkward angle.

Catnip

To facilitate her control over animals prior to the Crisis, Catwoman carries catnip with her wherever she goes, and even wears special catnip perfume which makes cats obey her every command.

Juice Boxes

For when she needs to chill during a heist, Selina has been known to bring a juice box with her. Gotta get that Vitamin C!

Speaking of…

Vitamin C

I guess she just has an obsession with this stuff idk. At one point she just pulled out a random container of Vitamin C to give to this guy. Because pulling out random hyper-specific substances is somehow consistent for her!

Rabbit’s Foot

During the 2018 Catwoman run, Selina acquired a rabbit’s foot from Zatanna, who said that when she needs it most, it will do what it needs to do. What does she mean by that? Good question! It’s implied that she used it to escape a potential drowning… but the exact specifics of how it did so are left to the imagination. Go figure.

Motorcycle

Catwoman pretty consistently rides a motorcycle, not just in the movies but in the comics as well. As you might expect, it’s stolen. It doesn’t have any special traits beyond just being a motorcycle. It looks cool though!

Hang Glider

Catwoman has used a hang glider when the situation has called for it. Once again it’s pretty self explanatory, no particularly notable traits.

Kitty Car

Because of course. Pre-Crisis Catwoman has a “kitty car,” which as you can see is exactly what you’d expect. Outside of looking hideous, the Kitty Car can leap like a real cat, using rocket jets for short jumps, has ejector seats because for some reason the 40’s thought ejector seats were cool, and is stated to be almost the equal of the Batmobile. Selina has also upgraded it, making it more powerful with the later model.

Cat-Plane

She also has a Cat-Plane which is somehow worse, I hate it. It can fire large retractable steel claws, capable of damaging the Bat-Plane’s wings.

Cat-apult

These cat things are getting out of hand. Though at least this time it’s not actually visibly or functionally any different than a normal catapult, it’s just Selina being cringe. She used it to launch herself up to a helicopter.

Cat-Boat

She has a Cat-Boat apparently. Thank the powers that be that she kept this sorcery to the handbook and never let it see the light of day.

Black Cat

Quantum Probability Pulsator

After losing her natural-enhanced bad luck aura, Felicia sought out the aid of Doc Tramma, who supplied her with surgically implanted cybernetics. The Quantum Probability Pulsator (or QPP) replicates Felicia’s old bad luck powers, enabling her to manipulate probability fields via tychokinesis. That said, it doesn’t operate the exact same way - evident in its much spottier track record in general. Where the bad luck aura consistently activates to threats, regardless of whether Felicia was aware of them or not, the QPP is certainly fallible, more than capable of leaving her vulnerable to surprise attacks, or simply not activating at all when it would be convenient. (See Weaknesses below) 

Still, Felicia has been in possession of the QPP and the power it bestows much longer (in and out of the comics) than her natural bad luck aura. This makes it without a doubt her most consistent and defining way to access that powerset - evidenced by the fact that she has actually gained some degree of control over these powers, as opposed to her original bad luck aura. Furthermore, she can even shut her quantum rig down or back on with a thought if the situation ever calls for it.

Interestingly, Felicia noted that the more she “gave in” to her more ruthless side, the better her powers would work. Even more interestingly, Felicia’s bad luck generation actively interferes with magic by way of eroding the conscious alteration of probability, thereby unraveling magic with entropy. 

With the QPP, Felicia has achieved the following:

• Caused Spider-Man’s web shooters to jam up and fall apart mid-swing

• Threatened to burst Spider-Man’s appendix

• Caused Spider-Man to accidentally step in rat poop at the same time his underwear rips

• Caused Diablo to accidentally drop a solvent to dissolve the gold she and Spider-Man were trapped in

• Deactivated an energy baton used by a Mr. Sinister goon

• Caused a driver to encounter a grandma crossing the street

• Caused Mary Jane’s heel to snap, sending her falling off a rooftop

• Caused two armored guards to fly into each other

• Caused handcuffs on her wrists to break apart

• Caused a gun to misfire on the user

• Made some random guy drop his phone

• When in-transit to jail, caused the transport vehicle to hit a pothole

• Forced a police officer to miss three direct shots while Felicia stood still

• Caused Spider-Man to accidentally grab a live wire and get electrocuted

• Protected Felicia from being caught in debris, as well as Electro’s lightning blasting apart a prison

• Delays Spider-Man’s use of a fire hydrant, sabotaging his plan to beat Electro

• Allowed Felicia to correctly guess a password with a million possible combinations on the first try

• Caused a firefighter to fall in a burning building

• Rolled her specific lucky number (13) in roulette on the first try

• Aided Felicia in avoiding Electro’s lightning blasts

• Protected Felicia from getting tagged by Electro’s lightning going out of control while she was stationary

• Caused Hawkeye to fall off a building, with the roof falling apart around his grip

• Caused this guy to accidentally get caught in an escalator, and subsequently get choked to death on it

• Protected Felicia by having Eddie Brock conveniently break her fall

• Protected Felicia by making Mysterio’s wire snap while he choked her 

• Allowed Felicia to tag Mysterio, who tried to throw her off with illusory doubles

• Short circuited Mysterio’s projectors and pierced his camouflage

• Felicia states she can cause someone to slip on a banana peel and make guns jam, or cause locks to break

• Caused a snow leopard to break out of its cage, mauling this guard to death

• Caused some guy on a motorcycle to hit a rock in the road, sending him flying

• Protected Felicia from a variety of magic attacks; transmuted lightning into string, fire into petals, and a hammer into cupcakes

• Caused the odds in a casino to go haywire

• Consciously made a glass of wine shatter in someone’s hands

• Made some guy fall from an air vent

• Subconsciously gave Mary Jane Watson bad luck, sabotaging her luck-based superpower over time

• Caused some guy to misfire, shooting his partner

Black Cat Costume

Implants / Accessories

Felicia’s costumed-getup isn’t just for show - far from it. Over the years, she’s compiled many gadgets and implants that augment her combat capability. For starters, the Black Cat costume is lined with thermal regulators, and wired to boost her strength (capable of lifting 800 lbs / 362.87 kg), and she even has further implants that boost her strength, speed, balance, and hearing on top of that. Later on, she received an additional earpiece that lets her hear nigh-undetectable, suppressed sounds.

Gloves / Claws

She can fire “electro darts” from her gloves, as well as emit some sort of laser that deactivates security systems. Perhaps most impressive, however, are her claws. Made with a polarized metal mesh, Felicia can create ultra-sharp talons out of her gloves with a simple flex. Even without her gloves, Felicia has cybernetic enhancements in her nails, so she’s always packing talons no matter what. Speaking of nails, Felicia can coat her nails with sedatives; even a light brush is enough to knock someone out for an hour. She can launch these nails from her gloves, serving as useful knockout darts, too.

With the right amount of tension, the Black Cat can become a wall-crawler just like the Amazing Spider-Man. Additionally, the claws are electrified, enhancing their cutting capabilities. Naturally, they can also emit electric shocks. If close range isn’t cutting it, Felicia’s gloves can also shoot out livewires to electrocute her foes from a short distance away.

When things are especially dire, Felicia can actually fire her claws off as projectiles, potent from at least a foot away in distance. Unfortunately, she can’t exactly regenerate her claws, so once they’re launched, they’re gone until she re-stocks later. On that note, her claws are susceptible to dulling in extremely cold temperatures, and are also not made of any particular super-metal, meaning they can easily fail to pierce sufficiently tough materials. 

Lenses

Her special contact lenses grant Felicia full on night vision, but also grant her sharpened eyesight in general. With these equipped, Felicia can detect infra-red beams, view the electromagnetic spectrum, and see ultraviolet light, but that’s not all. Felicia’s mask adds to her heightened visual acuity, as it contains motion-sensitive filaments that allow her to detect even someone cloaked from sight and sound.

Oh, and then she got another set of lenses that do the exact same thing. Cool.

Cat Cable

Felicia’s longest-running weapon of choice, the aptly-named cat cable is more than a simple rope. Originally launched via a projectile launcher, the cable has an impressive range, able to extend out a total of 1,000 ft (304.8m). The cat cable used to be stored within Felicia’s fur collar, but eventually, Felicia upgraded the cable to contain a claw-like grapple hook called the Cat’s Claw, in addition to now being launched from her gloves. Actually, Felicia even has some kind of wrist implant that lets her use the cable without a costume at all, ensuring she is never without a weapon.

Even the earliest versions of this cable made use of a “micro-encapsulated long polymer super adhesive”, which is a really long-winded way of saying it can stick to things good. This allows Felicia to swing from the cable so readily and reliably, she has consistently been able to swing through cityscapes alongside Spider-Man on even footing. Aside from traversing large distances, Felicia also regularly utilizes the cable to augment her natural acrobatic skill, letting her enter and flee any locale as she pleases.

With Felicia’s own keen senses and strength, the cable can easily wrap around and catch airborne opponents, bringing them back to earth. Logically, grounded opponents are even more susceptible to being roped up, disarmed, or partially restrained, a tactic Felicia makes ample use of. Speaking of tactics, Felicia very much likes yeeting her opponents after wrapping them in her cable. She can even yeet them to say, a pole, perfect if she’s feeling a bit patriotic. Last but certainly not least, Felicia’s cables can also act as conductive tasers, further amplifying their combat utility. Anyone tagged by these tasers can be traced on a tracking device, to boot. 

The only real downside to the cat cable is the fact that it’s at the end of the day, still just a really fancy, juiced up rope. Sufficient weight or wear and tear on it can lead to it snapping at inopportune moments; rather ironic, for one who weaponizes bad luck.

Blade Whip

During her time as the Queenpin of Crime, Felicia traded her cat cable in for a bladed whip. As you can expect, it cuts pretty good, but it also acts as a taser, too. Despite not having a grapple hook attached, Felicia can still swing around with it… somehow.

Guns

Although firearms are not her weapon of choice, Felicia is still smart enough to carry at least one gun on her most of the time. In serious situations, she’s employed the use of heavier artillery, able to put down superhuman threats in just a few shots.

Explosives

Come in remote-detonated, sticky, and classic flavors.

Flash Grenades

A Solidus fan’s worst nightmare, these heavy-light stun bombs compliment Felicia’s slippery style, allowing her to escape dangerous situations in a… flash.

Smokescreens

On many occasions, Felicia has used a smoke bomb for secure exits from sticky situations, or to reveal hidden lasers. Ha, get it, sticky, like webs, cause Spider-Man…

Knockout Gas Pellets

Felicia has occasionally made use of gas pellets containing knockout gas.

Talon Knives

Basically just small throwing darts. Ideal for knocking weapons out of hands, or for being tucked between fingers to make punching a little more fun.

Narcpatch

By applying this innocuous patch to someone’s neck, Felicia can incapacitate them within seconds with some kind of nerve-based reaction.

Clackers

CLACKER VOLLEY!

Gas Mask

Felicia used a gas mask to protect herself from Mr. Fear, basically a rip-off of that DC guy Mysterio obliterates in a fight. Presumably, this gas mask works like… any other gas mask.

Mini-Crowbar

An obvious tool for any burglar, Felicia used to carry hers within her boots. This choice actually saved her from losing a leg one time. Neat!

Lockpicks

The greatest burglar of all time carries lockpicks, shocker.

Binoculars

They sure are binoculars.

Glass Cutter

I mean, duh.

Motorcycle 

The Black Cat Cycle is more or less an ordinary bike, but it can at least lock in response to Felicia's voice. Cool!

Mirrors

Why dodge lasers when you can strap mirrors to your limbs and deflect them?

Laser-Proof Coat

Why dodge lasers when you can just wear a cool coat?

Laser Pointer

Why dodge lasers when you can use your own?

Freezing Laser

Why use heat-based lasers when you can use a freezing laser? Is it even really a laser at that point???

Scanner

Felicia’s phone contains some kind of high-tech scanner, capable of detecting anomalies like Adamantium.

Torch Blower

It does exactly what you think, probably.

Listening Device

A simple device that lets Felicia eavesdrop in on any sounds in a given area.

Dronesy

Felicia has a small surveillance drone named Dronesy that can levitate and scan its immediate surroundings, transmitting the data to her private caches. If it or Felicia are ever in a pinch, the drone can also act as a flashbang in and of itself to stun pursuers.

Flashlight

It’s a flashlight.

Pixie Dust

She knew a guy who knew a girl who got some pixie dust from Dr. Strange. Supposedly makes you impervious to low-level magic spells. Supposedly.

Teleporter Belt

Felicia once stole a prototype teleporter belt. Much like her cat cable and blade whip, the belt isn’t too shabby when it comes to constricting people, but obviously the main use of the teleport belt is… teleporting. She can either teleport solo, or with a partner, as long as they’re within close range of the belt. While this is obviously not something Felicia consistently uses, she technically never lost the belt, either.

Mind Control Claws

Three diamond-like claws that Felicia wears over her gloves. With a single slash on her target, Felicia can enthrall them, bringing them under her control. These claws seem to operate under some kind of magic, and don’t seem to leave physical wounds upon the afflicted targets. While the upper limits of the claws are unclear, we have seen Felicia enthrall an entire squad of enforcers at once. In order to break the spell that controls her victims, one would need to remove the claws from Felicia, at which point her control over them will instantly cease to be. These claws were destroyed by Hellcat, making their tenure rather short-lived.

Iron Cat

Note: VERY not-standard, but it’s cool, so shut up and hear me out, ‘kay?

Felicia helped herself to Tony Stark’s nanoforge, creating her very own Iron Man armor.  As you’d expect, it can fly, and comes packed with super cool claws capable of slicing up Tony’s modern armor like confetti. However, because it was made in such short order, the Iron Cat lacks vital features like life support, missiles, repulsors, and general quality control. It didn’t last very long - it fell apart after a brief chase & tussle with Iron Man - but Felicia can pilot the suit remotely with a neural transmitter, which is nifty. After it collapsed, Felicia briefly donned a second suit of nearly identical armor while aiding Tony against her crazy evil ex-girlfriend who stole a re-made, fuller version of the Iron Cat suit. Obviously, not something he let her keep, though.

Abilities

Catwoman

Strong Sense of Smell

Though not super extensive, Selina has been shown on occasion to have a strong sense of smell, not unlike that of a cat. For example, she can smell pheromones, and has been shown to be able to recognize the smell of blood.

Superhuman Physical Memory

As mentioned in the skill section, Selina possesses incredible hand-eye coordination and physical memory, allowing her to master a move for life after seeing it just once. This is something that has been backed up on multiple different occasions, and further alluded to later on with her having mentioned that she has picked up a lot of Batman’s fighting techniques, due to having spent a long time fighting him. According to her, it’s harder to predict what will happen when fighting someone new, until she can figure them out, see what works and what doesn’t, but she has shown to be capable of acclimating quickly.

Accelerated Development

One of Selina’s most interesting and unexpected capabilities is that she can fairly consistently make large jumps in both skill and physical ability after brief periods of training, or even individual heists. There are a fair number of statements that actually suggest that she has gotten progressively stronger and faster over the course of her history, almost like some sort of shonen protagonist. This trait was first established during her training at the Armless Master’s dojo, where the other students observed that she regularly made disappearances from the dojo for days at a time - for context, she was going out to steal things - and then every time came back “much more skilled than before.” It is established in this same comic that she can learn a skill for life after seeing it once, which is likely the justification for these large skill jumps within the course of individual thefts, as well as the fact that she came to surpass every student at the dojo within a year.

In the time since, there are various statements of her getting stronger over time; for example at one point she underwent six weeks of training and was stated to have become faster and stronger during that time. On another occasion she trained to the point where she claimed to be faster than she ever had been before, before then getting overwhelmed by a villain named Zeiss, who was superhumanly fast to an extent beyond what she could keep up with. A few issues later, however, she had a rematch with Zeiss and had gotten faster to the point where she could essentially dance circles around him, styling on him and defeating him with relative ease thanks simply to an improved mentality. She also has received some specific buffs over the years, such as getting faster and stronger after touching an Egyptian idol. This is also reflected in her performance against Batman, which was consistently very poor early in her history, but has progressively gotten better and better to the point where she is now clearly portrayed as his equal, if not superior in some regards.

Exceptional Endurance

Another one of Catwoman’s more impressive traits is her nearly superhuman willpower and endurance, which have allowed her to power through a variety of attacks and life-threatening injuries, as well as keep fighting and remain active for much longer time-frames than a normal person would be capable of.

Starting with stamina, she was at one point able to go for over three days with only 15 minutes worth of sleep. Additionally, both the chieftain of the Beti-Ma and Jean-Paul Valley have on separate occasions expressed their belief that Selina could fight them to a stalemate that would last until dawn.

In terms of pain tolerance, Selina has endured various significant injuries, including but not limited to:

• Getting her throat slashed, though the cut isn’t very deep

• Getting slashed in the upper chest

• Being stabbed in the stomach; manages to remain conscious for a little while

• Being stabbed in the left shoulder

• Being stabbed in the right shoulder

• Being stabbed in the left shoulder again

• Being stabbed in the back of the shoulder

• Being stabbed in the hip

• Falling hundreds of feet and stopping suddenly after whipping onto something

• This dislocates her shoulder; she endures the pain of resetting it herself

• Having a bullet surgically removed from her leg

• Falling four stories into a car hard enough to smash the top of it; only has two broken ribs

• Having her heart entirely removed, though is hospitalized

Perhaps most impressively, she was able to fight with extreme radiation sickness, which she said made her feel like her insides are liquefying, which is probably her most impressive pain resistance feat if taken literally. She has also taken a brutal beating from Cyber-C.A.T., and survived a body slam from Killer Croc, managing to remain conscious while Batgirl did not.

Resistances

Fear Toxin

Selina has a fairly long and complex history with Jonathan Crane’s (Scarecrow’s) fear toxin, with varying showings against it ranging from resistance to immunity to susceptibility. In her early years, she was able to somewhat resist the toxin, not by remaining unafraid but by toughing it out. Later she was clearly affected by it, though was able to resist it enough to avoid aneurysms, heart failure, or lethal self-inflicted harm, which occurred for every other exposed victim in this instance. It has been stated that her will to live cannot be shaken by the fear toxin, and she has even willingly injected it into herself in an attempt to develop full-on immunity, which seemed at first to be successful.

