Review: Catwoman #8

Gwen Dylan Stacy

6 years ago

Catwoman is another title that I haven’t read much of, not since that whole Bat and Cat wedding thing. I ended up trying to parse my feelings about it but granted that I knew that Joelle Jones as affixed to this title, I was happy to dive into it with a certain sort of vigor.Â I’d been a fan of her art on Spider-Woman and Marvel’s Mockingbird, so seeing her take on the title itself was really exciting. Elena Casagrande and Fernando Blanco lend their beautiful art to the title and do so in a very similar vein as far as Jones’s art itself, with colors by John Kalisz. It’s familiar, which is something that I very much enjoy about this issue. I could can see the effort to match the effort in there.

Diving right into the thick of things, we open to Raina Creel meeting to conduct business with an unnamed associate who, at best, looks ominous. The woman opposite Raina looks akin to Talia al Ghul, but I’m not particuarly sure at this poing that all is what is seems. A deal of sorts is made; bargain struck and paid for before we finally cut away to get into the heart of the issue. Our anti-heroine has a meeting of sorts with a familiar villain who drops a sort of bomb into her lap, wordwise. It’s understandable, in my opinion, considering who this information is about for Cat to react the way that she does…but we all know the adage about cats and curiousity.

What starts as a simple enough task soon explodes into utter chaos. A mess of blood and teeth as Cat fights for her life through a maze of what looks like the undead.Â As our confrontation starts to boil to a head, we cut to Raina doing something decisive and possibly foolish, the action itself touched by desire and madness. I’m not sure how her decisions will play out in subsequent issues but…I can only say that the vibe that I can is that it can’t possibly be good.Â

When we do finally cut back to the action, Cat is in the middle of fighting for her life to procure the reliquary that she’s been tasked to steal. The bloody and violent confrontation, which is strewn across pages in such beautiful art that I can’t help but appreciate it, eventually draws to a close as Cat makes her way from the confrontation into a completely different one.

I’m curious to see what exactly happens with everything. The information that was teased to Selina is enough for my interest to be held, coupled with the beautiful art inside. Jones’s story hits the ground at a fast pace and works itself into twists and labrynithian turns that keep us locked inside it. A solid 3 out of 5 stars for me.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

(W) Joelle Jones (A) Elena Casagrande (CA) Joelle Jones