Catwoman
By Ed Brubaker, et al.

After reading the Comics Journal interview, I finally gave in and bought the first two collections of Ed Brubaker's Catwoman. Read the first one last night. All by Brubaker, Darwyn Cooke and Mike Allred. There are two stories here. The first was a backup from Detective Comics meant to setup the ongoing series. It stars hardboiled detective Slam Bradley (what an awful name). Slam is hired by Gotham's mayor to find out if Catwoman is really dead (apparently, she died in some story). Cooke uses a heavier ink line here, fitting the story (almost entirely told in 9-panel grid. Notable exception is several panels where Cooke gets his Krigstein on).

Bad kitty. Good pussy.

Brubaker assumes a pretty authentic Raymond Chandler voice for the piece; but the closer he gets to Chandler, the worse it works as comics. I like Brubaker and enjoyed both Scene of the Crime and Sleeper, but he has the same problem in all his writing: Evoking the Chandler voice. Why is it a problem? Well, Chandler's voice is a stroytelling voice. It's meant to be all-inclusive, no extraneous matter. There's really almost no need for Cooke's drawings, and they are forced to act as illustrations rather than as storytelling devices in themselves. The other problem with this story (and maybe it is rectified later) is that it is a mystery. A real Chandler mystery. Which means that the case isn't the mystery so much as why the other characters hired Slam is. And that doesn't get resolved.

The second story, reprinting the first four issues of Catwoman are much, much better. Brubaker basically does away with the past ten years worth of Catwoman stories and essentially takes the character back to where Frank Miller and David Mazzucheli left her off in Batman Year One. The best part about this is that he makes Catwoman interesting and begins building a smart supporting cast around her. Actually, that isn't the best part. The best part is that Cooke (a former member of Bruce Timm's animating team) is allowed to really cut loose. Gone is the nine-panel grid, and in it's place is something more like Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan. The page gets subdivided again and again, never losing clarity, exposing the meticulousness of a former catburglar's lifestyle. His line is much more open and lively, and you get the impresion that he may have been involved in some of the better Batman Animated Series episodes. There are some weaknesses (the villain is too much of a Batman villain and Batman is used a little too much), but the storytelling is excellent, and Brubaker's dialogue is a great mix of crime fiction and Jamie Hernandez. Also, the costume is great.

Well, I've almost finished reading the second Catwoman trade, and I've come to a conclusion: This book is written way to young for me. It reminds me too much of all those DC superhero books I never read in the eighties and nineties. If they collect more, I probably won't get them. This makes me doubt that I'll buy the Catwoman OGN that Darwyn Cooke did by himself. Well, Brubaker still has Sleeper and Authority collections coming in the future. Still, there are things worth mentioning.

The art for most of this book is done by another Timm/Dini allum by the name of Brad Rader. What Rader lacks in varied and emotive facials and body language (two of Cooke's strengths you might not notice until they're gone), he makes up for with really tiny, detailed panels and creative angles. Mirror shots, upshots and from behind shots that are very impressive. And keep the book moving fast until you stop to say "How'd he do that?". Art-wise, the book starts off very strong. Rader squeezes information into nine, twelve and even thirteen panels per page. Cameron Stewart does a great job of matching Rader's clean work with a nuanced line and non-obstructive blacks. My first reaction was that the art might be even better than Stewart's, because Stewart seems to be approaching the work with fresh #2 brushes and possibly #1s, creating a high-contrast noir look without the slap-dash brushwork of Cooke's Slam Bradley story. The title of the book is something like "The Dirty Little Streets" or something like that, but should be "You Won't Realize How Much you Liked It Until It's Gone." Like Cooke's figure work. Like Cameron Stewart after he leaves and is replaced by Rick Burchet (who appears to ink with a wedge marker) and most of all, Matt Hollingsworth.

Color Me Badd

I don't think I wrote about Hollingsworth before. Let me correct that. Hollingsworth, after his work both on this book and on Daredevil (and I think some of The Filth) is now my favorite colorist, topping even Chris Ware, Laura Allred, Lynn Varley and Steve Buccelato. If you read the book, belive me, you will know right away when Hollingsworth leaves and Lee Loughrige take over without looking at the credits. Hollingsworth works entirely in flat colors on Catwoman and adopts a fantastic near-monochromatic look for the night scenes and a bright, but tasteful, complementary color pallete for the day scenes (Loughrige tries to work in this vein but trips up almost imediately when he chooses a lime green hue for both a high-contrast panel that should have been monochromatic and a monochromatic office page that shouldn't have been lime fucking green). It's those monochromatic panels and pages though. Purplish-grey skin against deep-purple night skies, reddish brown warehouses—it almost sounds sickening until you see it in use. Beautiful. Hollingsworth gives a tutorial on his coloring style in one of the Daredevil hardcovers (I think he did this online for an underwater base/dolphin page from the Filth), but his style on this book is so different that I want to see his process for this as well. On those books, he does a lot of watercolor work that he scans in to create texture (not to mention scanning old comics for texture). It's a rough, dirty, sponged-on look in Daredevil and a bright, glowing one on the Filth. But these are just flat colors. We're talking Chris Ware acuity here.

As for the stories in this book... eh. The first story turns out to be a prologue to the main story but reads like one of those bad Marvel fill-ins from the late eighties where a long-running story would suddenly stop and Herb Trimpe would be brought in to do a story about some two-bit thug selling drugs and a kid getting caught in the crosshairs, giving our hero a reason to "teach somebody a lesson." Then it's a four-part story so convoluted and non-sensical... corrupt cops killing undercover cops and trading heroin for diamonds and a plan that almost matches the Punisher's in that movie for overly, needlessly complicated revenge. You have this character that has been abused, worked as a prostitute, a cat burglar and a supervilain. She is trying to become a vigilante, a hero to drug addicts, the poor and, well, prostitutes, but there is none of the moral debate you have in Sleeper, none of the gruesome reality or tawdry sensationalism of Scene of the Crime.

There's just not much meat. And the last page of the story promises that the big villain to come is a Batman Z-Lister that could be portrayed by Al Jolson or Neil Diamond in the movie: Black Mask.

—Justin J. Fox