However, this was later recontextualized as Scarecrow deliberately intending for her to believe she had overcome his fear toxin, so that he could use it to slowly eat away at her sanity over a long period of time. This was successful, and not only was the toxin able to affect her again later, but its long-term usage against her was able to drive her mad to the point where she believed for a time that she was two people at once. Scarecrow does however comment that it took a lot of effort to break her will, implying she was able to put up resistance against the drugs he used to drive her mad, only overcome by continuous exposure over a very long period.

Once this debacle was over, her most recent showing saw her affected by the fear toxin, but able to ultimately see through the hallucination via figuring out the trick, and her various earlier resistance feats generally indicate that she has at least some degree of resistance via sheer willpower.

Mind Control

Much more rarely than Scarecrow’s toxin, Selina has also been subjected to Poison Ivy’s mental manipulations, which typically operate via pheromones and plant spores. Similar to the fear toxin, Selina has some instances of being affected by it, but in other cases has managed to resist the mind control through willpower. Eventually, Batman injected her with a cure that rendered her immune from Ivy’s mind control, during a point when Ivy had spread her control to the entire planet’s population.

Electricity

Interestingly, Selina has had a fairly consistently difficult time with electrical attacks over the years. Early on, she was rendered comatose and nearly killed via a lightning strike, and later on was knocked out by an electro-shock from the Joker. She was knocked out by a taser, knocked out by electrocution, survived Black Manta’s electrifying ray!... but was knocked out. At one point a taser was able to cause her what I can only assume is complete agony based on the face she was making, and she has been tased and electrocuted numerous times in recent years, even losing one of her nine lives from electrocution, her heart stopped so quickly that she didn’t even realize she had lost a life.

With all this said, she is not completely without defenses or good showings against electrical attacks. At one point she was able to not only survive, but remain conscious after getting blasted by electricity from a state of the art S.T.A.R. Labs robot suit, stated to be decades ahead of other military technology. She has also no-sold being electrocuted by a trap, and most notably stated at one point that her suit is “insanely insulated”, allowing her to survive a Lexbot’s several thousand volts of electricity. Though this property of the suit is arguably not consistent given her other showings of folding to electric shocks, the fact that she at least has several fairly good showings against electricity most likely suggests she can handle it to at least some extent. Though it is worth noting that in all these instances her resistance can likely be attributed to her suit, and an attack that can pierce the suit could thus hypothetically still be effective against her regardless.

Fire / High Temperature

At one point, Holly Robinson Catwoman survives getting blasted by fire and it doesn’t even burn her suit. While other Catwomen like Eiko have explicitly different costumes than Selina does, Holly’s was identical to hers, so they should both share the same properties and resistances.

Ice / Low Temperature

Selina has survived getting frozen solid by Mr. Freeze’s ice gun, though it is worth noting that she would have died from said freezing eventually, had she not been freed by outside forces.

Loud Sounds

Selina has on at least two occasions withstood Black Canary’s Canary Cry without suffering any permanent hearing damage, though in both cases it was damaging and in one of them it was able to incapacitate her briefly. 

Black Cat

*Technically no longer standard

Bad Luck Aura*

After days of experimentation, the Kingpin’s scientists discovered a latent power within Felicia’s genes that, when enhanced by Fisk’s men, brought out Felicia’s infamous bad luck aura. According to Vision, Felicia employs a passive form of probability alteration similar to the Scarlet Witch’s hexes. This ‘hex’ takes the form of an aura surrounding Felicia, perceptible to those with heightened senses, such as those of Puma. The degree to which Felicia can manipulate probabilities is incredibly potent; while affected by her powers, Peter Parker flipped a coin 179 times in a row, and failed to call which side it landed on every single time. 

Perhaps as a side effect of her aura, Felicia can somewhat sense those who try to sneak up on her, as well as sort of anticipate surprise threats, such as lasers appearing; though this application of her power is seldom explored further.

While this sounds ridiculously broken for a character of Felicia’s paygrade, it is worth stressing that her bad luck aura would usually only affect people who are actively attacking her, or who actively threaten Felicia. Additionally, if Felicia is pursued by someone without malicious intent, her powers will seemingly fail to manifest at all. Once this flaw in her power was discovered by The Answer, she was defeated by Spider-Man accidentally falling into her, causing The Answer’s trap to capture both of them. However, most notably, Felicia’s powers don’t activate if someone is merely protecting themselves, and not actually trying to harm her. This is exactly what the Kingpin did to trap Felicia, by raising Cloak’s (the character) cloak only to protect himself from her. 

Furthermore, Felicia’s powers don’t exactly care upon who or what they befall. Thus, if Felicia is fighting someone who has something she needs in their possession, it’s entirely possible she could inadvertently cause said object to fall or break along with the person attacking her. As you might imagine, this doesn’t make her an optimal team-player either. Doubly so, because, as Kingpin would later reveal the truth behind his uncharacteristic generosity toward Felicia, these powers also begin to build up in intensity and persist permanently on anyone who remains in contact with her for prolonged periods of time. In other words, Spider-Man eventually had his own personal aura distorted by simply being around Felicia often, causing him to experience constant bad luck. Or, you know, more than usual, anyway.

Additionally, Felicia’s powers have completely failed to do anything against sufficiently all-powerful forces, such as the time she was flicked away by The Collector, or when Dr. Strange was able to purge every trace of her hex from Spider-Man. Perhaps this is, in part, due to the fact that Felicia never really properly learned to understand or control her bad luck aura in the first place. It is for this reason that Felicia eventually learned not to rely on her powers, as they are, in her words, totally unpredictable.

During the time period in which she had this power, Felicia’s bad luck aura has achieved the following:

• Led to a ceiling randomly collapsing on top of Felicia’s opponents; one of said opponents then happened to get electrocuted 

• Various machinery and guns malfunctioned to prevent attackers from pursuing Felicia

• Caused an attacker to trip and fall on sewer grating

• Caused someone’s weapon to fly out of their hand mid-swing and land on their partner

• Caused a gun to completely dismantle after being fired once; additionally, the bullet led to debris ricocheting into the attacker’s partner, knocking them out. If all that wasn’t enough, the bullet also set off an alarm to alert police

• A police officer randomly swayed into a file cabinet, dropping his firearm after brandishing it against Felicia

• Caused the Blob to fall off-balance; he would later just so happen to run into scalding hot soup while pursuing Felicia, and then to top it off, the ground beneath Blob simply gave way and collapsed

• Caused a goon to trip and knock himself out with his own weapon; simultaneously, another gun exploded in this guy’s hand before he could even pull the trigger

• Threw off Puma’s sense of distance, causing him to over-shoot her while leaping forward; he would then snap the pipe he grabbed onto after whilst trying to slow his momentum

• If that wasn’t enough, the roof beneath Puma then collapsed as well

• Caused the roof beneath Spider-Man to collapse, then forced a water tower to shatter when Spidey approached it 

• Caused a net to shred itself to ribbons before falling on top of Felicia

• Caused a barrage of bullets to either veer off course or crumble to dust before tagging Felicia

• She understandably exploits this one a lot

• Caused a variety of traps to fail, including a gas nozzle, a guillotine, and enclosing walls

• Caused a bunch of goons to slip and trip over each other, defeating themselves 

• Caused another goon to trip and knock himself out 

Cat-Like Senses*

As a side effect of Dr. Strange removing the hex on Spider-Man, Felicia’s powers mutated into something completely different. Instead of possessing a bad luck aura, Felicia gained catlike senses, giving her natural night vision, a heightened sense of smell and balance, and overall increased agility. During this time, Felicia could also sharpen her fingernails into talons at will, and possessed some kind of low-key danger sense.

Yeah, this one didn’t last too long.

Resistances

Mind Control

Whilst possessed by the Venom symbiote, Felicia was able to resist its active mind control to some degree, defying the commands given to her for a time, and even managing to act on her own will eventually. That being said, she was still unable to fully break out on her own, and required the outside aid of Anti-Venom to actually liberate her from the mind control permanently.

Support

Catwoman

Fake-Tailed Cat

Throughout her history but especially prior to the Crisis, Selina has employed a number of cats to aid her strategies in both theft and battle. First up is this weird little fella who, when petted, splits off its fake tail and releases knock out gas.

Red Persian

Next up is her Red Persian, which reappeared more than once, and is established to have “knock out poison” on its claws, which does what it sounds like.

Hecate

One of her more recurring pets is a cat named Hecate, who wears a utility collar that contains a skeleton key and gas capsules. It is very well-trained, and was able to do things like steal a necklace and find her in jail via its unerring animal instinct. 

Lions, Tigers, & Leopards

Selina has access to circus animals which she has employed in her schemes, and is specifically capable of “controlling” lions, tigers and leopards as long as they are raised in captivity. She has been shown to be capable of riding a tiger like a horse.

Rajah the Tiger

Her pet tiger, named Rajah, is incredibly fierce, and well-trained enough to cut her out when she’s tied up by rope. Interestingly, this comic came out in 1966, predating Aladdin by 26 years. So if you thought Selina was referencing Aladdin, guess again!

Twin Ocelots

Selina has a pair of twin ocelots, which don’t do much but “twin ocelots” sounds cool and they look real menacing-like.

Diablo the Panther

Selina has a 400-lb pet panther named Diablo, who’s strong enough to break a metal chain and give Batman a decent wrestling match.

Other Cats

Outside of the more unusual ones that she’s used in actual battle scenarios, Selina has at least 12 cats. 

kitteh

Black Cat

None notable.

Feats

Catwoman

Overall

• Considered Batman’s equal

• Member of Justice League of America, Gotham City Sirens, Suicide Squad

• Broke into and robbed the Louvre

• Bypassed the security of the Justice League’s Watchtower

• Became a noteworthy Gotham City crime boss

• Knocked out three Flashes back-to-back

• Wielded a Purple Lantern Ring as a member of Sinestro’s Injustice League

• Stole Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth and Doctor Fate’s helmet

• Temporarily gained nine lives from Vandal Savage’s meteor and the Egyptian goddess Bastet

• Defeated Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Spoiler, Penguin, Joker, Riddler, Two-Face, Scarecrow, Black Mask, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Deadshot, Wildcat, Firefly, Hush, Punchline, Hellhound, Cat-Man, Trickster, Philo Zeiss, Cyber-C.A.T., Eiko Hasigawa, Cheetah, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, King Scimitar, Santa Claus

• Stated to be the only woman who has ever truly held Bruce’s heart

Strength

Physical/Claws

• Beating up two large guys, and lifting one over her head

• Smashes down a locked door

• Kicks down a door, and beats up multiple armed thugs with her arm in a sling

• Lifting a wooden beam and using it as a lever to move a couch

• Knocking over a large stone statue by applying enough force to break the ropes holding it up

• Knocks over a guy with a giant metal exosuit

• Uses her legs to throw a lion up over her head

• Smashed a guy into the ground hard enough to crack it

• Snares a guy around the neck and throws him into the air with her whip

• Beating up a mummy

• Slams the mummy into a wall hard enough to crack it

• Throws a guy into a door with her whip hard enough to knock it down

• Physically uprooted a large tree (5.77 tons lifting)

• Breaking through a metal chain with her whip

• Throws a guy through a window

• Snaps a rat’s spine with one hand for no reason

• Smashes a guy through a wooden table

• Kicking a wooden door hard enough to knock it down and splinter it

• Rips apart a metal chain, then snaps a second one

• Kicks through a car window

• Smashing through a wooden wall

• Kicking a guy through a window

• Pulling down a helicopter by the tail with a grapple gun

• Holding up a guy’s weight with one hand

• Smashing through a windshield

• Holding up a big guy with her whip with one hand

• [Claws] Easily cuts through bulletproof glass

• [Claws] Swiping a gun in half

• [Claws] Severed a cyborg lady’s metal arm off-panel

Weaponry

• Cat-aclysm grenades cause an earthquake felt across Gotham City (47.7 tons of TNT)

• Explosives are strong enough to blow any safe on earth or erase any wall or fence

• Blowing a large hole through a wall with an explosive

• Blowing up a fence with an explosive

• Has explosives that could potentially flatten a building

Speed

• Moving “swift as a striking puma”

• Her speed is again compared to a puma’s

• Moves with the swiftness of a panther

• Leaping over bullets

• Dodging automatic fire from a tommy gun

• Dodging more bullets

• Backflips into a guy fast enough that he can’t react and fire his gun before she hits him

• Dodging automatic fire

• Dodging point blank gunfire

• Backflipping over automatic fire from multiple sources while surrounded (Mach 4.07)

• Dodging automatic fire from four people at once

• Dodging automatic fire

• Dodging some gunfire with a backflip

• Dodging more gunfire being shot at her through the roof of a car

• Dodging gunfire

• Dodging automatic gunfire

• Jumping between bullets

• Fighting a group of ninjas all at once and dodging numerous shuriken

• Dodging a shotgun blast

• Dodges Cyber-C.A.T.’s missiles and leap-rides the shockwave from their explosion to escape

• Dodging bullets

• Dodging automatic fire from up close

• Ducking a point-blank missile

• Leaps over a sword slash

• Jumping over a shotgun blast

• Dodging several consecutive laser beams from Cyber-C.A.T., including one from point-blank range (65.2% speed of light)

• While she was wearing high-tech armor here, it did not enhance her reaction speed

• Dodging automatic fire by making herself a moving target

• Dodging bullets

• Her bullwhip cracks at 1100 m/s, the speed of sound

• Dodges a dart fired from Scarecrow’s gun

• Dodging a missile (Mach 1.36)

• Dodging automatic fire

• Bullet dodging

• Disappears from a man’s eyesight

• Dodging gatling gun fire

• Aim-dodging laser beams which reflect, among other things

• Outruns an explosion

• Dodging missiles

• Dodging electricity

• Dodging bullets

• Dodging bullets from a gorilla

• Blitzes some guys from across the room and steals all their guns before they can react

• Reacts to a bullet, explicitly while it’s in motion (Mach 1.39 reactions)

• Moving fast enough to create afterimages

• Deflecting bullets with her whip (Mach 1.5)

Durability

• Survives an explosion that destroys part of a building

• Survives a building exploding on top of her (0.098 tons of TNT)

• Diving off the top of a bridge and falling a long distance into the river below

• Survives a four story fall

• Survives falling off a tall skyscraper into water

• A police officer breaks his wrist from punching her in the stomach

• Getting tackled through a bannister

• Survives diving 2 miles underwater

• Taking a brutal beating from Cyber-C.A.T.

• Withstands getting smashed through a solid brick chimney

• Survives a small rubber chicken explosive

• Getting hit harder than she’s ever been hit in her life

• Survives a helicopter crash

• Survives an Exxol truck exploding - her proximity is unclear but she was caught in it to some extent

• Smashed through some wooden crates

• Smashing through a wooden wall

• Smashed into a wooden beam hard enough to break it in half

• Gets knocked through a wall/window

• Getting smashed through wood

• Getting thrown into a chimney by Black Lantern Black Mask hard enough to break off a chunk of it

• Getting smashed into the top of a car hard enough to crumple it

• Getting blasted nearly half a mile into the sky by the metahuman Reach, survives falling back down and stopping suddenly after whipping onto something

• Falls four stories into a car hard enough to smash the top of it, only has two broken ribs

• Smashing through a windshield

• Survives being caught on the fringe of a grenade explosion

• Getting smacked with a large chunk of rubble

Fights

VS Batman

• Knocks out Batman and Robin

• Batman comments that Catwoman is fast as she outruns him

• K.O.’s Batman with a blow to the head

• Hits Batman hard enough to make him grunt in pain

• Knocking Batman out with several surprise punches while he’s off guard. He’s out for a few panels and then regains consciousness, groaning. Her strikes made him bleed. 

• Suggests she’s as fast as Batman

• Suggests that speed is one of her strong suits over Batman

• Bruce comments that she’s always faster than he realizes

• K.O.’s Batman with a surprise pipe to the head

• Kicking Batman in the stomach and making him grunt in pain

• Knocks out Batman with a surprise hit to the back of the head

• Dodging Batman

• Batman comments on her speed and calls her “maddeningly elusive”, though he is holding back because he doesn’t want to hurt her

• Dodging Batman’s Batarangs

• Matching Batman and making him bleed with a punch

• Making Batman bleed with a kick

• Forcing Batman to kneel with her whip and strangling him for a bit

• Her and Batman flawlessly coordinating their attacks

• [Claws] Makes Batman bleed

• [Claws] Makes Batman bleed

• [Claws] Beating on Batman a bit, making him bleed with her claws

• [Claws] Cutting through the chest portion of the Batsuit

• [Claws] Slashing the chest of the Batsuit and drawing blood

• [Claws] Cutting through the Batsuit

• [Claws] Cutting the Batsuit and drawing blood

• [Claws] Cutting through the chest of the Batsuit and making Batman bleed

• [Claws] Slashing Bruce’s face

VS Robin(s)

• Knocks out Batman and Robin

• Clobbering Jason Todd, laying him out with a strike

• Punching Tim Drake

• Beating Tim and getting her whip around his neck

• Tim comments that Batman respects her abilities and he can’t give her a chance to get the better of him

• Outruns Robin while injured

• Keeping up with Nightwing’s speed while commenting that he’s slightly faster than Batman

• Attacking together with Nightwing

• Fighting on par with Tim Drake

• Easily catches Tim by the throat

• Matching Jason Todd, whom she acknowledges as fighting and moving like Bruce

• Fighting Jason Todd

VS Batgirl(s)

• Holding her own against Barbara Gordon

• Barbara says that trying to keep up with Selina is daunting

• Defeats Barbara with difficulty, admitting that she’s “good” and that she doesn’t have any choice but to hurt her

