Catwoman: Lonely City #1

Catwoman: Lonely City #1

DC Black Label 2021

By Cliff Chiang

Ten years ago, the massacre known as Fools’ Night claimed the lives of Batman, The Joker, Nightwing, and Commissioner Gordon…and sent Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, to prison. A decade later, Gotham has grown up-it’s put away costumed heroism and villainy as childish things. The new Gotham is cleaner, safer…and a lot less free, under the watchful eye of Mayor Harvey Dent and his Batcops. It’s into this new city that Selina Kyle returns, a changed woman…with her mind on that one last big score: the secrets hidden inside the Batcave! She doesn’t need the money-she just needs to know…who is “Orpheus”?

I am so very proud and honoured to work with DC Comics and if I didn’t I might have been able to read this title. As it stands I am so very glad I could and did read this because Selina Kyle is one of those people whose life has had so many twists and turns during her long and storied career and this one may just be the most powerful one yet. This is a gripping and stunning look at Selina after spending ten years in Blackgate Prison for something she wasn’t responsible for and it’s time to get her life back in order and Gotham City has changed in a lot of ways so how is she going handle all this? You’ll have to read the story to find out.

I am in love with the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exquisitely. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interactions as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter does a magnificent job in bringing the characters personalities to the forefront.

I am completely and utterly impressed with the way that we see this being structured and how the layers within the story begin to emerge, grow and evolve. These layers open up these amazing avenues to be explored and while some will be and others won’t be they all add this delicious depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably achieved.

Cliff’s interiors are instantly recognisable and I am actually incredibly impressed with what I see within these pages. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the attention to detail we see throughout is extremely nice to see. That we see backgrounds being utilised as we do to enhance and expand the moments the way they do is marvellous. They also do a great job within the composition of the panels to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a magnificent eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a great understanding of how colour works.

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I wasn’t prepared for this story to be quite honest. It is much more powerful, interesting, intriguing and engaging than I think any of us would have thought it could be. It is highly emotionally charged and it really hit me in the gut with just how strong the story is and is being told. With the appearance of some usual suspects, though not as you’d expect to see them, and one that’s an absolute delight to see, this is already high on my list as one of the best surprise books of the week. It has this phenomenal writing and emotional characterisation alongside these highly crafted interiors reminds us all why we love Selina Kyle.