Category: 2002
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Ah, the days when the first part of an arc was really the first part of an arc. This issue opens with Selina—as Catwoman—chasing a kid through the streets of Gotham. He’s in Alleytown, a frankly gorgeous but rundown and dangerous neighborhood in Gotham. Artist Cameron Stewart busts ass on the scenery, so much so…
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Presumably, regular writer Ed Brubaker needed someone to cover for him so he could work on Catwoman Secret Files, so Steven Grant fills in on the writing here–Brad Rader’s on pencils, with new-to-the-series Mark Lipka and Dan Davis on inks. It’s an outstanding issue for Rader. The issue’s entirely action, with Catwoman breaking into a…
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I sort of forgot about Secret Files. Especially this Catwoman one, even though I do remember Holly’s resurrection explanation being covered in it. Like I remember wanting to see how writer Ed Brubaker would address it. Now to decide if I want to spoil the reveal. But first, the feature story, with Michael Avon Oeming…
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This issue opens with Selina narrating—remember, she hasn’t been narrating lately, so it took until the second or so page before I realized it was her (and she wasn’t talking about her sister, whose name I thought was Rebecca—it’s Maggie). There’s a girl named Rebecca (in flashback) who went bad; real Bonnie & Clyde stuff.…
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As a Garth Ennis war comic, I’m not sure Nightingale is the best War Story. As a War Story, it’s the best comic. Ennis’s script gets out of the way and lets David Lloyd’s art do its terrible magic. Because Nightingale is a nightmare, not just because it takes place on rough, cold waters in…
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The finale proves way too much for penciler Brad Rader and inker Rick Burchett. It doesn’t look like a Batman: The Animated Series comic; it looks like a generic riff on one. Rader and Burchett rush through every character who isn’t Catwoman or Slam, which is kind of nice, I suppose. They were the leads…
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The cynic in me—combined with Dave Gibbons doing the art, the protagonist sergeant not getting a name until the finish, and the soldiers being in Easy Company—makes me wonder if Screaming Eagles didn’t start as a Sgt. Rock special. At least at some level. It’d be Sgt. Rock Gone Wild, so maybe it didn’t last…
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Batman doesn’t appear in this issue, but he really ought to be here somewhere. What with the cops moving a bunch of heroin through the city to make a deal with the Russians. One would think the Darkknight Detective would give a shit. But he apparently does not. It’s hilarious how bad Batman is at…
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Last issue ended with Holly, on assignment from Selina (but maybe a little too gung ho), shot by dirty cops. This issue opens with them approaching; luckily, Selina gets there in time. Selina rushes Holly to Leslie Thompkins’s clinic and reveals she knew Holly was a recovering addict this whole time. As Leslie gets to…
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Still newish penciller Brad Rader (his second issue) leans a little too heavily into the Silver Age romance comic homage, but otherwise, it’s a near-perfect comic. Writer Ed Brubaker figures out how to give the story the done-in-one feel while still kicking off a new story arc. So it’s part one of four, but really…
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New art team Brad Rader and Cameron Stewart take over for this done-in-one, which brings Slam Bradley into the series proper—he appeared in a Detective Comics backup setting up Catwoman (or at least tying in enough to be reprinted in the first trade… I think). But he and Selina team up this issue, which is…
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And here’s how you do a comic book. I was wondering when Catwoman was going to click and level up, and it’s this issue. It’s not just Darwyn Cooke’s pencils, though he’s got dozens of great panels in the issue. Pretty much everything except Selina fighting Clayface Y2K’s muck is great. The muck stuff is…
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There’s a lot of great Darwyn Cooke “good girl” art in this issue as Selina goes undercover to find the john who’s been killing all the girls, which I suppose could kick off an interesting discussion of how male gaze works in a non-realistic styles like Cooke’s. But it doesn’t make for a great issue.…
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Darwyn Cooke owns this issue. It begins with an action sequence: Catwoman breaking into Gotham PD to get a look at the autopsies on the dead streetwalkers. Cooke breaks each page into a dozen or two panels, sometimes splitting a horizontal frame, more often zooming in on one particular aspect of the action. All in…
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I’ve meant to go back and reread Brubaker’s Catwoman for literal decades now. The last time I tried, I started the post about Catwoman #1 pointing out it proves Ebert’s “no masks in noir” rule from his Batman Returns review wrong. I’ll never be able to top that one, though it’s impossible not to think…
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This issue is primarily a comedy soap opera, expertly executed by creator Beto Hernandez. But first, he does the opening Luba story, only it’s a Khamo story. Juxtaposed against Luba and Ofelia herding the children—and getting ready for Socorro to go away to gifted school—is Khamo and the “cops” he’s helping. It turns out he’s…