• Beating up Barbara

• Dodging attacks from Stephanie Brown and knocking her out

VS Joker

• Knocks out the Joker with a punch

• Making Joker bleed with a headbutt

• Making Joker bleed with a punch

VS Harley Quinn

• Kicking Harley in the face and making her bleed

• Keeping up with Harley

• Fighting evenly with Harley

• Getting smacked by Harley’s hammer

• Keeps up with an amped Magdalene whom Harley describes as fast

VS Riddler

• Kicking the Riddler in the face

• Disarms Riddler before he can react

• [Claws] Threatens to scratch Riddler’s eyes out

VS Two-Face

• Backhands Two-Face

• K.O.-ing Two-Face

• Dodging Two-Face’s knife stab

• Clocking Two-Face across the face with a shotgun, knocking him out

• Beating on Two-Face a bit

VS Penguin

• Strangles Penguin with her whip and threatens to snap his neck

• Dodging Penguin’s slash

• Kicking the Penguin hard enough to make him bleed

• Penguin questions when she got so fast and she questions when he got so slow

VS Poison Ivy

• Knocking out Poison Ivy with a punch

• Kicking Poison Ivy

• Breaking through Poison Ivy’s roots with her whip

• Beating up Poison Ivy and making her bleed

• Implies she’s faster than Ivy

• Knocking Ivy out with one punch

• Knocking out Ivy with a kick

• [Claws] Slashes through one of Ivy’s roots

• [Claws] Makes an amped Ivy bleed

VS Clayface

• Insinuates she’s fought Clayface multiple times before

• [Claws] Cutting through Clayface

VS Talia Al Ghul

• Contests the claim that Talia Al Ghul is the most dangerous woman alive

• Matching Talia in a sword fight despite only having ever held a sword once or twice before

• Continuing to do so

• Grabbing Talia’s sword by the blade and then kicking her in the face

VS Bane

• Makes Bane cry out in pain with a sneak whip and kick to the back

• Making Bane grunt in pain with a kick

• Outspeeding and dodging Bane

• Dodging an attack from Bane

• Tasing Bane repeatedly with her gloves, causing him pain and stunning him

• [Claws] Cutting through Bane

VS Killer Croc

• Fighting evenly with Killer Croc and wrestling him to the ground, pinning him so that he admits defeat

• Survives a body slam from Killer Croc, remains conscious while Batgirl doesn’t

• [Claws] Carves a message into Croc’s chest with her extendable molecular claws

• [Claws] Makes Killer Croc bleed and gouges out his eyes

VS Katana

• Kicking Katana in the face and making her bleed

VS Black Mask

• Beating up Black Mask and kicking him through a window

• Beating up and stabbing Black Mask

• Fighting Black Mask

VS Deadshot

• Fighting Deadshot

• Catching Deadshot off guard and pinning him down

VS Jean-Paul Valley (Azrael)

• Knees Azbat Suit Jean-Paul Valley in the face, then ties him up with her whip and causes him to remark that her moves are incredible, but then he comments he’s seen enough, breaks her whip and throws her into some barrels

• Grappling with Azbat Jean, scratching his helmet and breaking his grip

• Outruns Azbat Jean

• Trading blows with Azbat Jean

• Keeps up with Azbat Jean, dodging his blows while he dodges hers

• Jean says her reflexes are “every bit the equal of his”

• Jean implies that it will be a stalemate until one of them goes for the kill, and that they could end up in a stalemate until dawn

• Dodges a blast from Azrael

• Landing some hits on Azrael, but then he grabs her by the throat

• Manages to break out of Azrael’s grip

VS Hellhound

• Holds her own against Kai despite his mastery of all martial arts

• Claims Hellhound isn’t as good as her, and notes that she’s had years of practice at this point

• Outfighting and defeating Hellhound

VS Hush

• Beating Hush

• Fighting Hush without gear

VS Cat-Man

• Wrestles physically with Cat-Man and holds him off for minutes

• Kicking Cat-Man into a wall and then beating his ass a bit

VS Wildcat

• Overwhelms Wildcat via better reflexes and keeping him at a distance

• Kneeing Wildcat in the balls and laying him out

• Fighting and beating Ted Grant Wildcat

VS She-Cat

• Fighting evenly with She-Cat

• Fighting on par with She-Cat (again)

VS Huntress

• Beating up Huntress

• Grabbing Huntress by the neck and making her bleed

VS Black Canary

• Keeping up with Black Canary and surviving her Canary Cry

• Shiva suggests that Black Canary would be “so much more of a challenge” than Selina

• Survives Black Canary’s Canary Cry, though is incapacitated by it

• Admits that Black Canary is a better fighter than her, but claims that she is faster

VS Green Arrow

• Grappling with Green Arrow, both of them threaten to strangle the other to death

VS Cheetah

• Fighting Cheetah

• Holding her own against Cheetah while acknowledging that Cheetah has fought Wonder Woman lol

• Strangling Cheetah with her own tail

• Fighting Cheetah again

• Escaping Cheetah’s grip and pinning her

Miscellaneous

• Beats Vicki Vale hand-to-hand

• Snaring Longshadow around the neck before he can react, pulling him in and making him bleed with a kick

• Fighting the Night-Scourge hand to hand, successfully disarms him despite being caught off guard at first, but is subsequently overwhelmed and would have died had Batman not intervened

• Holds her own against Ramon Bracuda a bit, who K.O.’s Robin later in the issue

• Knocks out Selkirk with a punch

• Dodging strikes from Cyber-C.A.T. and holding back her grip

• Strangling the Mask (yes that one)

• Disarming Captain Cold, making him bleed and beating him up

• Snaring Midnight by the neck with her whip

• Slamming Victor Zsasz into the ground hard enough to fracture it

• Dodging cars thrown by Crusader’s telekinesis

• Knocking out Mirror Master

• Makes Vortex bleed with a kick

• Breaking Bone’s legs

• Dodging Zeiss’ knife throw

• Dodging attacks from Bronze Tiger

• Makes Red Claw bleed with a kick

• Holding her own against Headhunter without gear

• Takes down Lady Vic, who is acknowledged in the issue as a rival to Nightwing

• Beating Trickster’s ass

• Omari, chieftain of the Beti-Ma, admits that the two of them are evenly matched when Selina doesn’t have her gear, and that they could fight all night

• Taking down Captain Boomerang

• Defeating Eiko Hasigawa, the third Catwoman

• Beating up Magpie, Signal Man, Amygdala, Gorilla Boss, Ten-Eyed Man, King Snake, Werewolf, Copperhead, and Condiment King alongside Batman

• Beating up Thomas Wayne

• Fighting/beating Punchline

• Makes Black Alice bleed with a kick

• Knocked out Santa Claus

Black Cat

Overall

• Cracked the security codes of a top-secret military base

• Said to be the greatest cat burglar there ever was

• Successfully broke her father out of prison

• Also succeeded in curing her mother of cancer

• Saved the New York stock exchange from a terrorist attack

• Started up her own private investigations business, Cat’s Eye Investigations

• Became the Kingpin of Crime in New York

• Saved Dr. Strange from Knull’s symbiotes

• Resisted magic temptation so strong, Dr. Strange didn’t think it possible for a non-magician to do so

• Stole an island that she now owns for herself and her mom

• Survived being trapped in Limbo with Mary Jane Watson

• Successfully robbed the Kingpin, Dr. Doom’s Latverian Embassy, Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, The Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building, Iron Fist’s Rand Tower, Tony Stark’s Stark Unlimited, and Nick Fury.

• Rizzed up the Goddess of Thieves, Candra

• Defeated Spider-Man, Cobra and Mr. Hyde, Sabertooth, Scorpion, Hydro Man, D’Spayre, Vulture, Scorpia, Lizard, Star-Lord, Silk, Diamondback, Xander the Merciless, Parker Robbins, Mysterio, and her mentor, Black Fox

Strength

Direct

• Knocked over a bunch of tires

• Knocks out some goons

• Kicks a vent grate out

• More goon beatings

• Takes out some more goons whilst dazed and weakened

• Shatters a steel chain holding up a chandelier with a kick

• Damages a wall with a thrust of her arm

• Knocks out six armed guards whilst unarmed herself

• Can swing across the city whilst supporting Spider-Man’s weight

• Broke out of artificial plant roots binding her

• Topples an Egyptian tomb over

• [Claws] Slices apart a steel wire

• Shatters a guard’s helmet with a kick

• Knocks a dude out with a kick

• Shatters out of an air vent before beating some goons up

• [Claws] Sliced a gun in half

• Tosses a big guy around

• Slams a guy into a wall by the leg

• [Claws] Slashes up a bunch of computers and various tech

• [Claws] Slashes a control panel

• Slams a guy into the ground

• Knocks Hydro Man out (in his human form)

• Bloodies a hunter with a kick 

• [Claws] Carves a thick chunk of steel out

• Lifts a large set of dumbbells

• Yeets a guy like a baseball

• Chipped apart armor with a kick

• [Claws] Slashed up a metal helmet

• [Claws] Tore apart armor

• Swatted aside a goon with one hand

• Kicked Venom into an oil tanker truck so hard, it knocked the entire 16 ton vehicle off-balance and shredded the metal on impact (0.018 tons of TNT)

• Shattered a glass window

• Beat up some Limbo demons

• Launched someone through the ceiling of a warehouse with a single punch (Street Level)

• Tossed a man into a thick concrete pillar so hard, it snapped in half (0.0084 Tons of TNT)

Scaling

• [Claws] Slashes Tarantula’s back, then kicks him through a box

• Knocks Scorpion into a water tower with a tackle

• [Claws] Slices apart Scorpion’s costume down the back

• [Claws] Slices open a large gash in a Spider Slayer robot

• [Claws] Rips out another chunk of metal from a Spider Slayer

• [Claws] Hurt Tombstone with a slash

• [Claws] Slice apart Spider-Man’s webbing

• Punches Arcade

• [Claws] Slashes a Doombot

• Draws blood from Man-Ape with a kick (in tandem with Tarantula)

• [Claws] Kills a Skrull

• Keeps up with Satana

• Kicks Hawkeye from behind

• Beats Star-Lord in fisticuffs

• Chokes Howard the Duck 

• Beats up some goblin-ified goons

• [Claws] Slices up Venom!Deadpool

• Dazes Jubilee with a headbutt

• [Claws] Slashes an amped Diamondback

• Hurts Mysterio with a knee to the gut

• Knocks Mysterio out with a baseball bat

• Kicks Mysterio away

• Knocks Xander the Merciless out with a punch

• Trades blows with and knocks out Queen Cat

Speed

Direct

• Dodged a bullet from up close

• Outsped falling debris to save someone

• Dodged hidden lasers suddenly popping out

• Evaded multiple trucks charging toward her

• Dodged a crossbow arrow

• Appeared in front of someone in-tandem with lightning

• Possibly outran a grenade explosion

• Ducked away from gunfire

• Vanished from a room in seconds

• Kept pace in dodging gunfire with Daredevil

• Dodged lasers with Daredevil

• Evaded being tagged by laser blasters

• Saved Spider-Man from a big ‘ol death laser

• Moved in-tandem with gunfire whilst dodging (Mach 1)

Scaling

• Caught the Hobgoblin mid-flight with her cat cable

• Evaded Mr. Fantastic trying to catch her

• Dodged attacks from Blob

• Kept up with (a very early) Sabertooth

• Intercepted Scorpion mid-lunge

• Dodged Scorpion’s tail sting

• Dodged a kick from Tarantula

• Evaded a blast of water from Hydro Man

• Caught a bug that Spider-Man couldn’t

• Dodged beams and swipes from Spider Slayer bots

• Dodged Shriek’s blasts multiple times

• Dodged Carnage’s tendrils

• Kept up with Tombstone

• Dodged Spider-Man’s web shot

• Kept up with Paladin

• Kept up with Spider-Man

• Dodged Eel’s electricity

• Dodged Electro’s electricity (possibly influenced by bad luck)

• Kept up with Star-Lord

• Impressed Silk with her speed, and kept up with her in combat multiple times

• Felicia claims to be faster than Silk

• Outsped Spider-Man’s Venom Blast

• Kept up with Venom

• Kept up with a Kraven Bot

• Kraven bots are faster than the actual Kraven

• Dodged a repulsor blast from an Iron Man suit

• Dodged that same Iron Man suit charging at her 

• Did it again with a more familiar looking Stark suit 

• Outsped a Frost Giant’s swing

Durability

• Took a beating from an assassin while depowered

• Got caught in the debris of her own explosion

• Survived being caught in a collapsed building

• She appeared to be perfectly fine afterward

• Knocked out by some random dude with a trash can lid

• Shot by a crossbow arrow

• Survived being impaled by Wolverine’s bone claws

• Quickly recovers from being zapped by 300 volts of electricity

• Was tased by this guy

• Withstood a large fall from a tree into a lake

• Shook off being thrown into a chimney so hard, it lightly cratered upon impact

• Was fine after being launched clean through a warehouse wall

• Got shot multiple times by Diamondback, and was still able to fight back after

• Briefly KO’d, but mostly fine when a giant symbiote dragon crashed into her

Fights

Black Cat’s scaling is tricky. On a surface level look, she has technically taken hits from both Spider-Men and Spider-Man rogues, but simply listing these instances without context isn’t very helpful (hence their omission from the durability section above). For this section, we’ll cover every notable fight Felicia has had*, summarizing the context surrounding them.

*against relevant characters

VS Spider-Man

Frankly, almost every single encounter Spidey has had with Felicia as a combatant has been a one-sided affair; he has never actually tried to harm her. She has attacked him with malicious intent, though. Here are the highlights.

• While being emotionally manipulated by D’Spayre, Felicia slashed Spidey up with her claws. D’Spayre also manipulated Spider-Man into completely giving up; in this context, Ben Reilly considered Felicia capable of killing Peter. Note how the panel emphasizes Felicia’s talons here.

• Superior Spider-Man knocks a tooth out from Felicia with a single punch, sending her flying. Otto is specifically not trying to kill her here, and he completely bodies her in combat.

• Felicia slashed Spidey with her blade whip.

• Felicia slashed Spidey with her claws, ripping his costume apart.

• Felicia kicks Spidey, then forces him to catch a falling artifact so she can escape.

• Not a fight scene, but Peter acknowledges that in their dynamic, he is the muscle of the pair.

Felicia has never done notable damage to Peter with her raw physicals. Stated above, he’s also never actually tried to harm her seriously, either; not even when Superior Spider-Man brutalized her. Felicia does genuinely hurt Spider-Man with her claws and blade whip, however; indicative of her weaponry being able to harm people she otherwise can’t do serious damage to by simply punching or kicking. Overall, there’s no actual reason to believe Felicia is on Peter’s level physically, as evidenced by his own acknowledgement as being the stronger of the two.

VS Doc Ock

• Felicia is constricted by Ock.

• She remains ensnared, until Otto willingly lets her go.

• Felicia leaps atop Otto, scratching his face. Spider-Man says she is out of her league against Otto, and she gets yeeted by Otto right on cue.

• Felicia tries to run from Otto, but he captures her with his arms again.

• She remains captured and constricted by Otto’s tentacle the majority of this story.

• Otto knocks Felicia out with a slap from his tentacle.

• Felicia recovers after a fight occurs, but ends up captured yet again.

• Otto begins to thrash Felicia around against surrounding walls.

• The encounter concludes with Otto’s defeat at Spidey’s hands.

It should be fairly inarguable that Felicia stood basically no chance against Otto here, as Spider-Man himself states. He constantly overpowers her, easily knocks her out, and his tentacles outspeed her too.

VS Puma

• Prior to this fight, Puma dislocated Symbiote!Spidey’s arm with a projectile.

• Felicia flies in with a dropkick on Puma, knocking him back, but he quickly recovers his balance. He also outspeeds her.

• Felicia’s bad luck aura causes Puma to miss his attacks on her.

• Much later, Felicia kicks Puma in the jaw.

• She pounces on him, but he pushes her off. He ultimately talks her out of backsliding back into her old ways without fighting.

Felicia has landed hits on Puma, but never to the degree that he seems particularly hurt or even inconvenienced by it, frankly. She has also never been hit by him, so nothing here particularly helps Felicia in terms of scaling.

VS Sabertooth

• Felicia kicks Sabertooth from behind.

• Felicia claws open Sabretooth’s wounds; she kicks him, but feels like she broke her foot from the impact. She barely dodges a punch from him, noting how inhumanly fast he is, but she does better on the subsequent swing.

• Felicia tosses Sabretooth onto a car and barely dodges another swing.

• Felicia cuts Sabretooth in his wounded face again, then he tackles her to the ground.

• Felicia’s equipment (the lockpicks and mini crowbar) stop Sabretooth from biting her leg off. She pushes “beyond her limits” and tackles Sabretooth to the ground.

• Felicia smashes Sabretooth’s face into the ground over and over, definitively winning the fight.

A very straightforward, but hard-fought victory. That said, there is something important to note here with regards to scaling. This appearance predates much of Sabertooth’s more contemporary identity. He had yet to even meet Wolverine at the time of this publication, and the abilities he would gain later on contradict his showings VS Felicia here (namely, the lack of a healing factor, which allowed Felicia to exploit his wounded face multiple times). As such, scaling her to Sabertooth with his future achievements at face value may be questionable.

VS Kingpin

• Felicia fights one of Kingpin’s men; he then grabs her from behind.

• Kingpin is shown restraining Felicia by both arms, threatening to rip her limbs off.

• After this encounter, Felicia is rescued by Spider-Man, but incapacitated.

Very straightforward, really not a fight at all. Fisk just overpowers her blatantly and she is unable to do anything to break his vice grip on her.

VS Venom

• Felicia initiates the fight by kicking Venom into a wall.

• She manages to evade his webbing, and sends a chandelier crashing down on him. This does absolutely nothing but piss him off. Venom slams her into a wall.

• This breaks Felicia’s nose, leaving her completely shaken and defeated.

• Spider-Man states that even with her powers, Felicia wouldn’t stand a chance against Venom.

• Felicia later attacks Venom from behind with a slam kick.

• She manages to dodge Venom’s attacks, and then kicks Venom into a truck that conveniently explodes.

• Even after being caught in an explosion, Venom restrains and overpowers Felicia, then lets her go.

Spidey said it best. Felicia clearly stands no real chance against Venom in a contest of strength, though she can at least keep up with him in speed.

VS Carnage

• Felicia slashes at Carnage’s chest while Spider-Man kicks him at the same time.

• After that encounter, Felicia states that “nobody can beat Carnage”, and that she was completely overwhelmed fighting alongside Peter against Carnage and his allies. 

• Felicia eventually shows up again anyway, kicking Carnage from behind. This is after Peter and Venom had been tag-teaming Carnage for a while.

• Later on, Felicia reiterates that Carnage is too strong and too fast for her.

This time by her own admission, Felicia is clearly outgunned here. Her slash did the most notable damage, which is consistent with her claws cutting above her physical paygrade, but even then it was a tag-team attack, and Carnage was not put down by it in the least. She has otherwise failed to damage him substantially any other way and has continuously viewed fighting him as a fruitless endeavor.

VS Vulture

• Vulture flies directly into Felicia.

• Vulture drags Felicia through a building, then drops her.

