Catwoman #86 // Review
Selina hears the sirens. The blood on her skin is already cooling. There’s a voice on the radio that’s telling her to run. Someone must have called the police. But how could they have gotten there as fast as they did? There isn’t much time. The police are already at the front door of the apartment complex. Selina is going to have to exit via the roof. It’s nothing she hasn’t done before, but it’s only the beginning in Catwoman #86. Writer Torunn Grønbekk continues Catwoman’s return to Gotham City in a sweeping adventure mystery with delicious, little bits of horror that are brought to page and panel by artist Davide Gianfelice. Color comes to the page courtesy of Patricio Delpeche.
There's twisted, little poetry that's men scroll on a few scraps of paper that Selina grabbed before she escaped from her apartment. Selina’s friend Holly Robinson is in trouble. A quick check of her location of Selina’s smartphone reveals that she’s...in a safe house only Catwoman knows about. It seems like a trap, but Holly DOES appear to be in some kind of trouble, so Selina is going to have to walk right into the trap to figure out what’s going on.
Grønbekk weaves a particularly compelling chapter for the Catwoman. The action starts right away on the first page and doesn't really let up before the entire duration of the issue. This can be really difficult to maintain for any writer. Grønbekk modulates the attention with a very deaf hand that maintains the kind of action needed in order to keep the pages turning from beginning to end. It's also intimately tied in with the title character as well. Not all of this authors work has been so narrowly centered on what makes Catwoman unique. With recent issues taking place in Gotham, the author has found a really nice and stylish rhythm for the series.
The sketchiness of Gianfelice’s rendering can feel a little weird at times. More often than that, though, the artist manages to nail a pose or a perspective or some aspect of composition, just brilliantly. And there are enough of those moments throughout the issue to really make Selina feel every bit as beautiful and graceful as she should. There is some particularly clever work done by Delpeche as well. Not only is there quite a bit of delicious nocturnal atmosphere of being placed on the page, there's also some very interesting visual moments. Towards the end of the issue, a black light is lit and there's a writing all over the walls. The atmospheric work on that by Delpeche is really particularly impressive.
Grønbekk’s work fits quite well into the larger picture of Gotham city that DC comics is producing as of right now. It's not often that all of the titles that take place in the city feel as appealingly unified as they have been lately. Is the overall continuity between the DC’s bat titles feels particularly appealing at present.
