Category: Catwoman

By Will Pfeifer, David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-774-7

This action-heavy compilation starts the clean-up process as the current series prepares for cancellation by taking a number of the key premises of this incarnation and negating them. Rather than go for the favoured comics ploys of re-writing reality the creators have opted for Selina Kyle enlisting the aid of trusted friends to cover her tracks and “disappear” her.

Collecting issues #66-72, and featuring a somewhat muddled and misguided cross-over with the DC Universe Event Amazons Attack!, super-thief, single mum, and unelected guardian of Gotham’s East Side Catwoman is driven to finally forsake her life due to her increasingly high profile on the radar of such villains as Lex Luthor, the Calculator, Blitzkrieg and especially the relentless, revenge-obsessed Soviet superhumans Hammer and Sickle.

Although still a good solid read, the end is in sight and creators Pfeifer, Lopez and Lopez know they’re on clean-up detail. Necessary and enjoyable for established fans, but this isn’t the book to start with if you’re a new reader.

© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Will Pfeifer, David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-565-6

During the year she was “missing” from the DC universe Selina Kyle changed her name and had a baby. When she resurfaced it was business as usual for the self-appointed guardian of the Gotham City district known as The East End (See Catwoman: The Replacements ISBN 1-84576-426-9). Her friend and replacement Holly was arrested when she stopped a crime involving the bizarre movie-obsessed psychopath known as the Film Freak.

Now in custody for a murder that Selina actually committed, Holly can only await rescue. Film Freak is free and recreating classic movie scenes with murderous improvisations which the original Catwoman must stop before the final curtain takes all of Gotham with it.

Also included are an extraordinary side-trip to Metropolis to burgle Lex Luthor’s science-vault, a foreboding prelude of the next story-arc and the long-awaited revelation of just who fathered her baby.

Fast-paced and frenetic, this tale (originally released as issues #59-#65 of the Catwoman comicbook) constantly delivers quality action adventure that can’t fail to delight thrill junkies who don’t mind the odd bit of wit and style with their adrenaline.

© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-4012-0432-5

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale continue their continuity reworking shenanigans with this vivid, if lightweight, piece of eye-candy that discloses what Selina Kyle got up to between the end of Batman: The Long Halloween (ISBN: 1-5389-469-6) and Batman: Dark Victory (ISBN: 1-56389-738-5).

Confused, and on the run, Catwoman and the Riddler fly to Italy to escape the wrath of the Gotham City Mob and to track down a new lead into the secret of the slinky one’s (and that would be Selina, OK?) lost and anonymous parentage, only to find themselves co-opted into a major heist whilst trying to avoid being killed by what seems to be Batman’s (other) worst villains.

It’s a stylish homage to Film Noir and Gangster chic, with the odd overtone of late Hitchcock, and readable enough, but lacks the strength and vivacity of the regular Catwoman books, especially those by Brubaker and Stewart, and is not a patch on The Long Halloween.

Such a long-lived and well-rounded character is worthy of more than tinsel and whips, surely?

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Ed Brubaker & Cameron Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: ISBN: 1-84576-190-1

This last collection of tales (taken from Catwoman Secret Files #1 and issues #20 – 24 of her monthly comic) before a major redefinition of the character, sees Selina Kyle take her long time associate (“Don’t call me side-kick”) Holly on a mysterious road-trip across DC Universe America, having adventures in the home cities of other heroes.

After a brief stopover in up-state New York with Wildcat for some self-defence lessons for Holly and a rooftop fight with some Egyptian Cat Cultists, our four-color Thelma and Louise arrive in Keystone City and become involved with Captain Cold’s plan to burglarize the Flash Museum.

As octogenarian Shamus (and sometime paramour) Slam Bradley keeps an eye on Catwoman’s home turf for her, she and Holly hijack a mob hijacking at a diner on the way to Opal City, meeting up with the fondly remembered Bobo Bennetti (from James Robinson’s Starman series), before ending up Down South in St Roch for a team-up with Hawkman and Hawkgirl.

They finally reveal the origins of those cat cultists who have been popping up ever since paragraph two. Most brilliant moment comes as Bradley and Batman have a bitchfight over who gets to be Selina’s boyfriend.

