|
CATWOMAN #2
"Anodyne Part Two of Four"
Highly Recommended (9/10)
|
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 |
With much of the basic exposition and backstory out of the way after the first issue, the second issue of Catwoman serves to set up her new status quo, and
I enjoyed it a lot more. Brubaker does a terrific job of giving Selina a cynical
voice tinged with the idealism of wanting to help others, and Cooke and Allred
have given the book a stylish look unlike any other on the stands. It's
difficult to do Catwoman without playing up the T and A angle or the cat burglar
stereotypes, but this creative team has thus far avoided that while staying true
to Selina's sensual and professional nature.
Darwyn Cooke is phenomenal, and though I was
at first not crazy about Allred's inks taking the edge off his work, I found
that it worked much better for me this issue. The infiltration of the police
station was a beautiful piece of work, full of many tiny panels that gave a
sense of a lot of action going on at once and helped to give it a
claustrophobic, time-crunched feeling. Though we can't "hear" the alarms while
reading the comic, Cooke, Allred and Hollingsworth managed to give the reader
the sense of urgency required to make a heist sequence work.
Catwoman has rarely worked as well as she
did in Frank Miller's reinterpretation of the character, and Brubaker seems to
be drawing more from that interpretation than the cocky character we've had in
the DC Universe for so long. She is tormented by the same drive and fear of
failure as Batman, which we see through the inner monologue, and she is someone
who has been forced into what she does by circumstance. Still confident and
capable, Brubaker manages to give Selina a vulnerability that makes her much
more attractive as a protagonist.
Along with the stylish artwork and the more
sympathetic protagonist, this team has brought an interesting mystery to the
book. Someone killing hookers is an old story hook, but there are hints that
there may be some sort of horrific or metahuman elements to the villain, and I'm
curious to find out the identity and the motivation of the killer.
I was also impressed by how the team
portrays the corruption of Gotham right alongside the brighter side of it.
Hollingsworth does some amazing work showing a sunlit day, a regular city, while
Selina and Holly talk about the horrors that are going on under their nose. And
the casual corruption of Gotham's cops is shown in a couple of very effective
sequences, both visual and verbal.
Under Brubaker's reign, Catwoman has been
set up less as a burglar and more as Batman for those who can't actually go to
the Batman, sort of a combination of the vigilante and the outlaw hero
archetypes. It's an intriguing direction, and it's being carried off in a unique
style.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board. |
