The last time I reviewed this book, the "Relentless" story was just starting, and I was greatly impressed. Here we are three issues later, and I remain greatly impressed. Stewart's art is the best to grace the book since Darwyn Cooke kicked things off, and Brubaker has really turned up the darkness in the script, resulting in a moody noir tale that pulls no punches and leaves me absolutely riveted, worried about the fates of these characters. Make no mistake... Catwoman isn't a super-hero comic these days. It's a crime comic, and it's a damn good one.
While I'm a longtime fan of super-heroes and the somewhat simplistic good vs. evil morals that they represent, I've found as I've gotten older that I also have a fondness for the darker side of life. The private investigator whose toughness gets him into trouble, the femme fatale who has grown up and started to take responsibility for others, the young street kid who is finding that getting older doesn't necessarily mean things getting better and a variety of other characters make for a complex set of relationships. While Catwoman's point-of-view is romanticized to some degree and she is made the no-question hero of the book, she retains some of her edge and has become plenty more interesting now that she actually seems to care about other people on a more regular basis.
It's this caring nature, her relationships to others, that really make this issue work, because one of her old friends is using them against her. Thus we get things like Slam Bradley hospitalized, Holly attacked and much, much worse done to Selina's sister. In fact, what's going on with Maggie and her husband represents some of Brubaker's most disturbing and effective work on the issue, because no matter what happens, things will never be entirely OK for those two again. At any rate, the villains in this issue hurt Selina to the point where her drive for revenge seems logical more than just passionate, and you can root for her despite her very violent actions in the end. Brubaker uses Selina's narration to turn her into a pulp style protagonist, driven by her pain and unforgiving toward her enemies, reminiscent of Phillip Marlowe or (in more modern terms) Richard Stark's Parker.
Then there's the artwork, and it's really understating things to say that Cameron Stewart is doing a phenomenal job. The same storytelling ability and sense of design that defined the book is on display here, but with an individual style that sets Stewart's work apart. In addition to the obvious look of the animated series, I see some of the darkness and exaggerated human misery that David Lapham does so effectively in Stray Bullets, particularly in the torture scenes, while the chase/fight scene at the end has the same slick feel and flow that Cooke brought to the heist sequence in Selina's Big Score. I particularly loved Selina's kick and disarm move, and the martial arts sequence that followed.
Brubaker spent the first year of this title establishing Selina Kyle and her new supporting cast and status quo, and he began his second year with what looked like a new happiness and positive direction for her. The remainder of this story seems to be about kicking the chair out from under her, taking away a glimpse of a happy life and dumping her back into the dark world she's used to, and that's both a terrible and terribly interesting thing to do to the character.