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There are probably better movies with seven-minute end credits than Punch-Drunk Love but I doubt there are any where those seven-minute end credits are padded to give the film a more respectable run time. Punch-Drunk Love is an approximately eighty-eight-minute marathon where writer and director Anderson hones in on his protagonist, played by Adam Sandler,…
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It’s impossible to overstate what a profoundly, risibly bad movie Shyamalan has made with Signs. As the end credits started rolling, after the most disappointing “epilogue” Shyamalan could’ve come up with—it’s not just disappointing, it’s also pointless (pointless is the probably the best adjective to describe scenes in Signs)—my wife joked the movie took two…
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Catch Me If You Can is a spectacular showcase for Leonardo DiCaprio. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t exactly rise up to meet him, not the filmmaking, not the writing, not his costars. With the exception of co-lead Tom Hanks, who’s a whole other thing, the direction, the writing, the supporting cast, they’re all…
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Combination bad and stupid horror movie about Gabriel Byrne and his band of salvors (it’s a word in the dictionary!) find an empty ocean liner and think they’ve hit it rich. Unfortunately there are ghosts and other supernatural things going on, which start killing off the cast one by one. Who will survive? Will it…
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Despite sometimes exceptional direction from del Toro, Wesley Snipes’s second BLADE outing can’t overcome the terrible script (by David S. Goyer) or the awful supporting performances (everyone important except for Snipes and super-vampire-monster Luke Goss are atrocious). It also doesn’t help del Toro’s direction peaks in the first act–it’s a two hour movie and a…
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Outstanding, sometimes comedic, often tragic look at the lives of a group of laid off Spanish ship-builders, four years after the yard closes, as they contend with economic depression, alcoholic depression, unemployment, and the resulting martial strife. Truly great script (co-written by director de Aranoa and Ignacio del Moral), excellent performances from principals Javier Bardem,…
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Hyper-gritty cop movie about ex-undercover officer Jason Patric returning to the force to solve the murder of a fellow undercover cop (they didn’t know each other, but the NARC bond is apparently strong). Once back, Patric enlists the aid of bull in china shop tough cop (an awesomely bloated and belligerent Ray Liotta). The filmmaking’s…
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Either Evan Dorkin’s got the Eltingville TV rights back or whoever has them is a complete numbskull because the book’s so relevant you could subtitle it “An Incel Fable” and it’d be totally appropriate, narratively speaking. But it’d be somewhat intellectually dishonest, as Dorkin started The Eltingville Club long before the incels had a self-identity…
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I have no idea how I’m going to talk about Small Favors; it’s my first “erotic” comic. Possibly ever. (The first edition of Lost Girls is sitting on my shelf, still unread). The collection’s subtitle is “The Definitive Girly Porno Collection.” I’m just worried what kind of SEO I’m going to get from frequent usages…
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To put it mildly, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary is narratively erratic. The film–a filmed ballet “converted” to a silent movie–opens with panic over Eastern Europeans entering Britain. At least, the onscreen text implies this panic. It’s quickly forgotten; after doing cast introductions (also with onscreen text–these aren’t intertitles, these are just text onscreen…
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Maybe if there were anything good about xXx–there are a handful of things not bad about it–but if there were anything good, the sky’s the limited compared to the mess director Cohen finishes with. As is, xXx is an overlong, boring, James Bond-knockoff. It starts with a James Bond stand-in getting killed in the first…
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Personal Velocity: Three Portraits. Writer and director Miller (adapting her own collection of short stories) ties together three very different stories, each with its own structure, each with its own narrative approach. Velocity is short too–under ninety minutes–so Miller is fast to establish her protagonists. The biggest disconnect, of course, is the narration; John Ventimiglia…
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“Welcome to Eltingville.” You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious. I suppose the first thing to say about “Eltingville” is it has a very, very limited audience. It’s a spoof of fan culture from the inside. It’s knowingly spoofing the absurd. It’s not just spoofing the…
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Even though Star Trek: Nemesis is pretty dumb–and it is dumb, not just as a Star Trek movie, but as a movie in and of itself–and it has a lot of problems, the cast gets it through. The cast, the vague “train wreck” quality to some of its missteps (like Jerry Goldsmith either recycling his…
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