Storytellers: Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC Comics
Year of Publication: 2002- 2003
Page Count: Collects Catwoman 1-4 (Later Collected in the bigger trade Catwoman Volume 1: Trail of the Catwoman)

What I learned about writing/storytelling:
The story begins like many Batman stories, with a mysterious serial killer serial killing someone.  The audience immediately wonders: who is this mystery killer, and will Batman/Batgirl/Batwoman/Robin/Nightwing/Batwing/Catwoman/whomever be able to stop this killer once they learn about them and fight them?
This works fine, and starts the book as a page turner. After the two earlier talking heads heavy non- Catwoman “Catwoman” stories it was certainly a breath of fresh air.

The comic has Catoman reevaluating her identity. She soon meets an old friend and is soon told about the serial killer targeting prostitutes. The police and Batman don’t care all that much about it.  (The police don’t consider prostitutes human and Batman considers them criminals).  It’s up to Catwoman to save the day because there’s nobody else!

This is good use of pulp tropes.  Give the hero something to protect, give them a villain to fight against.  Tell us why only they can save the day. The villain turns out to be powerful, it looks like Catwoman will lose but then she wins!

What I learned about art/storytelling:
I’m a little uncertain about the idea of reading comics specifically to learn storytelling tools to add to my storytelling toolbox, because I can see tools in a book, but they aren’t necessarily tools I would want to use.  I like some of my storytelling biases, is what I’m saying.That said, here’s a tool, for a two page spread, you force the reader to turn the book over to the side:

Not my thing.  But it is a “tool” and presumably one the creative team liked.

I like the art better than in the earlier two Catwoman stories. I’m not sure why that is, but it seems like Cooke is going for something a bit different, maybe more mainstream.  Or… could it be because he’s no longer inking himself?  (Mike Allfred is credited as inker here.)

Cooke uses four tiers as the basic assumption of how to build a page, which seems to work a lot better than the three tier stuff in the earlier stories.  The high panel count no longer bothers me like it did before, in part because it looks better and in part because its more of a page turner stort of story. This is from that boring, earlier detective story:

Talking heads. Boring characters talking about boring things. This is from the Catwoman story:

I like that page.  It’s whimsical, its fun. Selina is just going for a jog for the heck of it, sans costume.  It helps the artist is working with material that is more interesting than a detective walking around talking to people.  The word count is lower and not drowning the art.

I like this page layout which has two big panels on a 6 panel page:

It gives room for two bigger establishing images.

Recommendation: B

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
I already covered the plot above. It’s good. It’s fun.  Its possibly not world changing, but compared to his colleagues, I suspect Brubaker’s scripts are kicking ass.  The only part that creaks  is when there’s this “Heroes don’t kill” thing at the end, where Catwoman doesn’t kill the serial killer and Batman and his friend are all like “You’re such a good person for not killing him the serial killer.”

Uh, yeah. Do people in the real world really believe this?  Cops and soldiers are expected to kill, if circumstances arise and are considered by many to be “heroes.”  The United States still has a death penalty in some areas.  And the superhero genre isn’t exactly a place for thoughtful reflection on the use of power.

Remember when Selina killed Bane in The Dark Knight Rises?  That was badass!

Storytellers: Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke
Publisher: DC
Year of Publication: 2001
Page Count: Backup story in detective comics 759-762. (Part of a bigger Catwoman collection, not a self contained Graphic Novel, but since I read it I’m doing a write up).
What I learned about writing/Storytelling:
There is really nothing to learn from this mediocre, under performing comic.  So instead, I’m going to highlight a sequence I didn’t like a muddled fight scene with exposition that has nothing to do with what is being drawn.  Image and Text, you are supposed to be a team! You are not working together!

I just end up reading the text and ignoring the art.  It’s not like anything interesting was happening during that fight scene.

What I learned about art/storytelling:
That art above looks kind of “muddy”to me.  I’m not sure why.  I also think Cooke tends to go for a closeup rather than communicate clearly the spacial relationship between the characters.  I dunno.  I think Dave Gibbons and many classic comic creators would have done a full profile shot of both fighters when the guitar is being slammed in someone’s face. Maybe I’m just biased against the art style.