• Felicia slashes Vulture’s chest open, ripping through his suit multiple times.

• Vulture states that his suit ups his strength at the moment “by 500%”, and he threatens to punch a hole through her. She defeats him by making him crash into a billboard.

Felicia never actually gets punched by Vulture, so his claim isn’t a factor here. Her claws do clearly rip into him, and she took being charged into by him just fine. This is one of her better showings, but Vulture’s more consistently on the level of someone like Daredevil physically, evidenced by the fact that he needs a new power up or suit every week to try and match Spider-Man.

VS Lizard

• Felicia happens to kick Lizard back, but this encounter ends here.

• Later on, the two face off again in a brutal back-and-forth. She slashes Lizard up, forcing Peter to intervene. In this encounter, Felicia forces Lizard to flee.

• Before this story is resolved, Felicia tosses Lizard into a tree, knocking him out. However, Puma notes that Lizard had already been fighting Vermin for a while before then.

There is some very important context here. During this story, Felicia and Lizard - among other animal-based characters - were being affected by the Prime Asteroid. This meteorite gives off radiation that reverses the evolutionary process. The first human who encountered it turned into a dino-lizard man, strong enough to throw hands with Peter donning the Iron Spider. This is the same devolutionary effect Felicia was under when she fought Lizard; evidenced in the dialogue after their fight, wherein Felicia ponders why she feels so angry, and notes that she “couldn’t stop”. In short, this isn’t a very applicable instance of scaling for Felicia, given she was clearly affected by the Prime Asteroid altering her physicality and mentality to a degree beyond her usual pedigree.

VS Electro

• Felicia backs up Peter against many of his greatest foes.

• She is quickly dispatched by Electro shocking her, which takes her out for the rest of the fight.

Very self-explanatory here. Felicia was, in fairness, taken off-guard by Electro, but the results speak for themselves. While Spider-Man fought like half of his entire history of rogues at once, Felicia couldn’t take a single direct hit without being incapacitated.

VS Scorpion

• Felicia intercepts a lunging Scorpion and punches him 

• Off-screen, Scorpion overpowers her presumably, and continues to attack Spidey

• Felicia intercepts Scorpion again, knocking him into a water tank

• Said attack seems to barely phase Scorpion, if at all

• Spidey admits to being “totally” outclassed by Scorpion; Felicia dodges his tail strike

• Felicia’s claws slice up his back armor and wires

• In the following issue, Felicia admits Scorpion is “big time”, and recognizes she has to attack from behind. His tail is too strong for her, and overpowers her grasp on it

• Scorpion, along with Whiplash and Bloodlust, completely fucking destroy Felicia off-screen

There are no particularly noteworthy circumstances that discount the very obvious admittance from Felicia herself that Scorpion is a tier above her. Her claws are more than capable of slashing his armor, but her physical tackles, as well as her own lifting strength, come up short against Scorpion. At the very least, she continues to prove quite speedy, able to dodge his stinger and keep up with him in general combat.

VS Rhino

• Prior to this encounter, Rhino was “drunk as a skunk”.

• Felicia briefly restrains Rhino’s arms with her cat cable, then kicks him in the face.

• She dodges Rhino’s punch.

• After Felicia manages to talk Rhino down, Puma states that there’s no way the two of them combined could’ve defeated him in a fight.

Rhino is barely inconvenienced by Felicia’s interference, evidenced by the complete lack of substantial damage done to him. Furthermore, Puma reiterates how little of a chance she stands in an actual fight against Rhino; and Felicia herself talked him down for a reason. She is definitively not throwing hands with this man.

VS Paladin

• While very reasonably angered, Felicia slashes Paladin in the face. He then blocks her kick, getting the upper hand on her; this encounter is stopped by Shang Chi.

• Paladin kicks Felicia away. Not much more to it.

There is an apparent gap in combat skill, but Paladin’s hits don’t really drastically overpower Felicia. These exchanges are ultimately too brief to glean much information from.

VS Captain America

• In the midst of a fight between Paladin, Captain America and the Heroes for Hire, Captain America throws his shield, accidentally hitting Felicia with it. 

• This results in Felicia being cleanly KO’d for the rest of the fight.

Not a very convincing showing for Felicia’s endurance.

VS Taskmaster & Black Ant

• Felicia is hit in the head from behind by Black Ant, catching her off-guard.

• Felicia admits she would have a hard time with just one of the two; both Ant and Taskmaster dodge her lunge. Taskmaster counters with a blow to her head, and Felicia responds with a kick that Taskmaster dodges. Black Ant then punches her to the floor.

• She continues to take hits from both, and is forced to try to flee the fight.

• Felicia is KO’d when Taskmaster throws his shield at her head.

Given the 2v1 nature of the fight, Felicia held up reasonably well against both physically. She would likely fare much better in a 1v1 against either, but by her own admission, it would still be a hard fight. Scaling to either physically (individually) is likely fine, but her limits are very clear.

VS Hellcat

• Hellcat initiates the fight, pouncing on Felicia. The two struggle with each other physically for a bit.

• Hellcat tosses Felicia into a wall, knocking her out.

Very clear loss for Felicia, given she’s swiftly defeated and only very briefly struggled against Hellcat physically.

VS Silk

• In their first encounter, Silk is “outta gas” and sapped of her strength from a previous fight. Silk dodges Felicia’s first hit, then Felicia catches Silk with a kick, and yeets her with her blade whip.

• Felicia then says that Silk is “almost” as fast as she is after the first fight.

• In their second encounter, Silk is first blasted by sound waves that nearly take her out on their own. Felicia lands some punches on Silk, knocking her down. After this, Silk is kidnapped by someone else. Notably, Silk recalls being taken after Felicia punched her, so she was likely not actually knocked out by Felicia either.

• In their third encounter, Felicia dodges a swipe from Silk, and kicks Silk out of a window. Silk lands a big hit on Felicia, and she says after that she’s “running out of gas”. Silk continues the fight, but Felicia drops the beef and limps away.

• In their fourth encounter, Silk is Goblin-ified by the goblin serum. Felicia kicks Silk out of a window, then catches her on her whip and yeets her inside. Felicia says the goblin serum made Silk stronger, but slower; and Felicia evades Silk’s punches. Finally, Felicia restrains Silk in her whip long enough to inject the antidote into Silk, reverting her back.

• In their final encounter, Felicia lands multiple blows on Silk. Silk dodges Felicia’s next two moves, but Felicia counter-hits after Silk misses a punch. Felicia manages to choke Silk with a belt, then continues to beat on Silk so much, she gives her a black eye. Silk is physically defeated here definitively.

It’s important to note that, when Silk was introduced, Spider-Man stated that she was faster than him, but he was stronger than her. One example of Silk “not pulling her punches” is when she attacked Mockingbird, a peak-human character with no superpowers. Mockingbird was bruised, but very much alive, obviously. With this in mind, Felicia’s showings against Silk are certainly impressive. She has always been able to keep up with Silk, even claiming to be faster than her. Felicia was, however, injured enough to back off when Silk landed her cleanest, strongest hit on Felicia thus far. Their last encounter is a definitive win for Felicia.

Summary

All in all, Felicia is definitely not physically on the level of Spider-Man. She has never displayed feats of physicality on his level, nor has she performed well against foes on his level without the use of specific weaponry. To her credit, Felicia’s claws and blade whip do have legitimately impressive showings, and are more than capable of harming or even killing Spider-Man level characters, provided their flesh is exposed. Felicia is most consistently on the level of peak human/enhanced human characters like Hawkeye, Daredevil, Taskmaster, Moon Knight, Mysterio, Paladin, and Star-Lord; save perhaps one notable outlier. 

Silk is certainly Felicia’s most impressive victory ever, and even if Spider-Man was definitively stronger than her at the time, it should still represent the absolute highest possible ceiling for Felicia to possibly scale to. Otherwise, Felicia is mostly a standard street tier character, with some bad showings and some that strike above her batting average, evening out more or less.

As far as speed goes, it’s arguably Felicia’s strongest suit by far. She has dodged and kept up with characters on the level of Spider-Man, or even faster than him, such as Venom and Silk. She no doubt scales well above the plethora of street tier speed feats performed by the likes of Daredevil, Wolverine, Deadpool, Beast, etc. and certainly scales to feats performed by Spider-Man himself.

Scaling

Catwoman

Bat Family

Catwoman has kept up with various members of the Bat Family, most prominently Batman but also four out of five of the Robins, two out of three Batgirls, and Jean-Paul Valley. While she definitely would lose in a fight in most circumstances against the most impressive members like Cassandra Cain and Azrael, in a broad scope she compares to the majority of the Bat Family, physically speaking.

• Batman:

• Survived an explosion that cratered a portion of a city from a short distance away (6.7 kilotons of TNT)

• In early Earth-2 comics, has several hyperbolic statements of moving at the speed of light (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Dodges lasers after they are activated, which are stated to be light on the next page and conform to laser standards

• Dodges light beams from Doctor Light and Malik (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Dodges natural lightning called down from the sky

• Stated to move “with the swiftness of chain lightning” and “react with lightning speed” (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Survives an explosion that destroys part of a bridge

• Survives various building-sized explosions

• Survives falling from orbit (because he’s Batman)

• Withstands being blasted by Quakemaster’s Jackhammer gun, which could produce an earthquake strong enough to shake all of Gotham (847.9 tons of TNT)

• Tim Drake survives an explosion that destroys a warehouse

• Cassandra Cain:

• Dodges a sniper bullet from centimeters away

• Dodges a blast of electricity (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Has several instances (1, 2, 3) that could be interpreted as moving FTE relative to other Bat Family members (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Stephanie Brown has:

• Dodged Livewire’s lightning blasts (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Potentially survived an explosion that could have cratered a city block (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Azrael is fast enough to cut through multiple lasers at once (2.33 times FTL)

Gotham City Rogues

While there are some exceptions, Catwoman has tussled with numerous Batman rogues over the years, from the Joker and Harley to Scarecrow to Ivy to Clayface to Bane and more, harming many of the strongest ones with her claws and physically having contended with or defeated many others. Those that she hasn’t defeated, such as Mister Freeze, she can oftentimes still scale to through Batman.

There are a couple exceptions to this, however. Poison Ivy’s dendro-kinesis is beyond most Batman rogues (and Batman himself) in power, having feats like growing plants on a city wide scale, or large enough to lift skyscrapers. This power is achieved through her “talking” to the plants via the Green rather than any normal method that could scale physically for any reason, varies depending on the size of the plant she is communicating with at any given time, and is acknowledged in-universe to be exceptionally powerful relative to other characters.

Similarly, there are lesser known Batman villains such as Doctor Phosphorus that have other great feats, such as creating a bunch of explosive gems which he intended to detonate and turn Gotham into a volcano. His daughter Tinderbox also suggests that she may be capable of replicating this with her own powers. However, not only does the process of doing it via gems make it questionable whether it scales to his own output, but Doctor Phosphorus’ natural radiation is strong enough to melt street tiers like Man-Bat upon contact, with Man-Bat himself already being physically superior to Batman. Given that his aura alone is capable of something like that, Selina should not scale to him.

That said, while it obviously operates on a case by case basis, the majority of notable Batman rogues are not in any way beyond Catwoman’s capability, and she should scale to most of them.

• Joker survives a helicopter explosion

• Harley Quinn survives being dragged into the sky by Power Girl with enough force to split a cloud

• Mister Freeze has survived the explosion of his own freeze gun, which can produce massive blocks and formations of ice (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Clayface was able to survive atmospheric reentry, using his body to block the explosion upon impact (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Poison Ivy has grown massive plants on a wide scale, including ones large and strong enough to lift skyscrapers (Inapplicable)

• Bane’s Venom is derived from the drug Miraclo, which is allegedly stated to grant the user FTL speed (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Doctor Phosphorus creates crystals capable of detonating with enough power to transform Gotham into a volcano (Inapplicable)

• Black Wind supposedly creates a storm large enough to extend to the horizon (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Firefly survives an explosion that engulfs a large area and creates a crater

• Philo Zeiss is enhanced to the point of seeing other street tiers in slow motion

Black Canary

Catwoman has fought and kept up with Black Canary several times, and fought alongside her and the rest of the Birds of Prey. Though Selina has admitted that Dinah is a more skilled fighter than she is, something that Lady Shiva has also implied, she has conversely claimed to be faster. With this in mind, Selina should scale slightly above any of Dinah’s speed feats.

It should be noted that while Selina has technically survived the Canary Cry, she has always been taken out by it and simply not killed outright, and Dinah can control the Cry’s output to avoid killing people. Sound also doesn’t operate in the same way as energy, so trying to scale Selina to the Cry as though surviving it is a “normal” durability feat would be misrepresenting how loud sounds function.

• Strikes Wonder Woman within the span of a nanosecond (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Dodges a light beam from the black diamond (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Scales to Lady Shiva, who has kept up with Richard Dragon, who dodged a laser beam right before their fight (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

Deathstroke

While Catwoman has not personally fought Deathstroke, she has consistently proven a rival or equal to Batman and many other members of the Bat Family, who have matched him plenty of times.

• Withstands a nuclear submarine getting dropped on him and then exploding (43.2 tons of TNT)

• Withstands blasts from Gunfire, who would later go on to punch a hole from the Earth’s core to the bottom of the ocean with his energy manipulation (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Keeps up with Katana’s sword swings, which are fast enough to deflect laser beams (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Reacts and moves within the span of a nanosecond (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

Adam Strange

Adam Strange is a lesser-known DC superhero whose capabilities are more sci-fi than your average Batman character. However, he has been shown to struggle with thugs in Gotham, while conversely Batman is capable of defeating Strange’s typical rogues. With this in mind, Batman and by extension Selina might be physically comparable or superior to Strange’s feats. (Debatable, see Before the Verdict)

• Withstands being blasted toward the sun at high speed on a large chunk of rock, enduring the acceleration force imparted onto his body (62.9 kilotons of TNT) 

• Comparable in speed to his wife Alanna, who reacts to and dodges a beam stated on the same page to be near-lightspeed (62% speed of light)

Black Cat

Spider-People

As discussed previously, there is no sufficient evidence to prove that Felicia can replicate the feats of strength performed by characters on Spider-Man’s level. That being said, she is consistently fast enough to keep pace with or outright outspeed Spider-men, women, and symbiotes; furthermore, Felicia’s claws can do serious damage to Parker, making his feats of durability relevant for scaling as a benchmark for the types of things Felicia can likely tear through.

• Spider-Man was stated to be faster than microwave ‘blasts’

• Spider-Man managed to avoid and eventually dodge Lightmaster’s solid light beams, albeit inconsistently

• Superior Spider-Man could similarly avoid Lightmaster’s beams, albeit he was eventually tagged

• Spider-Man claimed that Nightcrawler could not match his speed and agility, which Kurt seems to substantiate

• Spider-Man narrowly kept up with Dazzler, who can move at the speed of light (notably, a speed Spider-Man himself is stated to be incapable of reaching)

• An inexperienced Venom once claimed that Spider-Man moved in slow motion to him

• Shortly after her introduction, Spider-Man directly admitted Silk was faster than him

• Silk dodged Electro’s electricity thanks to “hyper spider-speed”

• Electro stated that Silk was too fast for him, and confirmed that she is faster than lightning

Avengers

Felicia is generally comparable to peak-human characters in terms of physicality, such as Taskmaster. Her brief encounters with Moon Knight and Hawkeye suggest she’s roughly on their level. Furthermore, she is no doubt fast enough to scale to characters like Captain America and Black Panther based on her showings against even faster characters, ie Spider-Man. 

• Moon Knight avoided lasers from the Master of Illumination, & reacted fast enough to deflect one of them (44.2% Speed of Light)

• Hawkeye & Black Panther react to a falling girder within a microsecond (Mach 9029)

• Captain America raised his shield at the speed of light (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Without the Super Soldier Serum, Steve Rogers withstood the blast impact of an explosion from afar (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

X-Men

Multiple X-Men exist within the lower echelon of Marvel’s power hierarchy. While Felicia may not have directly fought the following characters, their capabilities are generally comparable to characters Felicia has matched or surpassed in combat.

• Cyclops can redirect his beam within a nanosecond (3.3x FTL)

• Beast claimed to have acted within the timespan of mere nanoseconds (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Wolverine withstood being blasted by 240k mega-therms (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Wolverine endured blasts from the Black Shadow, a mutant superpower that can annihilate entire city blocks (140.74 - 465.6 tons of TNT)

• Wolverine avoided, dodged & intercepted Cyclop’s beams, which move at the speed of light (1.49x FTL)

• Wolverine knocked down Domina, who claimed to be strong enough to move mountains (1.6 kilotons of TNT)

Deadpool

The one, the only, the savior of Marvel’s lower end stats (or so he’d want you to believe). Felicia’s claws have harmed Wade directly in the past, and her ability to keep up with Taskmaster in a fight suggests she could likely compare to Wade in physical endurance as well. As the verse’s designated punching bag, Deadpool has the privilege of enduring quite a lot of abuse without any real risk of, you know, dying.

• Survived being blasted by a satellite laser

• Got blasted into a plane by an explosion 

• Withstood being punched so hard, the impact caused an island-sized explosion (182.1 - 849.6 tons of TNT)

• Got blasted by another big ass explosion

Miscellaneous Scaling

• The Punisher withstood being blasted by Shocker, whose gauntlets can create 10-mile long earthquakes (924.007 tons of TNT)

• Johnny Blaze (the normal guy, not Ghost Rider) dodged a beam of light 

• Daredevil noticed a nanosecond-long pause in a frequency loop (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

• Daredevil, while amped, sensed U.S. Agent’s combat speed in slow motion

• In one possible future, Luke Cage survived the physical force of a nuclear explosion (Inapplicable; see Before the Verdict)

Weaknesses

Catwoman

Though intelligent and cunning, Selina can also be impulsive and hotblooded, allowing her adrenaline junkie nature to control her decision-making. The same can be said for her attraction to Batman; if she sees something she wants she’ll go for it, consequences be damned. She’s also got issues with attachment and a fear of becoming reliant on others.

