“Catwoman”
Artist: Bengal
Color Artist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Review by Adam Ray
The girls have left town. Catwoman #43 sees DC’s greatest thief team up with a slice of quirky chaos. The duo of Selina and Harley Quinn feels like a less doomed Thelma and Louise, as they roll off on a road tripping adventure.
With Bengal’s quirky artwork and Bellaire’s neon color scheme, we get a very special, brand-new story. The great twist is that it’s all wrapped up with a blast from the past, making this issue one to remember.
This issue features one of the most natural sum-ups I’ve ever read. With a monthly title, sometimes reminding readers of what happened in the past few issues, or arc is necessary. Selina explaining her recent antics to Harley makes it feel natural within the story and is delivered to us without boring us with info we already had. This trope is something that usually completely irks me, but when it’s handled this well, I can celebrate it instead of just tolerating it.
Catwoman #43 is a masterclass in showing us characters have history without ramming said history down our throats. There’s so much familiarity, love, and friendship between Harley and Selina in this issue that it reads perfectly sincerely. They have history and they’re connected.
We’ve seen a lot of highly stylized, abstract line work in the current run of Harley Quinn, and it’s done here very well too, with the same level of color balance that we’ve seen in older Catwoman issues. Like the characters coming together for the next few stories, we’ve even seen artistic styles combine in this issue.
Conclusion
As far as I know, the issue closes with what may be the first comic book appearance in canon DC continuity of one particular character. It’ll be exciting to see how their place in the rest of the story plays out, as I expect it to mirror their first appearance in that “other” Batman media.
Images Courtesy of DC Entertainment