THIS WEEK: Old Lady Selina gets the ending she deserves in Catwoman: Lonely City #4. 
Note: the review below contains spoilers.  If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdicts.


Catwoman: Lonely City #4

Writer, artist, colorist, letterer, and cover: Cliff Chiang

When we were divvying up weeks for the Round-Up, I originally picked this week because it was the final issue of a Black Label series that I had been long awaiting. Unfortunately, Wonder Woman: Historia #3 has been delayed, so I had to come up with something else to review.

Luckily, it wasn’t hard to do so, as another fantastic Black Label series is ending this week. So instead of Historia, I get to talk about Lonely City, and that’s not a bad trade at all.

Cliff Chiang is the only creative force on this book, even going so far as to do his own lettering, and that makes the book have a very consistent vision throughout the four-issue run. Chiang knew exactly what story he wanted to tell, and how he wanted it to look, and the end result was a gorgeous and thoughtful story.

More importantly, it’s a type of story we see a lot of, but with a character type that we don’t often see in this archetypal story. There are dozens of old-man Batman stories. Bunches of old-man Superman. Old Man Logan spawned a dozen sequels over at Marvel and got adapted into one of the best superhero movies of all time. But rarely do we get to see “Old Lady” versions of this story. Sure there are some Wonder Woman stories that can fit the bill, and there was Captain Marvel: The End, but the number of times we see this type of story for women is negligible.

And never before have I seen it done with the poise that Chiang manages it. His Selina is most definitely in her golden years, a bit too old for this crap, but she still is sensual, she still is sexual. She is still very much the Selina Kyle we know and love, just a bit older and wiser. And that holds true for everyone in this book, they’re all believable endings for the characters, and everything felt set up and earned within the story.

The one disappointment I had was that the Zatanna cameo was so very short. I would have loved to see a little more of Cliff’s Zee, but what we did see was a nice little cutaway. That said, the book was packed with characters, and while the Demon maybe got a little more page time than I’d have liked, at least Chiang made him look incredible every time we saw him.

The introduction of a variant Lazarus Pit that extends your life but only briefly was a nice touch, especially with the idea that it would give Selina the strength surge needed to take out Harvey’s troops. The added personal conflict of whether or not to use it really gave some weight to the issue. In the end, the right decision was made and Selina ended her story the only way she could, by training the next Catwoman.

Verdict: BUY 


Round-Up

  • Action Comics #1048 continues the return of Kal-El story, and it’s interesting that the stories of Superman: Son of Kal-El and Action are both part of this “crossover” but both very clearly have their own stories without much to do with each other. I do love seeing the New Gods show up though, and the back-up story with David Lapham drawing Kara was fantastic.
  • I love what Tim Drake: Robin is doing with exploring the detective story genre. It’s nice to see a writer play with the fact that Tim is one of, if not, the best detectives in the DC Universe, and that he even outshines Batman on occasion in that respect. That on top of him juggling his personal life makes his story engaging and relatable.

Miss any of our earlier reviews? Check out our full archive!

1 COMMENT

  1. I guess after they finish up Swamp Thing: Green Hell, the large format for these Black Label books are basically kaput. Retailers complain how they’re a hard sell. Personally, I love them. I wish Allred’s Superman: Space Age was done in a larger format.

    ~

    Coat

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