In this review of Catwoman #71, Selina faces her past as Evie in Sweden, finding assassins and old crime lords galore.
Catwoman #71 main cover by Sebastián Fiumara
Catwoman #71
Title: “Rules of the Land, Part 1”
Writer: Torunn Gronbekk
Artist: Marianna Ignazzi
Colors: Patricio Delpeche
Main Cover: Sebastián Fiumara
Variant Covers: Frank Cho, Lee Bermejo, David Nakayama, Noobovich
Release Date: December 18, 2024
This review contains spoilers
Catwoman #71 begins 10 years ago in Europe, Selina, going by Evie, trains with a man named Shota, in the world of crime lord Ivan.
Today, she slips into the town of Trelleborg in Sweden, preparing to enter Stockholm as a wealthy new face.
Ivan fights with his brother, but is called to his club, where assassins sit and wait for Selina’s alias, Evie.
Selina calls Evie’s friend Suzy from the last issue as she recovers from her injuries in an ice bath (shown on the cover).
Using her translation earpiece, Selina gets ready to infiltrate Ivan’s club, fighting an assassin on her way up to the rooftops. She tries to get information about the assassin’s sister, but has to flee, breaking one of their spines in the process. With a cat mask, Selina enters the club, seeing Ivan pretentiously quoting Dante, and is ambushed by a man recognizing her as the “dead” Evie, holding a knife to her throat.
Analysis
While artist Marianna Ignazzi and colorist Patricio Delpeche drench Catwoman #71 in mood and setting – from the cold, crisp air of the daytime to the dark, tragic nights, writer Torunn Gronbekk sadly continues with the theme of “Catwoman with no Catwoman”. While Selina does have both a cat-mask scene and a brutal fight scene, they are not combined, and nothing about the current storyline really seems to connect at all with anything that makes Selina Catwoman. It feels more like someone took a Scandinavian crime story a la Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and called the main character Selina Kyle. Hopefully the generic feeling slips away and starts getting layers of Catwoman added onto it.
Additionally, the villain plot is still too vague to really catch in the mind and heart of the reader. Too many details are left for later for us to care about Shota, the sentimental safecracker, or Ivan and his violent relationship with his family/gang. Selina’s fight with the brother/sister assassin team, ending in the sister’s brutal death on the street, has more weight, showing that Gronbekk really can work efficient emotional setup and payoff very quickly. But right now, most of the story isn’t quite managing that same level of punch.
Sebastián Fiumara’s main cover for Catwoman #71 shows the ice bath scene from the interior, though instead of being naked, Selina is wearing her sadly absent Catwoman costume. Frank Cho’s typically excellent black and white with red-outline sketch style portrait of Selina crouching with white cat on her back is lovely, and also available in a virgin option for a 1 in 50 incentive (likely costing at least $50 in shops). Lee Bermejo’s second variant showcases Catwoman with her new cleavage costume against a ludicrously huge moon with a couple cats on the rooftops – an interesting departure from his usual choice to use his own designs. David Nakayama’s artist spotlight cover shows what appears to be Eiko (given the Japanese themed costume and props) in a sexy kimono, parasol, and lucky cat. Noobovich’s 1 in 25 incentive cover shows Catwoman falling backwards into a bright yellow cityscape – a very striking image, with fisheye lens effect.
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Final Thoughts
Solid writing with flashes of intensity in Catwoman #71 can’t disguise the rather generic globe-trotting crime story issue that lacks real Catwoman layers, though Ignazzi and Delpeche’s artwork adds a lot to the setting and emotion of the reading experience. 2.5 out of 5 Batarangs.
