Category: Catwoman

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Catwoman: The Movie & Other Cat Tales

Catwoman: The Movie & Other Cat Tales 

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.

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Catwoman: The Replacements

Catwoman: The Replacements

By Will Pfeifer, David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez

(DC Comics)  ISBN 1-84576-426-9

After the never-ending calamity of the DC Infinite Crisis event of 2005-2006, the company re-set the time line of all their publications to begin one year later. This enabled them to refit their characters as they saw fit, provide a jumping on point for new converts, and also give themselves some narrative wiggle-room. Now read on…

Gotham City is a much changed place one year later. Batman and crew have been absent, crime seems down and Catwoman has also changed. Depending on your point of view, she’s either a completely different person or a single mum just trying to get by as best she can.

It transpires that for the last twelve months Selina Kyle has been living under an assumed identity while she brings to term, and gives birth to, a bonny baby girl. The father remains, for us, unknown, but plenty of likely prospects are presented in the course of events, from Batman and Slam Bradley on down. Wisely, the creators are keeping this one a secret for a while longer.

Of more relevance is the fact that Selina has asked her old sidekick Holly to take over as masked protector of her beloved East End of Gotham City. Despite help and training from a number of veteran crime-fighters such as Wildcat, she’s not quite up the job yet. Selina’s old enemy Angle Man wants revenge, and teams with the truly demented late night TV pundit Film Freak to exact it. Initially, he’s as unaware as the police (who still want ‘Catwoman’ for the murder of crime boss Black Mask) that somebody else is wearing the leather and wielding the whip these days.

It might sound confusing, but this is actually a sharp little revenge-mystery with plenty of spills and chills, full of tense moments and well observed comedy breaks. Obviously there’s a point at which the ‘real’ Catwoman takes over, but the inevitable is well leavened by the ingenious, and even old know-it-alls will acknowledge that this is a plot that’s been tweaked by masters. The Replacements (which collects Catwoman issues #53-58) is good storytelling, and I certainly look forward to the next volume.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.