In terms of physical weaknesses, she doesn’t have a lot of super hindering ones, though as a fighter she’s overall more focused on speed than strength and will thus sometimes struggle with foes faster than her. Compounding this, she lacks any particularly special durability and her suit is designed for stealth, flexibility, and agility rather than protection, and so doesn’t offer much in the way of physical resilience to damage. Because of this, if she is stabbed or shot in a vital area it will typically be life threatening. Though it is worth noting that she has survived fairly severe injuries on plenty of occasions.

she also don’t get ate out

Black Cat

On the surface, having probability manipulation seems like it would be drastically overpowered for an ordinary human like Felicia. And, well, it is… when it actually works properly. Throughout the years, whether by magical or technological means, Felicia’s bad luck abilities have always come with a laundry list of shortcomings and loopholes. 

For starters, Felicia’s original bad luck aura could be completely nullified by similar abilities with greater control, such as Wanda Maximoff’s probability manipulation, or “good luck” powers. At the time, her power also acted as a reactionary defensive measure, and therefore could be beaten by an opponent only acting in pure self-defense, without actually aiming to harm her outwardly. It also could not detect hidden traps or gadgets she herself wasn’t already aware of, proving to be an imperfect defense.

Later on, after gaining the QPP, Felicia traded in one set of weaknesses and shortcomings for another. Firstly, as these powers are technologically based, the QPP is prone to remote deactivation and malfunction. With the QPP, Felicia’s perfect defenses become markedly worse; they have regularly, very consistently and frequently failed to activate in fights and skirmishes. By her own admission, Felicia cannot rely on her own powers in a pinch, as they are erratic and unreliable. This can be seen countless times, where Felicia’s quantum-rig powers have failed to kick in to aid her in a fight, or failed to save her from being tagged/defeated in combat. 

It is unfortunate, then, that Felicia, the thrill-seeker that she is, still can’t help but go into fights with caution thrown to the wind. She prefers to take big shots whenever possible, and simply hopes it’ll work out. In fairness, it usually does, but this has led to Felicia developing a bit of a chip on her shoulder, further feeding into her reckless and overconfident nature. She will often not think her strategies in a fight through, and, combined with her opportunistic attitude, means she also scarcely hesitates to grab stuff she really shouldn’t be grabbing. All in all, it makes sense that Felicia herself would admit to not being a great fighter. She is, after all, the world’s greatest cat burglar… not so much its greatest martial artist.

Before the Verdict

Catwoman

DC Nanosecond Statements

Black Canary and Deathstroke both have “nanosecond” timing feats that run into some issues, which we will discuss in much greater detail in the verdict itself. Black Canary’s feat is first-person narration from her rather than omniscient narration, thus even more prone to hyperbole and figure of speech than external narration would be. Deathstroke’s feat, similarly, is character narration rather than omniscient, and gauging the distance he moves from the panels is basically impossible anyway. Both are very weak and far more likely hyperbole than anything else.

Earth-2 Lightspeed Statements

There are a couple narration statements in Earth-2 that various characters move at lightspeed. Batman has one in his first appearance, as well as one later while he is directly fighting Selina. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the narration in these comics is extremely flowery and hyperbolic. For instance, in the first issue, the same one with the first lightspeed statement, Batman is described as a “human avalanche” and “an avenging black cloud” and on the page with the lightspeed statement, there’s a narration box that describes Joker “exploding a haymaker off the Batman’s jaw.” Hell, Selina’s random mooks have a similar lightspeed statement in these comics, so unless Random DC Burglar Man is lightspeed, it’s clearly a simple case of classic comic hyperbole.

Stephanie Brown’s Town Level Feat

There’s a feat from Batgirls issue 6 where the villain has an explosive capable of cratering a city block. Stephanie Brown takes the bomb and drives it off of a pier, at which point the car seemingly explodes with her inside of it. Initially, it seems as though she dies, but then it’s revealed that she’s actually okay and her friends are actually upset about the car being destroyed. Based on the city block statement, this has been calc’d as a town level durability feat.

However, I would say it’s fairly obvious that the intention is that she just escaped the car before the bomb went off, even if we don’t explicitly see her get out. The implication is that the bomb would have killed her, which is the whole reason why the subversion with the car works, because the reader is expected to understand that Steph would have died from the explosion, were she actually caught in it. We also don’t see her in the car when the bomb detonates, just right beforehand, and afterward she has no injuries except for one band-aid on her face that could easily be attributed to other factors. It’s simply far more likely that she got out than remained completely unharmed by a nuke level explosion.

Black Wind’s Storm Feat

There’s a character named Black Wind who supposedly creates a storm that extends to the horizon with his wind manipulation, which has been calc’d to large town level and argued to scale based on the fact that he can amp his strength and speed with his powers.

There are a couple issues with this; first of all the assumption that he can amp his physicality to the same extent as his wind manipulation is pretty baseless. The fact that he has both of those applications doesn’t make them equally potent, this isn’t Dragon Ball. More importantly though he does not create a horizon-length storm, just doesn’t happen. The black clouds were actually created by a bottle of Doctor Death’s poison, and had already come to cover the sky before Black Wind did anything with his wind. All Black Wind does is control the poison cloud on a localized scale, funneling it with his wind to keep it contained. Even just the effort of doing this much causes Black Wind’s powers to go out of control and kill him, and notably the dark clouds remain in the sky after he dies. The storm doesn’t even extend to the horizon, the horizon is obscured. So yeah, bad feat bad calc bad scaling.

Quakemaster’s Jackhammer Gun

This feat is actually legitimate, albeit a tad inflated. Basically there’s a very minor villain named Quakemaster who uses a weapon called the jackhammer gun to produce earthquakes across Gotham City, with the intention of destroying buildings throughout the city - Quakemaster was an architect whose buildings were faulty, so he wanted to prove that other people’s buildings were faulty too. Later in the issue, he blasts Batman with the jackhammer gun and Batman withstands its power. Worth noting, the handbook suggests that the jackhammer gun has a similar effect on people as it does on concrete, and would turn a normal person’s bones to dust, which is good support for the feat of Batman tanking it being impressive.

There is one key issue here though. Although the earthquake reached the suburbs, and Commissioner Gordon was able to feel it, supporting the notion that it shook all of Gotham, the only buildings that it actually destroyed were faulty ones that Quakemaster himself designed. Whoops! Plan backfired a bit there. Because of this aspect, the town level calc for the feat is inflated a bit, since it bases the earthquake’s intensity on the fact that it destroyed buildings. A re-calc brings it down to multi-city block level.

Fraudulent Laser Feats (ft. Doctor Light, Malik, Katana, Richard Dragon, Black Canary)

These are all basically the same issue, so let’s cover them all together. Basically there are a variety of laser feats argued for DC that aren’t legitimate for similar reasons. These being:

• Batman dodging Doctor Light’s photokinetic lasers

• Batman dodging light beams from Malik, the brother of Lightweaver with similar light manipulation powers

• Katana reflecting a laser with her sword

• Richard Dragon dodging a laser beam

• Black Canary dodging a beam of light from the black diamond

Every single one of these feats is aim-dodging. For a laser timing feat to be legitimate, you need to be able to prove that the character who is dodging moved some distance relative to the beam’s movement. In each of these cases, the light beam is shown traveling its full distance while the individual dodging simply does not get hit. In all of them, the individual could simply be moving evasively in a manner that causes the laser to miss, or they could have moved out of the way before the laser fires. Katana’s sword similarly could have already been in position before the laser fired, there’s no proof from the panels that she moved at all after the laser fired.

There are also some individual issues with some of these feats outside of these aspects; Malik’s beams for instance are shown shattering stone upon impact. Violet Harper’s energy auras (the one that Katana reflected) also have varying effects depending on color (each color reflects a specific light-based effect generated as “bodily auras”, rather than all of them being directly composed of light), with some of them producing force and the red ones being primarily heat-based rather than light-based, and these specific ones curve in this issue regardless.

To give an example of some laser feats that actually work, here’s one where Bruce moves to evade lasers after the light begins emitting from the laser source. This one is valid, since there’s a clear sequence of events of “lasers activate -> Batman moves -> lasers reach their destination point.” Granted, in this case it’s extremely difficult to judge exactly how far Bruce moves, so it’s still relatively unquantifiable. More calculable is Selina’s own laser feat, where Cyber-C.A.T.’s laser is shown emitting light with Selina looking down at it, and then in the time it takes the laser to reach Selina she moves her head to the side to evade. Again, clear provable sequence of events here where the character’s movement can be gauged relative to the beam.

Bonus: Cassandra Cain’s Electricity Dodge

This feat has a similar issue where you cannot prove in-tandem movement, as Cass could have simply jumped into the air to dodge the blast while Agrippina’s staff was still charging. The sub-relativistic calc for this feat is also incredibly inflated, as it not only assumes this random electricity blast is comparable to natural lightning without evidence, but rather egregiously calculates that Cass and Agrippina are 0.05 centimeters away from each other in the panel at the bottom of this page, or half a fucking millimeter.

I sincerely hope we don’t need to explain why that’s incorrect.

Deathstroke’s Submarine Feat

Deathstroke rather famously has a feat of surviving a nuclear submarine getting dropped on him and exploding. Previous calcs for this have gotten town level results, but are inflated as they measure the smoke cloud produced by the explosion rather than the fireball itself. Adjusting for this discrepancy brings the result down to city block level.

Deathstroke Scaling to Gunfire

Deathstroke has technically tanked blasts from the metahuman Gunfire, whose energy manipulation later allowed him to punch a hole from the Earth’s core to the bottom of the ocean, which has been calc’d at town level.

Key word: “later.” Deathstroke taking a hit from him is from Gunfire’s first appearance, when he still did not understand his powers and was using them for the literal first time. The feat, on the other hand, is much later on in Gunfire’s solo series when he has progressed significantly and has much better control. Hell, he straight up says in the issue where he does the feat that he's surprised his blast that initially created the shaft didn't go straight through the planet. Needless to say, he’s a little above Deathstroke and Batman’s pay grade at that point. The calc is also probably a little inflated, it somewhat arbitrarily assumes a 30 minute time-frame for KE when the comic provides a maximum time-frame of several hours, but the biggest problem is just that it doesn’t scale in the first place.

Clayface Surviving Atmospheric Reentry

Clayface has a feat where he survives atmospheric reentry which has been calc’d at town level based on the mass of his body, but it’s inapplicable because his resilience was bolstered by Ragman’s magic cloak at the time.

Scaling to Mister Freeze’s Ice Gun

Mister Freeze’s ice gun has several impressive showings in terms of freezing, like creating large blocks or constructs out of ice, which have been calc’d to town level based on the temperature change and fusion energy needed to produce such a high volume of ice. This is argued to scale back to Mister Freeze’s physicality (and thus the physicality of other characters) because Freeze has survived his ice gun exploding before.

This sounds good at first glance but kind of ignores a lot of the specifics of both the calcs themselves and what Freeze would actually be “surviving” when his gun explodes. The feats that his gun performs are all to do with lowering temperature and fusing water molecules together to create ice. The amount of energy necessary to do that is impressive, sure, but when Freeze’s gun explodes, even if it explodes in his hand, that energy isn’t going to be all concentrated on Freeze himself, nor would he even be tanking any kind of physical force. Only a tiny portion of the energy would be imparted onto his surface area, while the rest of it spreads out across a much larger volume. And the energy that actually does hit him would… reduce his temperature? So he has cold resistance?

It’s not something that would make him especially durable or mean that he can tank nuclear blasts, it’s a case of VS debating’s “energy is energy” idea being taken too far. There’s no real logical basis to scale his durability to his gun’s full freezing energy, and thus no basis to scale other characters to it physically either.

Cassandra Cain Being FTE to Other Street Tiers

There are at least three scans that have been used to argue that Cass is so fast that other street tiers like Batman and Robin and such cannot see her, which is a major source of upscaling arguments for DC street tiers, but all of them are pretty scuffed for one reason or another.

First, there’s this one, which has been interpreted as Cass punching Batman so fast that her movements aren’t seen, as the explanation for him coughing blood. This is inaccurate; what actually happened is that on the page prior, he challenges her to a fight, and this page occurs after a time lapse where they fought off-panel. Note how the windows are all intact on the previous page and then broken in this one. Note as well Bruce’s dialogue, where he challenges her on the previous page and then calls her out of shape on this one. He’s coughing blood because she injured him during their fight, and he only now realizes how much damage she managed to inflict on him. Not because she anime blitzes him in this panel faster than he can see for no reason.

Second, there’s this one, where she throws money bags in between Batman and David Cain to intercept their punch clash, and they only notice her presence afterward. This one is a bit more puzzling, because there’s not really anything implying this is some kind of perception blitz, they were just focused on each other and then she threw the bags in to block their punches and get their attention, at which point they turned and noticed her. There’s no blitz happening here.

Lastly, there’s this one, where she swoops in to save Robin from a bunch of guys jumping him, and he later says that it happened so fast he didn’t see anything. This is probably the least egregious of the three since Robin does at least say that it was so fast he didn’t see it, but the problem is that Robin was knocked when it happened, downed and stunned with his eyes closed, and only sat up and looked around after Cass was done. It wasn’t like he was actively looking at the people attacking him and then they were down so fast that his eyes couldn’t perceive it, it was that he got knocked out momentarily, and then Cass swooped in and beat them so quickly it was over before Robin recovered.

Overall, nothing too compelling in any of these instances, though Cass is still pretty impressive relative to other Bat Family members regardless of course.

Bane’s Venom Scaling to Miraclo

Bane’s Venom is derived from the drug Miraclo, which supposedly grants the user FTL speed. This one is a pretty straightforward debunk, the DC wiki claims that Miraclo makes the user FTL, but in the comic cited it actually says “almost as swift as thought,” which does not have a consistent speed attached to it. Thus, scaling Bane’s Venom to it as an FTL amp would be inaccurate.

Other Possible Arguments (ft. Pied Piper, Ray, Prysm, Livewire)

There are some miscellaneous lightspeed arguments that you could probably throw around, but most of them aren’t very compelling.

One of the Flash’s rogues, the Pied Piper, has a one-off statement that his sound waves move at the speed of light, but this is contradicted by other statements that more intuitively say his sound waves move as fast as… well, sound, and the only character we’ve located who has actually reacted to these sound waves is the Flash himself regardless. Similarly, there’s a Teen Titans character named Prysm who can manipulate electromagnetic energy, but we haven’t managed to find any examples of characters dodging it outside of metahumans that would be beyond what Batman characters could reasonably compare to.

There’s a character named the Ray who Batman has technically defeated before, who has multiple lightspeed statements, but he’s depicted as being faster than S-tiers like Martian Manhunter, and his fight with Batman isn’t super extensive anyway, so it would be hard to say this scaling particularly checks out. Similarly, Livewire in the DCAU has a statement that her electricity is lightspeed, but there does not seem to be a comparable statement in comic canon, Livewire is pretty high tier in general, and instances of characters dodging her blasts in the comics are aim-dodging.

Return of the Bat Crater

Batman has a fairly infamous feat in which he survives a massive explosion some distance from the epicenter, which craters several city blocks, and has been calc’d at town level for the amount that Batman would be tanking. This feat was used in several official Death Battle episodes, namely Batgirl VS Spider-Gwen, Batman VS Iron Man, and Harley Quinn VS Jinx, but has somewhat fallen out of favor in the community due to the fact that Justice League members like Superman and Wonder Woman were present for the explosion and were knocked out by it - meaning, in a lot of people’s eyes, the explosion was actually multiversal and Batman surviving it would be an outlier.

And funnily enough unlike every other DC feat on this list, we’re here to argue that this one is actually alright. To be honest, the counterargument here is a little bizarre. It’s a normal explosion, it doesn’t have “ki control” limiting the scope of its effect or some other kind of magical range-limiter attached to it. We can just measure its size and the amount that it destroys to determine how powerful it is. It’s unreasonable to presume that this town-sized explosion is secretly multiversal and just was somehow contained to only multiple city blocks.

“But it hurt Superman, and Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter-”

Sure. But those characters aren’t, in an average comic, depicted as multiverse busters. Most people would read this comic and view this as a low-end showing for those characters, where a town-sized blast is enough to put them out of commission - kind of silly since they’ve survived worse, but plot. Same way Superman has been hurt by nukes and such on other occasions, same way strong characters can be taken out by bullets or long falls in various media. Most people would not do some sort of crazy roundabout mental gymnastic of “this blast was actually multiversal even though it’s town sized, which is why it knocked them out, sure Batman survived it but that’s just a multiversal outlier for Batman, duh”.

There’s an old concept that doesn’t come up frequently in VS debating called “hiding the outlier”, where a feat is downplayed vastly beyond reason so that it will essentially fly under the radar and won’t be labeled an outlier. This counterargument would essentially just be the inverse of that. Exaggerating a feat vastly beyond the level it reasonably is at, to try and say that it’s an outlier and doesn’t count, because there’s no issue with it otherwise. Batman survives a big explosion. The explosion is exactly as powerful as its size and collateral damage indicates. That’s all, it’s not that complicated.

Scaling to Adam Strange’s durability

The lesser-known character Adam Strange has a feat in which he survives getting blasted into space on a chunk of rock, propelled toward the sun which he would have reached within 20 hours, and withstands the intense G-forces on his body while doing so. The force he was withstanding here has been calculated to over 60 kilotons of TNT, which is well into town level. This is typically argued to scale over to Batman via Adam Strange struggling with Gotham thugs, while Batman has managed to take down Strange’s usual rogues.

So first of all, this feat in and of itself is legit. The calculation is accurate, it doesn’t require an assumed time-frame or anything like that, and the comic makes specific reference to the amount of force Strange is withstanding, so it’s fine as an impressive feat of durability. The scaling, I would say, is a bit more tenuous. Batman’s encounters with Strange’s rogues are all fairly brief and don’t involve him overcoming their durability or anything, while Strange’s encounter with those Gotham thugs is similarly brief and would imply a random street punk in DC is over four times stronger than a nuke if taken seriously. However, there’s at least some very vague basis to stand on, if you’re willing to ignore the silly implications there.

The problem is… it’s kind of just an outlier. A lame argument maybe, but it’s true. It’s over ten times more impressive than the next best legitimate feat - the crater - which is itself both contentious and ten times stronger than the next best feat after that (Quakemaster). The feat was performed by a random nobody character that no one has ever heard of, who Batman almost never interacts with outside of some very brief encounters with very tangentially-related characters and random nameless thugs. We’re talking about a character who originated in the forties and has over ten thousand appearances. You can’t say that one feat, from a character he barely even chain-scales to, that nobody knows about, is sufficient to place him 10-100x stronger than the next best feat. It’s just not an accurate or realistic way of gauging things, so it will not be accounted for in this comparison.