I also find Cooke’s 9 panel pages to be overwhelming.  I’m not sure if its because he can’t do a 9 panel page as well as Frank Miller or Dave Gibbons, or if I just am not digging the story pacing so more panels of it seems unappealing, or if I’m too used to decompressed comics these days to appreciate a 9 panel page.  So, there’s a word of caution in there somewhere about 9 panel pages…

Recommendation: D

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:
So I’m reading Catwoman Volume 1: Trail of the Catwoman, which according to an Amazon review collects three previous DC trades:
Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score
Catwoman (Book 1): The Dark End of the Street (Issues #1-4 and backups from Detective Comics #759-762)
Catwoman (Book 2): Crooked Little Town (Issues #5-9. Issue #10 and Secret Files and Origins not included here in C:TotC)

I picked this up because I wanted to read Ed Brubaker’s take on Catwoman, but first I had to suffer through Darwyn Cooke’s take on Catwoman in “Selina’s Big Score”, then Brubaker’s take on “Slam Bradley” in a backup story that ran in Detective Comics called “Trail of the Catwoman.”   (Wikipedia indicates Bradley is a generic golden age detective, rather than a generic detective Brubaker invented for the story. )
The plot involves detective Slam Bradley, who is hired by the corrupt mayor to track down Selina Kyle.  The Italian mob also puts pressure on him to track down Selina Kyle.  (Apparently Selina pissed everyone off in some previous Batman story when she was running for public office, possibly in New York City, but this isn’t really explained.)
Anyway, turns out Slam Bradley develops a crush or pulpish infatuation with Catwoman just from reading her case file, so doesn’t turn her in to the bad guys like he’s been hired to do, even after learning she’s Catwoman.

The story ends with a real stretch in logic, as it turns out the mob and the Mayor know that Bradley dropped the case and won’t share what he knows, but these bad guys don’t seriously retaliate against him. Bradley even beats up a mobster for annoying him about Catwoman as an ending “punchline” to the story-arc, because apparently the mob is sort of evil but also too lazy to go after someone who beats up one of their own, or something.

Now I can finally go on to Catwoman #1, which I expect to be better!

Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score

Storytellers: Darwyn Cooke with Matt Hollingsworth
Publisher: DC Comics
Year of Publication: 2002
Page Count: 96 Page Graphic Novel (reprinted in Catwoman Volume 1)

What I learned about Writing/Storytelling:

I confirmed for myself two existing biases in regard to what not to do:

1)  Don’t assume changing the color for your flashbacks in any way helps identify them as flashbacks.  Colors change with scenes and may be consciously invisible to the reader.

To illustrate:

2)  When introducing the concept of narration in your story, show the character who is narrating on panel.  You would think that the narrator in a book called Catwoman would be Catwoman, but the book switched narrators with the chapter change, and this was no longer the case.  It took me a moment to figure that out:

What I learned about art/storytelling:

I’m not sure.  The art didn’t work for too well for me.  I think it’s odd that Cooke does big panel closeups, and  I think he does too many closeups in general.  There’s a big panel closeup in the flashback image above, which seemed to me like an odd storytelling choice. Later in the book, this bit had me scratching my head:

Part of the problem might be I don’t believe you can jump back on a moving train after falling off, which seems to be what is happening here.

Recommendation: C

Notes/Reviews/Synopsis:

Basically, it’s a crime fiction heist story.  Catwoman does not appear in costume, except briefly in flashback.  She is poorly motivated and says she recently came back from the dead, whatever the heck that means.  It’s clearly a reference to whatever was going on in other Batman books at the time, but is not explained.

I didn’t really read this in the spirit I was supposed to.  When Selina mentions a sister, I expected a flashback or some payoff to the reference, but there is none, the only reason the sister is mentioned is because it’s a continuity reference to some previous Catwoman story.

Similarly, when Selina flashes back to the time she was a  prostitute, this isn’t because Darwyn Cooke has anything to say about prostitution, or what it’s like to be a prostitute, or the human condition in general, but because Selina was a prostitute in an 80s Frank Miller comic.

The ending pulled together a bit better, focusing on doomed love and doomed criminals.  The book began at a more leisurely pace.

Over at the Comics Experience workshop, Andy Schmidt challenged people to read 30 graphic novels in November and attempt to take from each book at least one idea about writing and art that we can use to enhance our own work. I’m going to post a few of my write ups here because a) it’s content for my new web site and b) why not?