DC Round-Up: It’s daddy issues all the way down in CATWOMAN #83

THIS WEEK: We spotlight Selina Kyle’s continued international escapades, with a review of Catwoman #83. We’ve also got quick-hit reviews of DC K.O.: Green Lantern Galactic Slam #1, Superman Unlimited #9, and Nightwing #134.

Note: The reviews below may contain spoilers.

Catwoman #83

Writer: Torunn Grønbekk
Artists: Danilo Beyruth, Patricio Delpeche
Inkers: Danilo Beyruth, Joe Prado, Adriano Di Benedetto
Colorist: Patricio Delpeche
Letterer: Steve Wands
Cover: Seba Fiumara

We haven’t discussed Catwoman much lately, have we? So let’s fix that. Over the last 15 issues, writer Torunn Grønbekk has turned Catwoman into a tight, tense international crime thriller, which never fails to keep me on the edge of my seat. Here, Grønbekk is joined by artistic collaborators Danilo Beyruth, Patricio Delpeche, Joe Prado, Adriano Di Benedetto, and Steve Wands, for the penultimate chapter of a six-part arc pitting Selina against both Carmine “The Roman” Falcone and The Court of Owls. 

Grønbekk’s scripts have a lot of strengths, which her various artistic collaborators lean into and enhance. For example, her narration (often third-person, sometimes first-person for Selina herself) offers glimpses into various characters’ thoughts and motivations, but it never gives away the entirety of those characters’ thoughts. This slight reserve keeps readers guessing at exactly why protagonists and antagonists alike are doing what they are doing. And perhaps more importantly for a thriller, it keeps us guessing at what those characters will do next.

That reserve carries through to Catwoman’s pacing and overall atmosphere, which I’ve settled on describing as “methodical and inevitably tragic.” It’s here that I want to call out how Beyruth and Delpeche’s page layouts and choreography, as well as Wands’s placement of captions and word balloons, serves Grønbekk’s story so well, keeping things moving at the slightly-restrained, just-waiting-to-explode pace Grønbekk is undoubtedly looking for. Reading a page of this team’s Catwoman feels like watching a countdown timer tick another few seconds toward zero, when something terrible will inevitably happen.

The final strength I want to discuss, before getting into my one gripe with this run, is Grønbekk and co.’s handle on Selina Kyle herself. This team’s Catwoman does what she thinks is necessary and right even when she knows it’s wrong. She struggles with her capacity for revenge, duplicity, anger, and violence, while also inevitably continuing to engage in those things. In this arc, Selina and Falcone are both also concerned with family – Selina with her relationship (or lack thereof) to her mother and biological father, and Falcone with his relationship to his own father and the rest of his family. Throughout the story’s twists, turns, and action, that theme shines out, making this arc more than just a well-crafted thrill ride.

The only thing that prevents me from telling you to go and pick up this issue now – to dive into Catwoman with #83 – is that individual, mid-arc issues of Catwoman are not new-reader-friendly. This series has no recap page, and Grønbekk does not especially take the time to reintroduce characters and plots points that featured in previous issues. Thus, when I set out to read and review an issue of Catwoman, I always find myself reading every previous issue in the current arc, so I can understand what’s going on.

If you’re already in on Catwoman, that lack of hand-holding is not a big deal (and some may say it’s another strength). Grønbekk’s stories work quite well when read as a whole. But I would not recommend jumping into this story with this issue, which is not labeled as such, but is part five of six. (This Catwoman team stopped labeling issues with part numbers in #81, perhaps in an attempt to get new readers to try the series without worrying about jumping in mid-story.) Instead, I’d tell you to grab a copy of Catwoman #79, the first part of this story, and move forward from there. This issue will make a lot more sense if you do.  

Crime fiction fans who do catch up on Catwoman will find a lot to love – a gripping thriller starring a conflicted anti-hero who you cannot help but want to see win. And they’ll also be ready for this arc’s finale, which will hopefully provide a confrontation between Selina and the father she’s so enraged with.

The Round-Up

• • I am a Kyle Rayner fan, so I wanted to like DC K.O.: Green Lantern Galactic Slam #1 more than I did. But DCKOGLGS #1 (as we will all now refer to this issue) is more focused on new intergalactic pro wrestler Omega-Bam-Man than Kyle, and that focus propels this one-shot into a frantic, exposition-heavy narrative. It seems like writer Jeremy Adams, artists Cian Tormey and Pat Boutin, and co. needed more than 40 pages to tell this story. As a result, several pages’ pacing and panels-to-word-balloons ratios get thrown out of whack. DCKOGLGS #1 is still an enjoyable romp, but unless you’re a big pro wrestling fan and/or collecting everything related to DC K.O., you can likely pass on this one.
  • Superman Unlimited #9 continues that series’s run of mostly self-contained Superman stories, with the first part of a two-parter featuring The Prankster(s). This issue made me think of the Superman titles’ Triangle Era, as the story writer Dan Slott concocted, and the way Slott is keeping sub-plots running in the background, would fit right into that era. The result is an issue that feels “classic” and approachable, whether you’ve been keeping up with the Superman titles or not. Artist Mike Norton’s solid superhero cartooning, aided by colorist Marcelo Maiolo and letterer Dave Sharpe, keeps the story moving and also conveys that “classic” feeling, making Superman Unlimited #9 a snappy, entertaining read.
  • The “Cirque du Sin” saga reaches its penultimate chapter in Nightwing #134, by writer Dan Watters, artist V Ken Marion, colorist Veronica Gandini, and letterer Wes Abbott. While the DC Round-Up crew highlighted Watters’s Batman: Dark Patterns frequently last year, we shouted out Nightwing less. I suspect that’s due to Nightwing being a bit weirder and less artistically-cohesive than Dark Patterns. Me, I like weird, and I like how Watters has pulled disparate threads of the DC Universe into his run and woven them together. Here, combining those threads pays off in a wild confrontation between Nightwing and this arc’s big bad, the Zanni. Marion, Gandini, and Abbott keep things tense throughout the issue, and they mostly keep up with the strangeness of Watters’s story. However, that “mostly” is carrying a lot of weight, and it speaks to my primary gripe with Watters’s and co.’s Nightwing run to date – the art has not always served the story. For that reason, there’s a high likelihood we’ll be talking about Nightwing more later in the year, after penciller Denys Cowan, inker Norm Rapmund, and colorist Francesco Segala come on board as the series’s regular art team. That said, the “Cirque du Sin” arc seems set to end on a high note, and I’m excited to see how Watters and artist Dexter Soy bring the story to a close next issue.

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