Black Cat

Marvel Nanosecond Statements

Cyclops, Beast, and Daredevil all have “nanosecond” timing feats, much like DC, though there are different problems here. Starting off with a positive, Cyclops’ Optic Blasts are described as veering off-target via omniscient narration of his actions. Of course, this verbiage is still prone to hyperbole on the part of the writer, but at the very least it’s a step above first-person narration. Not to mention, Cyclops’ blasts are just really fast in general, so that’s a point for Summers here. 

Beast, however, brings many familiar problems to the table. First off, context matters; we actually see the active event that Beast is describing when he refers to his actions as being within the span of a nanosecond. Evidently, Beast didn’t rewrite the ship’s programming in a nanosecond; we see it play out on the page, where Beast monologues to himself repeatedly as the X-Men fight to survive in the back. Additionally, this statement is first-person narration, and Beast as a character is known for being a quirky guy who likes saying flowery stuff in general.

Daredevil might be the worst of them all, though. Let’s break down the context here. Daredevil was trapped in a secure room, then was subjected to a high-frequency sound to damage his heightened senses. Matt eventually focused his senses and located the source of the sound, a speaker. However, he does not know the exact physical location of the speaker relative to himself.

 

Next, DD realizes there’s an extremely brief gap in the sound where it loops and repeats. He describes this break as only being a nanosecond long before the sound repeats. Upon realizing this, Matt understood how to identify the distance between him and the speaker. During the break, there is no sound, and thus, Matt can “see” where the speaker is located. It is because of this break in the sound that Matt was able to identify how far the speaker was, in order to destroy it. 

To be frank, this isn’t really a super impressive speed feat at all. In essence, Daredevil is only perceiving his surroundings in a nanosecond, but he doesn’t actually need to react in that timeframe. The proof is in the context, as nothing required him to actually react & destroy the speaker in the nanosecond-long pause. The perception of his surroundings for a brief time only gave him the bearings to identify the speaker; anyone could destroy the speaker at any time, it wasn’t a time-sensitive action. 

Imagine that you are standing in the corner of a pitch-black room, and the lights flicker for just a second before shutting off. If you know when to anticipate the lights flickering next time, it’s entirely possible for you to perceive the location of the door to the room, and you wouldn’t need to have super-human reaction speeds to throw something at the door afterwards, let alone reaction speeds multiple times faster than light.

Oh, and it’s also first-person narration, hyperbole, etc etc. 

Deadpool & His Many Fraudulent Feats (Ft. Wolverine)

The Merc with a Mouth has quite a few notable feats that are routinely misconstrued. There’s the Hoover Dam explosion, wherein Deadpool blows up the - you guessed it - Hoover Dam. There’s that time he got blasted by a massive satellite laser, and didn’t appear too inconvenienced afterward. More recently, a major lynchpin in Marvel’s street level arguments has been the Deadpool/Magik feat, wherein the latter punches the former so hard, it creates a mushroom cloud larger than the island nation of Krakoa. 

First off, the Hoover Dam explosion isn’t actually super impressive when measured and scaled directly. It is stated that the Founding Fathers want to destroy the Dam, but you don’t need to completely annihilate a structure in order for it to be “destroyed”. What we actually see happen on-page is not contradictory to the statement. More importantly, however, Deadpool is just not actually tanking very much energy, relative to the total explosive yield. His body’s surface area is tiny compared to the radius of the explosion, and the blast would spread omnidirectionally, dispersing its energy quickly. Obviously, an explosion that can bust up Hoover Dam is still impressive, and we don’t recommend you try tanking a blast like this at home; the point is just that Deadpool would not scale to the full yield of the Hoover Dam explosion due to everyone’s favorite stat-killer, surface area.

Oh hey, speaking of surface area, let’s move on to the satellite laser. We’re told that the laser has a blast area of a square mile, which would result in a fairly large radius, nearly a kilometer in total. The actual impact of the laser itself backs up that this blast covers a massive area, meaning that Deadpool’s body is simply physically incapable of absorbing all of the laser’s energy at once. The yield of the laser is impressive, make no mistake, but is inapplicable to Deadpool’s durability. 

Now for the real meat and potatoes here: the Krakoa punch. Much like the Batman crater feat mentioned above, there is some critique of the validity of this feat due to it being entirely caused by Magik, a very powerful Marvel character. Deadpool surviving a hit from a high-tier like that could be construed as a simple outlier, regardless of the explosion’s direct yield. Just as we did with the Bat-crater, we’re taking this feat at face value, measuring the big explosion itself, since there’s no reason it shouldn’t be as strong as it appears to be. Okay, good news is over!

Most calcs for the Krakoa punch over-inflated the results by measuring the mushroom cloud relative to the area affected by the blast. This is a mistake, because mushroom clouds are often far larger than the actual blast itself. Adjusting the calc with real-world examples of size ratios between mushroom clouds and their corresponding air-blasts, Magik’s punch drops from 30 kilotons down to 182 - 849 tons of TNT. (On a higher end; more conservative estimates land around 50 tons.) All in all, it’s certainly still impressive as a feat, but far from what it was previously believed to be.

That’s not all, though. The aftermath of Deadpool’s Krakoa feat brings to mind a sort of ‘sleeping dragon’ problem with many Marvel street level feats; that being that a lot are performed by Deadpool & Wolverine. You know, the two characters famously known for being able to regenerate from basically any sort of physical damage? After Deadpool was nuke-punched by Magik, we’re shown that he has a huge crater in his abdomen from the impact; something that is laughable for Wade, but would obviously be life-ending for most other characters. While many feats, like the aforementioned Satellite Laser, do not explicitly show Deadpool regenerating from the blast, it can still be inferred that Deadpool of all characters is chosen to endure this type of punishment from a narrative perspective for a reason. The fact that Wade and Logan have such a high quantity of notable feats - a much higher density than any other combination of street tier characters, mind you - supports this notion.

Let’s look at a Wolverine feat for example. Here’s Logan getting blasted by 240,000 mega-therms, a ridiculous amount of energy, even if he were only taking in a fraction of that energy. After this fire bath, Logan was, understandably, not very happy! But more importantly, it’s obvious that his body is extremely fucked up; he’s even referred to as a “walking dead man” multiple times. It would be ridiculous to insinuate that most other Marvel street level characters could replicate this level of endurance because they lack Wade and Logan’s X-Factor; the ability to heal from just about anything. 

Logan and Wade’s physical strength and durability can be comparable to their peers, but the feats they endure often damage their bodies in ways that really, only they could survive. We’re not necessarily saying they can never be scaled to; Wolverine does have a valid feat we’re using in this very blog! Just keep in mind that just because Deadpool can walk off having his chest cratered doesn’t necessarily mean anyone else could.

Luke Cage’s Nuke Feat

In Age of Ultron (the comic, not the movie), Luke Cage faces off against Ultron’s drones alongside She-Hulk. Jennifer ends up getting killed, and Luke is caught in a massive nuclear blast, presumed to be dead. Later on, it’s revealed he survived, but has only been holding on to life so that he could convey information to the other surviving heroes; after that, he dies. We’re not shown what he looks like after the blast, so it’s technically not clear if he died from radiation or from having his body fried like a 3am burrito in the microwave. Either way, the feat is the calcs for this feat can vary, but it’s a fine upper limit for Luke’s external physical durability… not so much others. 

Luke Cage is far stronger than most Marvel street tiers, able to humiliate people like Green Goblin; even an enraged Daredevil broke his hand while punching Luke, who wasn’t fighting back. Not only is he stronger, but he’s also far tougher… it’s kind of his whole thing. As we’ve established, Felicia is certainly not on Luke’s level of strength, and she lacks the X-Factor to survive the same thing Luke did, so we are not scaling her to this feat. 

Shocker’s Gauntlets

Despite being a Spider-Man villain with a decent history of actually hurting the web-slinger with his weapons, Shocker is hiding one of the better lower-end feats… sorta! To clear the air a bit, we’re not saying that everyone scales to Shocker’s gauntlets at max blast, the kinds of shockwaves that have put Spidey on the fritz. The actual feat in question comes from a complete doofus nobody that happened to get their hands on Shocker’s gauntlets, and accidentally set them off. Note, that same page also confirms that the Shocker cosplayer modified Shocker’s gauntlets to include “safety features”, likely to dampen their power so they don’t, you know, kill each other while LARPing. 

Despite those safety measures, the gauntlets still generated a unidirectional quake that was felt 10 miles away from the point of origin. A simple calc comparing this to a magnitude 5 earthquake places it at a comfortable 924 tons of TNT. Shocker has certainly pushed his gauntlets’ power higher when used against Spider-Man, but he has also used his gauntlets to blast people like the Punisher, and obviously Frank survived the attack otherwise he would’ve… you know, died. We believe it is reasonable to say the real-deal Shocker could easily dish out more damage in a blast of his own gauntlets than a LARPer with training wheels could do, even if he weren’t going for a kill.

Symbiote Dragons

Spider-Man is undoubtedly faster than most Marvel street tiers, capable of blitzing the likes of Nightcrawler and Daredevil, who are already pretty quick on their feet, even among their peers. For a long time, it was unclear exactly how much faster Spider-Man truly was, due to him lacking any actual concrete feats numerically superior to those performed by slower characters. At most, we could infer he’d be faster than those feats to an uncertain, vague extent. This changed with the advent of a new argument centered around Knull’s symbiote dragons, who have demonstrated interstellar flight capabilities north of a million times faster than light.

Here’s the thing, though. Space is a very, very big place with very, very little actual physical mass in it. In order for the symbiote dragons to make the flight from Klyntar to Earth in two weeks, they would not need to actively react to objects at the speeds in which they travel. Even if they did encounter a planet or asteroid along the way, visibility of celestial objects would allow them ample time to redirect or change their trajectory long before they would collide. Think of pilots in real life, who fly planes at mach speeds. As funny as it would be to insinuate otherwise, people don’t simply have mach-speed reaction speeds simply for being able to operate vehicles; traversing empty space doesn’t demand immediate reaction at the speeds you’re traveling, and avoiding objects/changing direction can be done well ahead of time without the need to react at the last second.

There is no actual on-screen showing of the dragons having to react to anything at MFTL speeds; therefore, there is no basis to argue that Spider-Man & co. match or exceed those speeds when defeating the dragons in battle. It should also go without saying that Spider-Man and his amazing friends simply do not have the physical means to replicate the speed at which the dragons travel via their flight; they would not scale in terms of combat/reaction speed or travel speed. 

Verdict

Stats

Ah, Marvel VS DC street tier stat debates, what a menace to society you are. But hey, this one should be simple, right? Spider-Man characters beat Batman characters in stats any day of the week, right? Well… it’s more complicated than that. Every character needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis, and in this case, it’s a much tougher call. Let’s start with their direct feats, to get a good picture of what the characters themselves have done, before moving on to where exactly they scale.

Direct Feats

Selina, all things considered, is pretty over the top. She dodges and deflects bullets all the time like nobody’s business, with the best example being the time she did a complex front flipping maneuver over point blank automatic fire from four guys at once, hitting speeds above Mach 4. She also reacted to Cyber-C.A.T.’s laser… potentially. Technically speaking you could interpret that feat as her reacting to the laser charging and then moving before it’s fired, but assuming the laser source glowing is an indicator that it’s already being fired before she moves, she would need to react upwards of 65% the speed of light to dodge it.

Her physical strength is great enough to rip a giant tree out of the ground, and while she did have help from a bystander, said bystander only used a metal bar to help pull the tree up out of the ground by its roots, he didn’t actually contribute to lifting the tree itself. The weight we’re talking about here is 5.77 tons, nearly 12 times stronger than the strongest lifted weight ever recorded.

In terms of striking, she can pretty consistently match characters who can hurt her, with her own durability being great enough to survive an explosion that wrecked an entire building story, over 196 pounds of TNT. This has allowed her to do things like break a person’s wrist just from the force of them punching her in the stomach, and survive dives over 2 miles below the ocean’s surface. Which… is insane. The pressure at 2 miles deep is about 320 atm, nearly 2 and a half tons per square inch. For reference, remember that Titan submersible that imploded? That happened just slightly over 2 miles deep. That was made of carbon fiber and titanium, and it collapsed inward in the span of milliseconds from the sheer water pressure. To be clear, with how water pressure works this can’t really be translated to “normal” durability, but it’s still pretty absurd in terms of pressure resistance.

Felicia is also pretty crazy, though in terms of direct feats not to the same extent. She’s dodged gunfire from Nick Fury at speeds just under Mach 1, and while she doesn’t have a whole lot of laser timing feats where you can prove in-tandem movement, she has dodged blasts stated to be lightspeed, namely Iron Man’s repulsor blasts, with a presentation that’s pretty similar to Selina’s showing against Cyber-C.A.T. Granted, it was from a larger distance away and these are different Iron Man armors than the one with the lightspeed statement.

Strength-wise, she doesn’t have a whole lot of super clear lifting feats, but the best is probably tipping over (though not lifting) an Egyptian sarcophagus. Sarcophagi vary pretty substantially in weight depending on their size and material, with some extremely large granite ones weighing tens of tons, while smaller wooden ones can be only a few hundred pounds. This one is about human-sized and the material is unclear, but it’s visually pretty similar to the coffin of King Tut, which was made of gold (consistent with the coloring here) and weighed 1.36 tons. Granted, this was also the total weight of the interior and exterior coffins, and the interior coffin alone potentially weighs less.

Felicia also has a feat where she punches Venom into an oil tanker with enough force to potentially tip it off balance (the art makes it a little hard to tell, but it appears to be tipping over), with oil tanker trucks having a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 16.5 tons. Now, mind you, this isn’t really a lifting feat, since Felicia is kicking Venom into it and not applying the force via direct pushing - these things require entirely different muscles and such. But it is an extremely impressive striking feat, especially considering Venom’s impact ruptured the stainless steel. To achieve this result, Felicia must have struck him with up to 36 pounds of TNT, which is pretty consistent with her knocking an unnamed repairman through a pillar with 16.8 pounds of TNT. And thanks to good ol’ Newton, she can withstand this kind of force as well.

Conclusion: Selina more or less has better direct feats in every physical aspect, including both lifting and striking strength, durability, and speed comparing her against both bullets and lasers. 

That said, everyone knows this fight was never going to come down to direct feats. Felicia fights Spider-People all the time, not to mention other Marvel street tiers, so through comparing her to other characters, we can get a better idea of her capabilities and limitations. If she regularly fights and matches characters way stronger than Selina, then it stands to reason that she would be able to gain the upper hand against someone much weaker than the foes she commonly fights. So let’s discuss stats from a scaling perspective, and see if and how the comparison changes.

Scaling

So, this is where things start to get complicated and long-winded. We imagine you got a pretty good idea of it from the Before the Verdict sections, but the long and short of it is that between Marvel and DC, there are dozens upon dozens of feats that have been argued for street level heroes over the years, that Selina and Felicia would scale to… if the majority of them were legitimate. However, before we get into all of that, let’s first discuss where exactly the characters scale, because there are definitely some misconceptions.

Selina is all things considered a lot simpler than Felicia. She has a wayyyyyy higher number of fights across a much longer history, and has pretty much fought every major Batman character worth talking about on pretty even ground. While she struggled consistently with Batman himself and even weaker characters like the Joker early in her history, as time has gone on she has been consistently established to get stronger and stronger, being considered Batman’s equal midway through her history, and nowadays being capable of perfectly comboing with him and things like that, while struggling a lot less against his rogues gallery than she used to.

There are however a handful of characters that she probably wouldn’t scale to. She has surprisingly good showings against the Azbat Suit but is generally depicted as Azrael’s inferior, and she’s always portrayed as a step below the uber skilled characters like Cassandra Cain in sheer combat ability. Batman villains with elemental powers that don’t scale to their own physicality, like Poison Ivy and Mister Freeze, are also generally outside the range of what she can compare to, at least with their more high-scale abilities. Similarly, there are lesser known villains like Doctor Phosphorus with extremely potent abilities who are clearly outside the range of her scaling. And then there are some like Bane and Killer Croc that she can technically hurt to an extent, but is more so comparable to them with her claws. That said, rule of thumb, if Batman can fight them and they’re reliant on physical strength and/or martial arts, Selina is usually able to hang with them to at least some extent.

Felicia is a bit more complicated and context sensitive. She’s never really been able to match Peter from a sheer physical strength perspective, though she can damage and threaten his life with her claws, so she does scale with her weapons. She also compares to him in speed, being able to consistently keep up with him, and even characters like Venom who can see him in slow motion. Her showings against Spidey’s rogues gallery are similarly not the best, with folks like Doc Ock, Kingpin, Venom (in terms of strength), Carnage, Electro, Scorpion, Rhino, and so on proving a step above her paygrade, and characters that she can deal with like Vulture being a step below Spidey in comparison. 

She does have a couple showings that you’ll probably see people throw around to argue she scales to Spidey, with differing levels of validity. First up and most flawed is her fight with the Lizard, during which she was devolved by the Prime Asteroid and her physicality was thus enhanced beyond the norm. More interesting perhaps are her fights with Silk, which are more competitive and generally her most impressive showings. Especially considering that while Silk isn’t as strong as Peter, she is faster, and Felicia has in turn claimed to be faster than Silk. However, while these showings are probably the best argument, similar to Selina’s fight with the Azbat Suit they are outweighed by a far larger number of examples in which Felicia has been depicted a step below the spiders in strength. Especially considering Silk is stated to be physically weaker than Peter, it’s probably not quite enough to scale to his strength on its own.

That said, there are plenty of characters and feats that Felicia does scale to on a much more consistent basis. She did a pretty decent job against Taskmaster, even when he had Black Ant backing him up, and has good showings against Paladin and the Vulture, the latter of whom is comparable to Daredevil. She’s also had brief encounters with the likes of Moon Knight, Hawkeye and so on which would back up the notion that she scales to the more “human” to “peak human” characters on Marvel’s list.

Which brings us to the question of the hour: how strong even are those guys? 

Let’s start with strength and durability, since there’s a lot more to cover there. On the Marvel side of things, the feat that people typically throw around most often is Deadpool surviving an explosion that engulfed a portion of the island Krakoa, which can get results up to double digit kilotons, which is town level. Problem: the calc measures the size of the mushroom cloud, when the mushroom cloud of an explosion is much larger than the fireball, and thus the result is being inflated pretty substantially. Adjusting for this discrepancy brings the result all the way down to city block to multi-city block level.

