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CATWOMAN #4
"Anodyne Conclusion"
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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DC Comics
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Pencils: Darwyn Cooke
Inks: Mike Allred
Colors: Matt Hollingsworth
Letters: Sean Konot
Editor: Matt Idelson
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
The very first episode of the Batman Animated series I ever saw was a Catwoman episode, and it set the tone for the series for me. It was dark, but it had a core of heroism and hope to it, and it was without a doubt one of the most stylish and distinctive things I had seen in that form. Brubaker, Cooke & Allred have recaptured a lot of that feeling with their first arc of Catwoman, which concludes this issue with a wonderfully strange villain and a nice conclusion to the character-based arc. These creators have turned Catwoman into a must-read crime book,
definitely set in Batman's Gotham but in a side of it we rarely see, and I would
put the work up there with Frank Miller's take on Catwoman.
Much of this issue is given
over to a fight between Catwoman and the powerful killer who has been killing
prostitutes. The killer is physically and mentally quite deformed, and both of
those aspects come through quite well in the story. He's almost sympathetic,
especially when Brubaker is having the character speak as if the origins of his
powers are what have unhinged his psyche, but he's got a sinister edge to him as
well. Cooke features this fluidity and dichotomy in his artwork as well,
depicting a shifting form that varies between pathetic and vicious, depending on
what mindset the killer is occupying.
The action sequences are
fantastic. Catwoman's agility is played up nicely with a constantly moving
camera, and we get a sense of a fight that ranges throughout the room. Cooke
also uses close-ups to establish the claustrophobic feelings as Catwoman is
snatched by the villain, matching that close-up view with slow motion
storytelling that highlights some of the big moments, such as Catwoman's final
weapon used against the villain.
While the action and the
conclusion of the hunt for the killer is certainly exciting, it is by no means
the only good part of the book. In fact, this issue is the setup for the ongoing
status quo of the book, with an interesting role for both Holly and Leslie and a
sense of inner change for Selina that makes her a far more interesting and
complex character. I'm also impressed that Cooke manages the range between dark
and dirty interior for the fights and the brightly-lit daytime sequences where
Holly and Selina start out on their new role.
Catwoman has undergone a complete change of direction,
one that may not sit well with its older fans but which will no doubt interest a
much wider comics audience if they give it a chance. In Brubaker's hands,
Catwoman has been given a new purpose, one that makes absolute sense given her
past and her abilities, but one that takes her off in more interesting
directions than her focus on burglary would ever have taken her.
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