Broken Frontier

Selina considers who and what she is now that she knows the truth about her reformation. Unfortunately Black Mask isn’t giving her time for introspection.

This story begins to deal with the fallout from the revelations of the previous issue as Selina goes to the one person she believes knows the truth about the person she used to be. Meanwhile, Black Mask sets out to take revenge on Catwoman the best way he knows how – by kidnapping and torturing someone close to her. Can Selina save the day, or will someone else intervene?

Catwoman has had more incarnations than perhaps any DC hero or villain and now Will Pfeifer gives us a twist on what readers thought they knew. I have to admit, it’s been awhile since I picked this title up. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read Catwoman since the early days of Ed Brubaker’s run. As a result I found myself a little lost as to some of the characters and motivations in this issue. I have followed and been following a lot of the action spinning out of Identity Crisis, though, so I was familiar with the basic plot point motivating this story, and may I say, I dislike it. The editorial decision that retroactively made Catwoman a victim of the JLA ‘Personality Revision Squad’ has a number of negative repercussions for several titles but with Catwoman, it regretfully undermines a lot of work writers like Darwyn Cooke (Selina’s Big Score) and Ed Brubaker did on building the reasons for Selina’s change of heart. Perhaps that is why I found it so hard to enjoy this issue.

Will Pfeifer, however, does a solid job on the writing. He makes Selina’s struggle real and gives her an edge of sadness as she mourns the loss of the person she was. I also thought he did an excellent job with Black Mask. Under Pfeifer’s script this villain is sickeningly sadistic. With a general mood of melancholy broken by violence, Pfeifer wisely manages to lighten the script with a chuckle-worthy sequence in an elevator.

Credit is due as well to Pfeifer’s partner-in-crime on this issue – artist Pete Woods. There are many panels of silence here where the characters express their feelings solely with body language – a dialect Woods obviously ‘speaks’ fluently. The aforementioned elevator sequence would not be half as funny without Wood’s art.

Despite all the things this issue had going for it, the editorial direction rather ruined it for me. Another stumbling block, as well, is the fact that this is the middle portion of a three-issue arc, not a good place for a new reader to jump on. That being said, the creative team is talented and Pfeifer’s depiction of Catwoman as a strong woman trying to find her path is interesting. This is a title that might bear another look when DC’s "One Year Later" event begins in March.