In this review of Catwoman #70, Selina faces old friends and assassins galore as she explores Berlin.
Catwoman #70 main cover by Sebastian Fiumara
Catwoman #70
Writer: Torunn Gronbekk
Artist: Fabiana Mascolo
Colors: Patricio Delpeche
Main Cover: Sebastian Fiumara
Variant Covers: Frank Cho, Homare, W. Scott Forbes
Release Date: November 20th, 2024
This review contain spoilers
Catwoman #70 begins as Selina wanders Berlin in disguise, looking for people and clues to help her figure out who put a price on her head. She meets her old friend Suzy Sinner from her Evie Hall days, and they talk about their old job working for Theodore Belov (now dead) “gentleman criminal”, his three sons who hate each other, and their mother Katarina in Budapest. A powerful crime family war, a sealed vault, and other plot pieces dangle in the wind. Assassins and their informants swirl around Selina. Cornered by amateurs on a rooftop, a professional contemptuously takes them out, and Selina slips away, beginning to plan to fight back.
Analysis
In Catwoman #70, writer Torunn Gronbekk sets the action in Berlin. While a neat setting, and Catwoman has been a globe trotting solo character before in the 90s, a couple of flaws hold this installment down from being quite as compelling as the first issue. While the dark family drama and secrets from the past plus an innocent girl caught in the web of violence and deceit are all tried and true hardboiled crime tropes, Gronbekk doesn’t write the evil characters with quite enough verve, nor the good characters with enough sympathy to get the emotions very invested. Looking at the recent Penguin show, every character in that story was monstrous – selfish and violent in the extreme – but showrunner Lauren LeFranc and her team of writers crafted razor sharp dialogue, carefully considered actions that reveal character, and structured plot to keep emotions invested despite the despicable nature of the protagonists and antagonists. There isn’t quite enough here to latch onto yet – and while I’m sure Gronbekk is layering pieces of character for a long term story, I’m still very hesitant to think new characters are cool after the intensely frustrating Orgham saga by Ram V in Detective Comics.
Another misstep, in my view, is the choice not to have Selina don her cowl as Catwoman at all, though she does at least have some action and show off the body of her new suit. Priest often played with the idea of flouting superhero comic conventions in his powerful Deathstroke run, but he almost always made sure to feature Deathstroke being impossibly badass every issue, even if just for a page or two. I think in general any superhero character in their own title should have a page or two of action in their costume, even if just in flashback as in Tom King’s elegiac “Cold Days”.
Artist Fabiana Mascolo and colorist Patricio Delpeche create a clean lined crime comic look, with lovely watercolor pastel hues, grimy rooftops, and punchy action scenes. There’s still a sense of a stronger, more experienced art team than Nico Leon’s work in the last Catwoman run, though not quite as distinctive as the similar work of Sean Phillips in his crime comics. In general, the art serves the story quite well, and I hope Gronbekk unleashes Mascolo a lot more to do beautiful action scenes with her new costume design, as well as some more intense emotional scenes.
The brilliant Seba Fiumara continues with his second cover of this new run, playing many fun visual/historical jokes with the many faces of Selina Kyle – spot all the references to various versions of Selina and other Batfamily characters! Frank Cho’s lovely, seemingly simple cover of Selina reclining with a cat on her shoulder and batarang before her continues his masterful use of design, sensual appeal, and humor. Homare’s variant showcases Catwoman’s new costume cleavage in a fisheye composition reminiscent of some of Artgerm’s work. W. Scott Forbes’s 1 in 25 incentive variant shows a sexy and confident Catwoman with really big metal nail/claws facing the audience.
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Final Thoughts
While Gronbekk does a good job of building tension and Mascolo renders conversation and action beautifully, this second issue loses a bit of steam from the first.