This sassy, thrilling and charming ramble is Brubaker at his streetwise best and the retro styling of Cameron Stewart captures the joy and horror of these extraordinary characters lives in an mesmerisingly subversive way. Utterly recommendable, fun comics.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

  

By Ed Brubaker & Cameron Stewart (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84023-821-6

The latest revamping of the Catwoman continues in this third volume, collecting issues #12-19 of her comic series plus the Secret Files one-shot. The transition from slinky villainess to bad-girl super-thief to anti-hero continues with her making one district of Gotham City her own protectorate, earning the enmity of crime-lord Black Mask.

Apparently, when you annoy a gangster he comes after not only you, not only all your loved ones but even anybody who might have stood next to you on a bus once, and Selina Kyle has to defeat a ruthless and obsessive foe determined to make her an object lesson to all.

This is work that avoids the formula writing of many comic series, and the deceptively simple art style hones that storytelling until it’s like a sleek ice-pick for the eyes – but in a good way. Brubaker and Stewart have fully adapted a classic Noir sensibility to the flash and dazzle of super-hero comics and the resulting feel of grimy authenticity permeates these stories. If this had been the stuff of the film, we’d all still be sitting in those gum smeared seats.

© 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-833-X

It feels odd to plug a book that is so obviously a quick and cheap cash-cow tie-in to a movie (and a bad movie, at that), but the Catwoman volume has a great deal to recommend it. For a start it is quaintly cheap’n’cheerful. The references to the film are kept to an absolute minimum. The selection of reprints, purporting to signify nine distinct takes on the near seventy year old character, are well considered in terms of what the reader hasn’t seen as opposed to what they have. There are also some rare and stunning art pieces selected as chapter heads, too, from the likes of George Perez, Dave Stevens, Alan Davis and Bruce Timm.

The stories themselves obviously vary in quality by modern standards, but serve as an intriguing indicator of taste in the manner of a time capsule. From her first appearance as a mysterious thief (Batman #1 1940), through ‘The Crimes of the Catwoman’ (Detective #203 1954), the wonderfully absurdist ‘The Catwoman’s Black Magic’ (Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #70-71 1966), to the cringingly painful ‘Catwoman Sets Her Claws For Batman’ (Batman #197 1967) one can trace a gradual decline from sexy object of pursuit to imbecilic Twinkie.

In the nonsensical ‘The Case of the Purr-Loined Pearl’ (Batman #210 1969), Frank Robbins slowly (and oh, so terribly gradually) begins her return to major villain status, ‘A Town on the Night’ (Batman #392 1986), shows one of her innumerable romantic excursions onto the right side of the law before ‘Object Relations’ (Catwoman #54 1998), shows us the ghastly Bad-girl version of the glamorous thief.

Mercifully, we then get to the absolutely enthralling ‘Claws’ (Batman: Gotham Adventures #4 1998), produced in the tie-in comic based on the television cartoon but probably the best piece of pure comic book escapism in the whole package. The volume closes with the new, current origin ‘The Many Lives of Selina Kyle’ (Catwoman Secret Files #1 2002), by Ed Brubaker and Michael Avon Oeming and Mike Manley.

Catwoman is possibly one of the few female comic characters that the real world has actually heard of, so it’s great that the whole deal is such a light, frothy outing, as well as having some rarity appeal for the dedicated fan. Go get her, Tiger!

©1940-1955, 1956-2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved

 

By Various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-991-3

If you’re one of the six people who saw the truly abysmal Catwoman film: Sorry, no refunds.

If you bought the movie adaptation comic, here it is again, and even the tremendously gifted Chuck Austen can’t make sense of the silly, silly tale of corporate dogsbody Patience Philips, murdered by her cosmetician boss and revivified by the Cat Goddess to seek revenge. Artists Tom Derenick and Adam DeKraker are competent too, and worth looking at, anywhere but here.

I really enjoyed the other volume designed to cash in on this film (Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale ISBN 1-84023-833-X) but I cannot understand the thinking behind this volume. It also includes one of the many origins of the Selina Kyle incarnation (from Catwoman #0 1994) and two of her later revamps from her current comic series (issues #11 and #25).

Three such disparate and recent inclusions must surely be confusing to the movie-going purchaser who doesn’t know or care about two different Catwomen and this filler must already be known to or ignored by the comic reading audience. Surely they’re not just here as padding, like the sketches by comic superstar Jim Lee who was invited to draw Halle Berry on the set of the film? Nor to justify such a high price tag for a book reprint of a magazine still gathering dust on most comic store’s new comics racks?

Nah!

© 1992, 2002, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.