Knight Terrors: Catwoman #1 // Review
Sister Zero says every sinner needs to be forgiven. It’s a really nice sentiment and everything, but there’s something ever so slightly unsettling about the way that she’s saying it. Maybe it’s the context. Maybe it’s the crazy look in her eyes or who it is that she’s talking to. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s cuddling up to a snake as she says it. Whatever it is, something’s definitely wrong in Knight Terrors: Catwoman #1. Writer Tini Howard gets a hand at this summer’s nightmare crossover with artist Leila Leiz and colorist Marissa Louise. It’s a fun and sweetly poetic dance between dichotomies that serves as another really solid entry into the big summer crossover series.
Some know her as Sister Zero. Some know her as Sister Maggie. Selina knows her only as...Maggie. Her sister. By blood. She might be aware that she’s in a nightmare. Selina might as well. There’s something outside it all that has to do with guilt. Catwoman grew up Catholic in Gotham City. There has GOT to be some kind of serious minefield inherent in THAT situation. It’s not something that she mentions often. She’s forced to think about that and a whole lot else as she tries to extricate herself from her nightmares to save the city in dream so that she can save it in the waking world as well.
Howard is having a delightful time nestling between dichotomy as one sister and the other tackle similar problems in different ways. It's not the type of thing that hasn't been explored on the pages of comic books before. Howard manages to catch it from just the right angle in a way that really amplifies the whole nature of the story. The strange tripping up of the whole situation is something that rests in the background as very real philosophical and theological questions end up revealing themselves in the course of a provocative story.
Leiz and Louise give the nightmare a kind of washed-out quality. There is heavy shadow, yes. But there is a sense of sickly death about the page. Lots of light earth tones and things of that nature. The madness seems to be restless. And at the same time very, very exhausted. Catwoman is engaging danger in a way that seems completely oblivious to her own exhaustion. This is an interesting contrast to the overall sense of stylishness that usually accompanies her to the comics page. It's an interesting contrast. It makes for a somewhat unsettling journey through nightmare that has quite a bit of impressive subtlety to it.
Howard plunges Catwoman into her own kind of madness. She is usually so very on top of things even when she's at the bottom. That kind of irrepressibility is what defines the character. She always lands on her feet. The challenge with her for any writer is to find a way to push her into chaos that really challenges her. Howard certainly seems to be doing that here.
