Catwoman #79 // Review
Selina Kyle sometimes it looks to find her mother in her own face. It's not something that she does likely. It is evident that she had learned a lot from her. Oh, there is a particular memory of her mother from a few weeks before Maria Kyle took her own life. Selena remembers talk of a certain pearl. That pearl comes within Selena's grasp in Catwoman #79. Writer Torunn Gronbekk and artist Danilo Beyruth open up a whole new story for Catwoman with the aid of artist/colorist Patricio Delpeche.
The location of the Palermo Pearl has been a secret that has been rather closely guarded by the people who own it. The people who own it happen to be the Falcones. The Falcone family is well known. Selena has a history with them. And she would like to be able to take something of theirs. Something valuable something irreplaceable. To the end she's going to find the parole. She's going to take it from them. It's not going to be easy, though. The Falcones are engaged in some rather vicious activity. Catwoman is going to have to tread lightly if she is to take something so valuable from them.
Gronbekk works with various elements that are sifting around the mysterious past of Selena Kyle. It's fun to see the background worked in a way that doesn't feel superficial. It's way too easy to go into somebody's past and simply draw something out to serve as an incentive or a motivation for the hero. Gronbekk find a way of doing so that adds considerable depth to not only the title character, but the world in which she lives and a various motivations that have to do with deep psychological aspects of her. So there's a lot going on that is more than just gratuitous desire to have some sort of motivation for stealing this particular pearl.
There's a clever decision that's been made with respect to the art for this particular issue. Beyruth’s visuals that serve as the central grounding for what is going on in the contemporary world of the comic book. The colorists art serves as the visuals for those scene set in Catwoman's childhood. The visual style is drawn from an earlier era. There are been dots on the coloring. The inking is more heavy. It feels like something out of the silver age. So for the purposes of this particular world, it really feels like your childhood is the silver age of comics. It's a cool effect to draw in the concept of an earlier era for the character.
It's cool to see Gronbekk and company working around the edges of the Batman end of the DC universe. There are a lot of little elements that could be added in here and there are. And it's cool to see Gronbek working the international angle. She's a very international author, so it makes sense that she would be able to explore more that has to do with the concept of being an international thief. It works to her strengths quite well.