This issue impacts another noteworthy feat that people have argued, that being this gamma explosion that Black Panther and Blade supposedly withstood. The calc measures the mushroom cloud, inflating the result by hundreds of times. Additional problem: this isn’t a feat in the first place. We see beforehand that She-Hulk is starting to overload and charges toward T’Challa, Blade, and Robbie, and then it cuts directly to the massive explosion, which led people erroneously to the conclusion that she blew up on top of them. Immediately afterward, however, Captain Marvel radios that she has Jen and is the one to verify her condition, and they’re nowhere near those three anymore, with the implication being that Carol swooped in and got Jen clear of the area before she blew up. A page later, Jen says that she needs to get better control of her powers and that she could have killed everyone, contradicting the interpretation that they all just inexplicably tanked the blast with zero damage.

There are some other “nuke” or “large explosion” feats that run into similar caveats, like one from Punisher where his position relative to the explosion is pretty unclear. There’s a pretty popular one for Captain America where he survives an explosion from a completely unknown distance that you wouldn’t be able to gauge without massive assumptions. Prior to receiving his serum, Cap has also “survived” an explosion underwater that was stated to be able to make a half-mile crater, but the explosion visibly doesn’t even reach his location, so he’s not really tanking anything. Frankly, the fact that this is pre-serum Cap is a pretty substantial point against it as well, even if it were legit in the first place it would be absurd to argue that an asthmatic civilian in Marvel has anywhere approaching nuke level durability.

Continuing with the explosion feats, Deadpool has a couple supposed MCB ones that were floated around the community for a while, but one of them doesn’t even hit him and the other occurred while he was cursed to be invulnerable. Furthermore, Deadpool’s Hoover Dam feat is faulty due to a lack of context on how much of the dam would be destroyed, when even a small portion would be enough to cause the dam to break apart due to the water rushing through.

Continuing with DP, he also has this feat where he survives a space laser that vaporizes a square mile of jungle, but since the laser’s effects were distributed across a large area, Deadpool’s much smaller surface area would only be taking a tiny fraction of it, too small to be noteworthy. On the topic of vaporization, Wolverine has a feat where he survives hits from the Black Shadow, which had previously vaporized a city block, but with his healing factor it’s debatable whether we can attribute this directly to durability. Even doing so, it would only be worth up to around 465 tons of TNT.

The regen point goes for other feats as well, like the one where Gorgon smacked Wolverine between countries, in which he could very easily have healed from any blunt force damage. Likewise, Wolvie also survives a nuke at one point, but we don’t see him until some time afterward so he most likely just regenerated there too. Speaking of nukes, Luke Cage survived one for a time, but it ended up killing him and his whole thing is being “the super durable guy” anyway, so scaling this back around to squishier folks like Felicia wouldn’t work out.

Captain America has a feat where he fights a demon that can turn people to ash from half a mile away, but this only gets impressive results if you calculate the effect as an omnidirectional blast rather than blasting directly from that distance. Regardless, Cap only blocks the demon’s attacks with his shield, a couple small embers get past and they are able to harm him, and Cap was the person whom the demon was stated to be capable of incinerating in the first place. Cap’s shield is an important point, as he also used it to block a blast that caused a large crater around his vicinity. Since the shield absorbs impacts, it’s impossible to quantify how much of this actually hit Cap’s own body.

Amusingly, there is also this calc, where the X-Men were in the vicinity of a rocket that shook Manhattan when it took off, and therefore they were… “tanking” it, supposedly? This just isn’t a feat. Speaking of “not a feat”, here’s Captain America being compared to a 5 ton meteor, in his early comics which were later retconned to be in-universe propaganda that didn’t actually happen. As an aside, while it’s not an AP feat, this lightspeed statement you might have seen thrown around for Cap is in the same boat.

Falcon survives a nuke at one point by surrounding it with his wings, but the wings he used for the feat were actually specifically created for him by Tony and aren’t his normal wings, being pure vibranium rather than his typical vibranium mesh. Nick Fury survived an orbital bombardment as a child and only ended up with a scar over his eye, but he’s only getting hit with one of the blasts and not all of them, so he’d only be surviving a small portion of the damage. Additionally, the feat getting high results would be contingent on assuming that the portions of the ground that we see destroyed were vaporized, based on gaseous emissions which could just as easily be smoke. Lastly, we don’t actually see the rocket hit Nick even though it’s headed in his direction - if he was able to get even a little bit out of the way, only a portion of the blast would actually be imparted onto his body, which would impact the result substantially.

Jack-O-Lantern has damaged suits that are designed to withstand 50 megaton nukes, but he does it with antarctic vibranium, so it’s not anything scalable… the list frankly goes on and on. There are dozens of Marvel street tier feats that have been presented over the years that aren’t legit for one reason or another, so what CAN Felicia scale to?

Well, Deadpool’s Krakoa feat is still legit, it’s just worth hundreds of tons of TNT instead of thousands. On a similar scale, the Punisher has survived a blast from Shocker’s gauntlets which can produce a unidirectional earthquake worth over 900 tons of TNT. As an aside, it is worth noting that Shocker has harmed Spider-Man before, but there is context to this particular earthquake feat. It was performed by a cosplayer who tampered with the gauntlets to dampen their potency, while Punisher survived a blast from the real Shocker. While Punisher shouldn’t scale to Shocker’s full power, he should at minimum scale to the baseline minimum level of power that his gauntlets can output, which should be at least comparable to the explicitly diminished output.

Additionally, Wolverine has drawn blood from the Warclan chief Domina, who claimed just beforehand to possess the strength to “literally move mountains”. Granted, she doesn’t show it, and Wolvie only hurts her a little bit, with the guidebooks describing the event as just him knocking her down, but the yield of such a feat would only be around 1,600 tons of TNT, or 1.6 kilotons, less than double Shocker’s gauntlets. It makes sense and is congruent with other feats that Wolverine would be able to somewhat hurt someone on that level. Felicia, being comparable to characters like Daredevil, Moon Knight, and so on, would scale to this as those characters can harm the likes of Deadpool and Punisher in spite of their durability, and match strength with Wolverine.

On the DC side of things, the best you’ll get without dipping your toes into Adam Strange scaling is the Bat Crater, clocking in at around 6.7 kilotons of TNT, several times higher than the Domina feat. Batman survived that explosion, and Selina frequently harms him with physical strikes and with her claws, which can even cut through the most durable portions of the Batsuit. Worth noting, while people have contested the Bat Crater due to the fact that it knocked out other Justice League members, Domina harms Colossus with her mountain-moving strength right before Wolverine hurts her, so if you were to try and discredit the crater feat for the fact that it harmed much stronger characters, you would need to discredit the Domina thing too under the same standards. Or conversely accept both, which is what we’re going with. 

Ultimately, DC street tiers have a lot of feats that aren’t legit too, for a lot of similar reasons to the Marvel stuff. Similar to the gamma explosion feat for Black Panther and Blade, Stephanie Brown’s explosion feat is dismissable because she very likely got clear of the blast radius before it went off. Similar to folks like Luke Cage, whose powers make him uniquely suited to certain feats, high end kinetics like Freeze and Ivy have powers that aren’t scalable back to lesser human characters who don’t have equivalents to those powers. Individuals like Azrael, who have showings indicating them to be much stronger than the norm, require substantial proof of consistent scaling, similar to Marvel powerhouses like Spider-Man, and shouldn’t be compared to your average street level hero. Then you have feats that don’t have direct equivalents on the other side, like Black Wind’s storm feat for DC or the X-Men Manhattan feat, which are just clearly invalid in the first place based on their context.

When everything is laid out, however, the comparison is ultimately that the spiders beat out most of DC’s roster, while DC conversely has the advantage overall when comparing more “average” characters. Quakemaster’s earthquake feat and Shocker’s are pretty comparable in scope and level of power, and then Batman’s crater feat beats out Domina scaling several times over. Plus, while likely an outlier if one were to attempt to scale it back to the majority of street tiers, Adam Strange’s feat does still technically exist as a maximum generous high-end. Meaning that in addition to lifting, since Felicia is not comparable to Spider-Man in strength, Selina has overall better striking strength.

However, this is only part of the story, as Felicia’s claws scale differently than her physicality. They’re able to consistently cut through Peter and even threaten his life. While there are a whole laundry list of illegitimate Spider-Man feats that would double this section in length if we were to cover all of them (exajoule scepter, Atlantis sinking blast, Chernobyl’s explosion, Morbius’ H-bomb statement, and so on), it’s fairly obvious that Peter is several steps above someone like Catwoman in strength. The most straightforward feat we could bring up is Insomniac Miles Morales absorbing and withstanding enough energy to vaporize Harlem, and while some calcs for this feat are inflated, it should still be worth about 15 megatons of TNT with all variables accounted for.

Meaning that while she can’t match Selina in direct striking strength, Felicia can certainly cut through her easily with her claws, granting her a deadly option for ending the fight quickly and easily if properly executed. However, she will need to be careful, as Selina’s claws can similarly cut through Batman and Killer Croc and Bane and even scratch the Azbat Suit, so they can likewise carve easily through foes a lot stronger and tougher than Felicia. In this cat fight, Selina might hit harder with her bare hands, but both can rip the other’s throat out with little effort, if given the chance.

Which brings us to speed, and once again we have a lot to talk about, so let’s get into it.

First up, what the hell is the deal with those microsecond and nanosecond feats? For years now, Marvel and DC street tier heroes have been frequently scaled based on statements that they can move or react in a microsecond or nanosecond, a millionth or a billionth of a second respectively. Nanosecond timing in particular is impressive as moving a meter in that time-frame (general distance at melee range) translates to speeds over 3 times faster than light. On Marvel’s side of things, Daredevil, Beast, and Cyclops all have such statements, while Black Canary and Deathstroke have them on the DC side. Numerous other characters have microsecond statements, which are significantly less impressive but essentially operate under the same mindset.

The problem lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of how these words are typically used in the English language. If you pull up the Merriam Webster dictionary definition for nanosecond, you’ll see what I mean; there’s a specific dictionary definition for the word that just means “a very brief moment”. If you look at the example sentences, you’ll see the word used informally to just mean “this thing happened very quickly”, such as a person accepting a marriage proposal in a nanosecond. Obviously, when used in a real life context this is never meant literally, otherwise ordinary people in real life would be faster than light which they obviously are not.

VS debaters (and we have certainly been guilty of this too at times) oftentimes have a tendency to look at a text and read it hyper-literally. If a character says they did something in a nanosecond, we take them seriously because that’s what the story says. In reality, however, characters are allowed to speak like normal people and they’re allowed to exaggerate. Writers who put these lines into their stories don’t mean it literally, and are just using these words the way that real people use them.

If you don’t believe us, there are at least two examples that we know of where Marvel writers have actively stated that these statements are meant hyperbolically, except when they are used to describe the actions of speedsters like Quicksilver. And this makes sense; characters like Daredevil and Black Canary obviously aren’t meant to have super speed, and while they do certainly have superhuman feats, most of them are more explicit and provable than “they are 3 times FTL because they said so”.

Now, obviously these writers don’t speak for the entirety of Marvel or DC, and death of the author is a concept that exists. Regardless of what the writers intended, these statements are present in the story, and some people will definitely argue that they need to be taken at face value, unless there is direct evidence in the story that they are exaggerations. And frankly, there’s plenty of evidence for that.

Take this instance, for example, where Ghost Rider falls off a cliff and says when he’s near the bottom that he has only microseconds until impact. For reference, even if we assume 10 microseconds or something like that, an object falling under normal gravity will move less than a millimeter in that time-frame. This is, objectively, hyperbole.

Of course, one example doesn’t speak for all of them, so why don’t we look at other instances? For example, this one, where Iron Fist claims that he only has a microsecond to react to a hail of bullets. For reference, even very generously assuming that this gun was something well above average like an AR-15, and using a high-end muzzle velocity of 3300 ft/s, a bullet would only just barely hit a full millimeter within a microsecond. Second verse, same as the first for this feat, where Daredevil claims that he needs to time his movements to the microsecond in order to evade bullets.

Perhaps most egregious of them all is this one, where it’s stated that a plant doubles its growth rate with each passing microsecond, which would make the increase 2^1000000 times per second. To put into perspective how absurd that is, let’s say that this plant’s initial growth rate is so goddamn slow that it would take the entire history of the universe to grow one millimeter, which is obviously absurdly slow, that would be a growth rate of 2.31 * 10^-21 meters per second. Within the first second of its existence, if that growth rate was literal, it would increase to a growth rate of 2.29 * 10^301009 meters per second. That plant would fill up so many universes in the first second, the number of universes that it would fill up would have over 11,000 zeroes. And then it would keep getting faster.

I dunno guys, I think it might be literal.

All of these instances, mind you, are Marvel and not DC, but both of DC’s nanosecond feats are character narration rather than omniscient - that is to say that Black Canary and Deathstroke themselves are saying that they did something in a nanosecond, rather than an objective narrator. Which means that every point about hyperbole and whatnot applies equally to them. In fact, the only nanosecond statement between the two franchises that’s made by a narrator and not a character is Cyclops’, so that’s really the only one you could argue comes from a reliable source, but it would still run into all the other pitfalls outlined above. 

All of this is to say that you could maybe use these statements as a counter to similar cases for the opposing side. For example if a Marvel character is fighting some other guy, and the other guy has a nanosecond statement with similar context to the Marvel ones, you can reasonably say that if you take the nanosecond statement seriously for the other guy, it’s only fair to do it for Marvel too. Which would be totally fine. In the case of Marvel VS DC, it’s pretty easy to say that if you take one seriously, the other should be taken seriously too, and likewise for if you dismiss them. But at that point we need to look at other feats to determine what would happen if you were to dismiss them for both.

As far as other feats are concerned, Captain America’s lightspeed statement from his early comics is retconned to have never happened in-universe, and Batman’s lightspeed statement in Earth-2 is extremely hyperbolic and unreliable. There are a variety of laser feats on both sides that you can’t prove in-tandem movement for, with a couple that are potentially more usable, primarily Wolverine cutting Cyclops’ Optic Blast and Azrael cutting through lasers from some drones.

Both of these feats are debatable, for somewhat opposite reasons. Cyclops’ Optic Blasts are specifically stated to be lightspeed on three separate occasions, so there’s no question of how fast they are, but it’s more debatable with that one whether Wolverine reacted to them legitimately. Not only has it been stated that the servos in Cyclops’ visor are much slower than the beams themselves, giving people an opportunity to react to them before they’re fired, but Wolverine himself has specifically made note of the fact that he can sense the pressure wave produced by the blasts before they’re fired, allowing him to react beforehand.

Azrael’s feat, on the other hand, definitely needs to involve some form of in-tandem movement, since he cuts through two beams with the same sword strike and his movement relative to theirs is clearly measurable. However, unlike Cyclops’ blasts, these beams aren’t stated to be lightspeed. They do come from a technological source, move in an unbroken linear path, produce no explicit force, and reflect off of Azrael’s blade, so depending on your laser standards they may be pretty valid. However, conversely, you can see in the panel that they have a jagged pattern along their edges, which isn’t really consistent with the appearance of light-based beams. It’s really just a matter of strictness in this case.

If you were to take both, the Azrael feat is around 2x FTL and the Wolverine feat is around 1.5x FTL, a gap which is within a margin of error and further mitigated by the fact that Azrael is somewhat faster than most DC street tiers. It would probably be fair to call them “around” even, IF you were to accept both. Obviously, if you were to accept one and not the other, whichever one you accept would have the advantage, but for the purposes of this blog we’re okay with both.

If you were to dismiss both, there are some relativistic light timing feats on both sides, like Batman’s and Selina’s own for DC, and Moon Knight and Johnny Blaze’s for Marvel. These would similarly mostly equal out. However, Spider-Man would be higher than this despite some anti-feats, as he has explicitly outsped microwave beams which are lightspeed.

With that said, Selina and Felicia aren’t precisely equal in speed, because after all that time spent yapping about other characters and feats, it’s finally time to talk about their own performance, now that we have context to situate them in. Ultimately, there are three possible frameworks to work under here: DC laser timing VS Spidey speed scaling, Wolverine VS Azrael, and nanosecond statements VS nanosecond statements.

Selina has her own laser feat and pretty comfortably scales to Batman, to the point where it’s consistently insinuated that she is faster than he is. This would have her upscaling from a fraction of the speed of light. In comparison, Felicia is faster than Silk who is faster than Peter, and can keep up with Venom, who can see Peter in slow motion, with Peter being baseline FTL. Selina has her own upscaling to mitigate the gap between her laser feats and Peter’s microwave feat, but Felicia being faster than Peter to a notable extent would keep the difference in her favor. Scenario 1, advantage Felicia.

With the Wolverine and Azrael feats included, the quantifiable difference flips back in Selina’s favor a bit, and she probably doesn’t downscale from Azrael too much, since Jean-Paul has admitted her reflexes are equal to his. That said, Peter Parker is so fast that he can see normal people in slow motion, including the likes of Wolverine, Venom can in turn see him in slow motion, and Felicia is comparable to Venom. Selina can match this to an extent based on her showing against Zeiss, who could initially see her in slow motion and then lost to her in their rematch, after she had gotten faster. But that’s one “slow motion level” speed jump for Selina against two for Felicia. Coupled with the debatable consistency of a 1-to-1 comparison between Selina and Azrael in the first place, Felicia likely takes a small advantage, albeit not a massive one. Scenario 2, roughly even with potentially a small but undefinable advantage for Felicia.

With nanosecond feats for both, Selina would once again upscale as she has claimed to be faster than Black Canary, and has her fights with Zeiss to demonstrate that she’s gotten significantly faster in the time since Dinah’s nanosecond feat occurred. However, Spider-Man can perception blitz Daredevil, and we once again have the Venom comparison to fall back on for Felicia. One “slow motion” level jump for both + the difference between Spidey and Daredevil being bigger than the difference between Selina and Canary = slight advantage Felicia, once again. Scenario 3, advantage Felicia.

In short, at varying levels of argument the exact specifics would change, but altogether Felicia’s performance against faster characters and the large gaps between them are more defined and impressive than Selina from an upscaling perspective. As long as the feats they are scaling to are on similar levels, which they are at every step of the way, Felicia will take a very slight speed advantage.

