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I’d heard great things about the Catwoman revamp from Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker (Cooke only stayed on for the first four issues, but redid the costume and logo, while Brubaker did 3 years worth) a long time ago, and I’d even bought the first trade, but it hadn’t struck me as all that special. Nothing bad, just not so interesting.
Then, for whatever reason, years later, I decided to give it another chance last month, starting with the first 24 issues.
I kept reading after that, all the way to the end.
The early issues of Catwoman take away a lot of the super powered insanity you see in the other Batman universe titles; it’s not about super heroes or villains here, it’s about Selina Kyle and her friends. More character driven then superhero driven.
It works. It feels different, but as you read more and more, you’ll really like the difference in storytelling.
This is the reverse of the Batman titles. I’ve been unhappy with the Batman series’ for a long time, and this especially hurts because I’m such a big Batman fan. I think Batman, whose appeal partly lies in the fact that he seems to be the most realistic of the superheroes (You could be like Batman if you were in similar situation, while you could never be Superman), is very unrealistic. Batman is supposed to be a “What If” in an extreme situation, what could happen. Yet, when you see so many people in masks just being super villains or heroes, it doesn’t feel like the extreme created a Batman, that’s just how things are.
In Catwoman, though, Brubaker keeps a realistic feel to it, though I’m not sure that’s quite the right word. It just seems smarter, and not for your average teenage reader. You feel like you’re delving more into each character, rather than watching them fight all the time. You’ve got Selina Kyle, her best friend Holly, noir detective Slam Bradley- the focus is always on them as people. There’s something that you can identify with and understand.
Unfortunately, as Brubaker ends his run, this focus, and the quality, go away as well. While there are some interesting plotlines over the next 40 issues, with Will Pfeifer primarily in control, Catwoman slowly becomes like every other comic- event driven, not character driven. It feels like a generic superhero comic. The Catwoman series was cancelled in mid-arc earlier this year, but once you get to issue 75, you can understand why- it’s not so bad, just not good.
My recommendation: Follow Brubaker’s run from in issues 1-33 (the Wargames issues are worthless, though that’s probably how I feel about all crossovers), after that read until you find it boring. There’s no recovery in quality over time, it just falls away.
Some of the covers from the series (software courtesy of ComicRack- not ComiCrack)
