Broken Frontier

Guilem March defines down-and-dirty sexy in the new Catwoman series, featuring a feline fatale that's more likely to user her charms and claws in a killer comic book combo.

Freed from responsibilities, Catwoman is once again the anti-hero thief of Gotham City. Her friendship with other Gotham City sirens is over, she's not bogged down by another Catwoman, sidekick, or child, and doesn't even have the nagging problem of knowing who's under the hood of the Caped Crusader. Like many heroes of the New 52, Catwoman has been simplified and boiled down to her purest essence; she's not encumbered by years of backstory and circumstance, she's exactly what people in the mainstream know. She's a thief that tends to foul up Batman's plans, while managing to keep readers and characters guessing which side she truly stands on. At times, she's even all-too-similar to Marvel's Black Cat: thieves at heart that tend to have carnal relations with heroes.

Judd Winick takes command of the cat with this series. In its best and original days, Gotham City Sirens was written by Paul Dini with art by Guillem March. The series combined the antics of Catwoman, Harley Quinn (both of which had headlined their own series in the past), and Poison Ivy. One of the most underrated books of the past decade, it had a writer who truly loved and cared for those characters (having co-created one) with an artist that defines sexy and stands amongst peers such as Frank Cho, Terry Moore, and Adam Hughes. It's not even just the sexual that he defines; sure, a few pages and panels in this new Catwoman are jaw-droppingly gorgeous (and with Catwoman in disguise for a chunk, it's not even repetitive), but forgettable things like the look on the faces of disgruntled cats, Selina's face watching her apartment burn, and even the weathered appearance of her confidant are all things that could have been glossed over or turned into stock models.

Winick's writing, as tends to be, is a mixed bag. The plot itself is fine, and the debate over the last few pages is irrelevant (superheroes having sex is nothing new, this exact pair of superheroes having sex is either not new or has been heavily implied, and there's no nudity or out-of-character moments), but Winick can be a little heavy-handed and blunt at times. Awkward bits of Catwoman referring to her iPhone as a "talkie-talk" and her cats as "babies" seem out of character, but that just may be part of a personality shift. The narrative structure of the book is slightly awkward; it doesn't work exactly as internal monologue (describing friends for the reader), but it doesn't work as commentary (being surprised by an explosion). It's as if a novel can't decide which point of view it wants to write from.

Catwoman is definitely one of the best drawn books of the New 52, perfectly capturing the essence of the character. Winick tends to be a good writer, but Guillem March's amazing pencils should be the reason you deserve to steal this book in an elaborate heist.