To conclude, Selina has better physical lifting strength, striking strength, and durability. Felicia is slightly faster. Both of their claws can cut through the other and kill each other pretty easily.

Arsenal & Abilities

Physical stats are one thing, but the real crux of this debate hinges on the weapons, tools and gadgets these two bring into battle; and boy, do they bring a lot. 

Suits

Let’s focus on what each of their respective suits natively bring to the table. Selina’s Catwoman costume is generally geared toward stealth, with added doo-dads and tools typically being separate from the jumpsuit itself. To its credit, her suit is insulated from electric shocks (sometimes), and it has resisted extreme heat on multiple occasions. Inside her cowl, Selina has special goggles packed with x-ray and infrared sight.

On the flip side, Felicia’s Black Cat costume is decidedly practical, lined with thermal regulators and strength-augmenting wires. Not satisfied with that, Felicia would go on to add even more implants, boosting her physical capabilities - strength, speed, balance, and hearing - to new heights. Furthermore, Felicia wears special contact lenses that grant her night vision and heightened visual acuity in general. Much like Selina, she has infrared sight, but that’s not all. She can view the electromagnetic spectrum, see ultraviolet light, and can even bypass the cloaking of sight and sound via motion-sensitive filaments. She’s explicitly used these to counter perfect stealth before.

In general, what it lacks in insulation, the Black Cat costume makes up for in dependability via its many implants and expansive utility, ensuring she will basically always perform at her best in battle. 

Claws

Of course, a cat fight isn’t complete without sizing up the talons. Selina’s claws are built-in to her gloves; sometimes made of steel, sometimes diamond-tipped. As established previously, they can cut through even the toughest of Gotham’s metahuman populace with ease. Not only that, Selina’s claws come packed with a taser, sedative-coating, and flashlights, naturally. Most impressively, Selina eventually upgraded her claws to a titanium variant, sharpened to a molecular level. It should come as no surprise that Selina can scale buildings and dice baddies like ribbons without breaking a sweat.

Not to be outdone, Felicia matches Selina’s claws almost blow-for-blow. They also function as tasers, operating on-touch and from mid-range distances. Much like Selina, Felicia also has sedative-coating on her nails, which she can additionally launch out of her gloves like darts. The main difference between their claws comes down to composition, as Selina’s are generally more well-defined. Felicia’s claws are made of an unspecific metallic mesh, and while Selina has sharpened hers to a molecular level, Felicia’s can and have failed to pierce certain dense metals in the past. 

Interestingly, Selina has resisted Scarecrow’s infamous fear toxin - the one that causes synaptic and neural misfires - in the past. Real sedatives like nitrous oxide affect the central nervous system, which might suggest some degree of Selina’s resistance to disruptions to the central nervous system (fear toxin) could work against Felicia’s sedatives. It may not be an explicit immunity, but it is interesting to note.

Functionally, both claws are potent enough to land a direct killing blow - whether it's through molecular sharpening, or by having cut through more impressive foes in the past. Selina could possibly resist the sedatives in Felicia’s claws to some degree, while the reverse isn’t true at all; but Felicia’s ability to launch her claws as projectiles gives her a small but notable range advantage as well. Both characters have been downed by electric shocks before, but also resisted them in other instances, somewhat cancelling this factor out overall.

Whips/Cables

Comparing the Cat O’Nine Tails and Felicia’s Cat Cable/Bladed whip, Selina’s more relatively mundane cable here is clearly outmatched. To her credit, the Cat O’Nine Tails (what a mouthful) boasts impressive feats, like being durable enough to restrain Batman, or breaking through metal chains. Obviously, it’s useful for disarmament in battle, bodily constriction, and general maneuverability across the terrain. Clocking in at 8 feet long, it’s certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Felicia’s Cat Cable, however, is much, much longer - staggeringly so - at a massive 1,000 feet in length. In addition to being a cable, it doubles as a grapple hook with a claw, and can be launched from her gloves, meaning it’s always a viable option for her to use. More importantly, though, Felicia’s Cat Cable can match all of the utility of Selina’s whip and offer more, operating as a taser and acting as a tracking device planter. The bladed whip variant is even more dangerous, as it has slashed Spider-Man level characters open with ease, and it also retains the taser capability of the normal whip. 

No matter how you slice it, Felicia’s options here are stronger, with more outright potency in battle, equal utility, and a comically large edge in length and range. Granted, Selina can compensate; she has a grappling hook in addition to her cable, but these tools are notably separate quantities, whereas everything Felicia needs is packed in one/two options.

Miscellaneous Tools

Both cat burglars here are packing certain key items that could turn the tides of battle instantly, whether it be through incapacitation, utility, or completely disabling other options entirely. 

Let’s start off simple with Dronsey, Felicia’s handy pet, uh, drone. This cute little device can scan any area assigned by Felicia, and doubles as a flashbang in a pinch. Unfortunately, this is ill-suited for countering Selina’s stealth, as the Catwoman just so happens to conveniently have an anti-drone camouflage cape. Not only is she imperceptible to Dronsey, Selina also has access to a drone-jamming gun, which… jams drones, disabling them from their functions. Pretty straightforward counter there, sorry Dronsey nation.

Both combatants have access to tranquilizers; for Selina, this comes in the form of hand-thrown powder, chloroform, and bombs. Comparatively, Felicia has knockout gas pellets and a narcpatch that incapacitates people on contact. Both characters here have gas masks, so in practice, only the chloroform and narcpatches would be effective. Given both characters can kill each other with their claws anyway, incapacitation through physical application is unreliable and hardly a game-changing factor to consider.

More pressing would be two factors unique to both Selina and Felicia here; the EMP and teleporter belt, respectively. While neither is strictly ‘standard’ to the characters, they’ve never exactly lost either, and both would be insanely impactful in this fight. The benefit of free-range teleportation should be blatantly obvious here, with Felicia being slighter faster. If she were to utilize the belt, it’d drastically reduce Selina’s odds of ever landing a killing blow, even without factoring in the bad luck powers. On the flip side, if Selina were to use her skyscraper-range EMPs more liberally, she’d have much better odds of disabling Felicia’s Quantum Probability Pulsator (more on that very soon!), which would essentially be an instant-win in practice. 

Ultimately, neither character depends on either tool all that frequently, and their impact on the fight can be thought to essentially cancel out - not in a literal sense, but in that both have an additional win condition, and therefore, the ‘needle’ here isn’t moving in anyone’s favor more than the other. 

Quantum Probability Pulsator

Black Cat’s bad luck powers were always going to be the most important aspect of this debate to settle. Does it make her an immortal, untouchable, unbeatable god, or is it completely unusable? Can Selina disable it somehow? Would she even have a chance to? Let’s get into it.

Starting off, the QPP is an implant, which means it’s definitely not easily discernible from the outside. Her EMP, mentioned above, could disable the QPP in theory, but without a good reason to use it, it’s unlikely she would make the attempt. Let’s put it this way, there’s not even an actual image of the QPP. We’ve never actually seen it, which speaks to how hidden the implant really is. 

As for the QPP’s actual impact on the fight, it doubles as both a defensive and offensive measure. Felicia can consciously disable weapons on-sight, deactivated Mysterio’s tech in a battle, threatened to bust Spider-Man’s appendix, and much, much more. Felicia’s bad luck powers can cause her victims to suffer environmental damage, drop held objects, and shatter items. On the defensive side, she’s been able to evade Electro’s lightning, was protected from dangerous falls, caused weapons to break while being used on her, and her subconscious ‘protected’ her by constantly applying bad luck toward someone she viewed as a threat (Mary Jane).

That said, it is not all-powerful. Selina would have no answer against Felicia’s bad luck powers destroying equipment or causing her random, unpredictable misfortune, but the effects of Felicia’s bad luck is scarcely explicitly lethal. For someone as skilled as Selina, recovering from a fall is elementary, she has a ton of weapons to cycle through if one breaks, etc. 

In addition, Felicia’s QPP has a very spotty record of actually failing to protect her in battle, and in fact, Felicia herself doesn’t always make the best use of her powers. The QPP didn’t activate to stop Hawkeye and Deadpool from stealing items from Felicia, nor did it protect her from being incapacitated by a Hydra soldier. She wasn’t protected from electrocution whilst trying to catch Howard the Duck, and she’s taken lengthy falls out of buildings, with her powers unable to do anything to stop it. People like Black Fox have used smokescreens to escape Felicia just fine, with her powers failing to kick in to prevent such an action from occurring. She’s been beaten up plenty of times, such as during her fight with Silk, the Thieves Guild, or a Kraven robot. On the flip side, she’s failed to use her powers in battles with Silk (again), Taskmaster and Black Ant, various super-soldiers, Vulture, and more.

All that is to say, Selina can definitely still win; Felicia has been defeated many times. We know that the effects of her bad luck powers are inconsistent and unpredictable. Technically, Felicia could explode Selina’s appendix by complete chance; but by that same metric, it’s equally likely that Selina simply gets the upper hand in a close brawl once, slashing Felicia’s throat before the QPP can ever kick in. 

However, Felicia’s powers grow in efficiency the more she gives in to her “ruthless side”. That’s not insignificant here, as it suggests Felicia would be more likely to use her powers offensively to disrupt and inhibit Selina actively in the fight. That’s the real x-factor in this fight; the QPP effectively compensates for Felicia’s huge disadvantage in skill and experience by forcing Selina on the defensive, almost inherently from the onset. These abilities compliment Felicia in active combat and decision making, meaning that, as the fight opens with both going in, Selina not only has to anticipate, evaluate and avoid Felicia’s normal attacks, she also has to perfectly adapt to, say, one of her claws just exploding, or her whip getting caught in its’ holster just long enough to give Felicia the time to draw hers first. Broadly and individually speaking, Selina can likely handle most situations spawned by the QPP, but in a fight this close where one strike determines the outcome, Felicia’s powers are simply the better way to definitively swing those odds.

Tertiary Factors

All things considered, this segment is the most straightforward of the three, in the sense that Selina essentially runs away with the majority of advantages and it’s not particularly close, though some aspects are still more nuanced. As far as established martial arts are concerned, Selina knows all of them, hand to hand and with weaponry, and is trained by one of the best mentors in the world. She can learn new moves and memorize them for life just by watching them, and can rapidly improve and adapt mid fight to counter her opponents. In comparison, Felicia’s abilities in sheer martial combat are rather limited. It might sound silly to say she “only” knows two martial arts, those being Goju-Ryu karate and judo, but compared to someone like Selina it’s woefully insufficient. This is reflected in her performance against master martial artists in her own world, with her having lost to Moon Knight and generally having poor performances against anyone moderately skilled. And between the two of them, Selina has a vastly more extensive combat history and resume across a much wider range of appearances. Skill, experience, training, adaptation, and overall combat record all go to Selina.

While Selina sweeps most tertiary categories, there are some aspects where Felicia can compete more effectively. For starters, stealth is pretty much off the table, due to Felicia’s infrared contact lenses. Selina has been detected by infrared before, and while she has managed to sneak her way around the Azbat Suit, which has infrared vision built into its visor, this particular application of the suit is something that needs to be switched on rather than a passive function, and there is no indication that Jean-Paul switched it on in the instance with Selina. With this in mind, outside of perhaps remaining outside her field of vision, Selina’s ability to sneak up on Felicia or catch her off guard is limited. This isn’t insignificant, since catching Felicia off guard when she doesn’t think she’s in danger would be a potential counter to her bad luck aura, so the fact that’s off the table is a very good thing for her.

Selina has a couple fights against a villain named Cat-Man, who possesses superpowers from his cowl that give him supernatural good luck. Despite these powers, which allowed Cat-Man to defeat Batman in mere moments, Selina has held him off for minutes at a time, defeated him via stealing his cowl, and even beaten him outright. With this in mind, one might argue that Selina’s experience against luck manipulation would give her a leg up against Felicia’s bad luck aura. However, the reality is more nuanced than that. For starters, though she knows to target the source of these kinds of powers, as shown by her snatching the cowl, Felicia’s implants are much more hidden and indiscernible than Cat-Man’s cowl, which Selina was aware of beforehand.

For another, we actually went through and read Cat-Man’s entire comic history to verify whether his feats with luck compare to Felicia’s… and frankly, he kind of sucks. His showings are entirely defensive for the most part, and also incredibly inconsistent, with large portions of his history spent without powers. It’s sometimes even presented ambiguously whether his supernatural luck is even real in the first place, though other instances make it clear that it is. Compared to Felicia, whose luck powers have a much clearer and more extensive and powerful effect on her opponent, and whom she can control somewhat actively depending on the circumstances, he’s a fraud. With that in mind, Selina doesn’t really have good showings against a luck manipulator on Felicia’s level. Against the probability-altering Miss Fortune, who could manipulate bad luck much more actively, Selina was unable to fight back at all.

Selina does have overall better stamina, having gone for three days without rest. Pain tolerance and endurance, however, is a closer comparison. Selina has endured pain from radiation sickness equivalent to having her insides liquefied, and frequently shrugs off stabbings and broken bones. Felicia on the other hand has survived impalement by Wolverine’s claws, shrugged off a 300 volt taser, and was able to recover fairly quickly from seven gunshot wounds from Diamondback. All things considered they’re probably fairly relative, though both of their ability to power through mortal injuries is still limited and a fatal wound will still be fatal for both regardless of their endurance.

Interestingly, both fighters would thrive in battle against each other, respectively being the sort of opponent that each of them excels against. Selina is at her best when her back is against the wall and the odds are against her, which allows her to become much more wild, dangerous, and precisely effective in such situations due to her thrill seeker personality. Against someone like Felicia, whose powers stack the odds against her, Selina would essentially “get hyped” and lock in to fight much more effectively than normal. Likewise, as Selina becomes more deadly, Felicia would in turn become more ruthless, at which point her powers sharpen in intensity and become more focused, sometimes becoming more akin to telekinesis than random occurrences. As this happens things get even more unfavorable for Selina, which in turn causes her to become more locked in, essentially creating a dynamic where the two of them mutually bring out the other’s potential more and more as the fight goes on.

Lastly, Selina’s seduction tactics probably wouldn’t be too effective in this fight. Sure, they’re both bi, so Felicia’s not exactly impervious to womanly charms, but Selina has only ever actively attempted to seduce men mid-combat, with her dating history with women being much more limited. It’s not really in character for her to try it here, with that in mind. Even if she did, Felicia could probably turn the tables on her, given that she was able to successfully charm the literal goddess of thieves, so her rizz feats are undeniably superior. If either of them is getting flustered or distracted here, it’s Selina.

It was definitely of incredible importance that we cover this. Look at how serious I am. 😠

Conclusion

"I’m at my best when the stakes are high and the odds are against me. Dangerous? Definitely. But the sweetest victories are those hardest won."

Advantages:

• Slightly stronger

• Slightly more durable

• Much, much more skilled in melee combat

• More experienced

• Better stamina

• Can oneshot with claws, especially with sedatives

• Better overall combat record

• Capable of learning and adapting mid-fight

• Experienced in fighting other claw users

• Has some minor experience against luck manipulators

• More effective when fighting at a disadvantage

• Can resist mind control

• Can counter gases with gas masks

Disadvantages:

• Slightly slower

• Counters to bad luck aura would require specific tactics like EMPs, which she doesn’t use commonly in character

• Lacks a solid method of discerning or locating Felicia’s implant

• Stealth would be ineffective against Felicia’s scanners

• Lacks sedative immunity

• Vulnerable to electricity if her suit is pierced

• Disadvantaged at long range

• Out-rizzed

• People are gonna skip to the end of the blog and think she got stomped 😔

“I’m not a hero, I’m a thief. Born a thief, raised a thief, will die a thief.”

Advantages:

• Slightly faster

• Better ranged arsenal

• Can oneshot with claws & blade whip

• Bad luck powers can disable equipment & force Selina into unpredictable situations

• Bad luck powers can potentially protect from dangerous situations

• QPP implant is nigh-impossible to discern or locate

• Sedatives could impede Selina’s combat ability

• Multiple avenues for electrocution

• Can counter gases with gas mask

• Lenses completely counter stealth

• Objectively superior rizz

Disadvantages:

• Slightly weaker

• Slightly less durable

• Significantly less combat skill

• Terrible combat record, especially against highly skilled opponents like Selina

• Less experience overall

• Less stamina

• QPP could theoretically be disabled with EMP

• Vulnerable to sedatives

• Insanely carried by a character with 6 total appearances

Ultimately, this is a much closer fight than it seems on the surface. Whether you take Selina at her direct strength showings or her scaling to the broader DC cast, Catwoman is stronger than Black Cat. On the other hand, Felicia is consistently faster than the likes of Silk and Venom, affording her several degrees of superiority above faster-than-light combat speed. Selina can definitely keep up with speed gaps, demonstrated by her fight with Zeiss, but the Black Cat edges out in agility. 

At long range, Felicia has a better, more potent arsenal with her darts, tasers, and 1,000 foot long Cat Cable. Her bladed whip performs similarly to her claws when it comes to slashing Spider-Men, granting her a dangerous long-distance weapon to end the fight with. Up close, Selina clearly holds the advantage with a massive skill difference. Felicia’s bad luck aura could give Selina trouble there, but Felicia’s been bested in fisticuffs aplenty regardless of her powers. Add on Selina’s superior stamina, experience, and combat skill, Catwoman has the edge in melee.

Frankly, this fight has a ton of small details that could easily swing the verdict. If Selina could avoid Felicia’s anti-stealth lenses, it’s possible she could get a killing blow off without Felicia even having a chance to react. If Selina could detect the QPP implant, she could actively target or work around its effects. If Selina used her EMPs more frequently or subtly, she’d have a chance to disable the QPP before Felicia can actively disable or destroy them, all but sealing Felicia’s fate. If Selina had an immunity to Felicia’s sedatives, or even had better armor, Felicia’s claws might not be so potent. Hell, if Cat Man wasn’t a fraud and had better powers, it’s entirely possible Selina could fold Felicia just as bad as she folds him through more direct, comparable relevant experience against the same powerset.

Catwoman certainly had purr-suasive arguments to be made, but Black Cat’s bad luck powers in-tandem with her slightly better speed, range, and arsenal made it paw-ssible for Felicia to litter-ally claw her way to victory. This fight ended in cat-astrophe, but Felicia is probably feline pretty good about it now, eh? 

The winner (by a whisker) is Felicia Hardy, the Black Cat.