Tag: Ed Brubaker
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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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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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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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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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The whole issue doesn’t rest on the action sequences, but it’d still have been nice if penciller Michael Lark had broken them out differently. There’s this very anti-climatic car chase, foot chase, car chase, shoot-out sequence, and it should have been better. Though it also doesn’t matter because it’s just the red herring ending. Scene…
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Scene of the Crime doesn’t exactly stall out this issue, but it definitely goes into idle. Not sure why I’m doing car references, possibly because of an ill-advised speeding car sequence, which artist Michael Lark visualizes too quickly. Our hero, Jack, has just been to a hippie commune where he’s gotten in trouble, a la…
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I was going to say all writer Ed Brubaker needed to do to completely tie together all the San Francisco crime eras was a grandfather in a wheelchair in a greenhouse, but Big Sleep’s L.A. Scene of the Crime is all San Francisco, all the time; Brubaker knows what he’s doing too. This issue introduces…
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In the twenty years since Scene of the Crime came out (and I last read it), a couple things have become more clear. First, protagonist and narrator Jack is a bit of a narcissist, and the reason he’s loveless is because he was a lousy, possessive boyfriend. The way he talks about the female characters…
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Oh, my. So, Kill or Be Killed does not have a bad ending. Nope, not bad. You see where I’m going? What’s a thousand times worse than bad? Horrendous? Is horrendous enough? Kill or Be Killed has a horrendous ending. Writer Ed Brubaker does a greatest hits of lousy writing choices, including protagonist Dylan telling…
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Based on the end reveal and what it means for the series-long narration… well, Kill or Be Killed, specifically writer Ed Brubaker’s work on it, goes from disappointing, tedious, and grating to pitiable. He’s even commented on the narration device to the reader before—when this arc started—so promising it’s not something lousy and then it…
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Writer Ed Brubaker, apparently unknowingly, cracks the Kill or Be Killed conundrum this issue. How could he tell the series and have it work? Individual issues about characters. Without Dylan’s terrible narration, obviously. Got to get rid of the narration. But this issue’s a return to detective Lily Sharpe. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as good…
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Does writer Ed Brubaker actually not see the possibilities he raises with scenes? It’s fascinating. For the second or third time, Brubaker’s started an issue completely invalidating a possibility the previous one raised. There’s an anecdote about a short story being a room in a house, a novel being a house. Maybe Gordon Lish (but…
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Well, writer Ed Brubaker is not overcomplicating matters with a last-minute reveal. He’s just stumbling along, as usual, the comic suddenly with far less momentum as Dylan’s in a mental hospital. The slowing down makes sense—after confessing to being the vigilante and finding out there’s still a red-masked vigilante in New York (a copycat, Dylan’s…
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But, wait, what if Dylan’s a ghost and he’s been dead the whole time? Okay, writer Ed Brubaker doesn’t end the issue on that reveal, but he ends it on one much more similar to it than I’d have thought. It’s definitely an intriguing cliffhanger, though Brubaker’s either going to do something interesting with it,…
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Despite finally giving full context for the bookend writer Ed Brubaker started in the first issue, the comic still can’t make it interesting. The bookending device is less interesting the more protagonist Dylan talks about it, and he talks a lot about it this issue. Well, he talks about the next part of the plan.…
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This issue opens with more of writer Ed Brubaker’s “is it condescending or doesn’t he know how to do this” narration for protagonist Dylan. We’re almost caught up to the first issue’s framing device (the whole comic’s in past tense), but there’s one more story to tell first. And… there’s actually a story to tell?…
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So. I'm not sure how seriously one can take this issue with even the briefest historical context. There's a lengthy section of Dylan's narration where he talks about how he's not just some alpha who protected his woman from the wolves. Given Kira's Harry Potter costume, if it were written these days, it would feel…
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The issue opens with Dylan narrating the shootout from the first issue, explaining how narration works. Unfortunately, it’s an entirely pointless few pages, with writer Ed Brubaker unintentionally making the narration incredibly condescending. As if we weren’t talking about narration devices any well-read fifth grader would be comfortable with. Then Dylan takes us to therapy,…
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Okay, so I don’t think I was expecting more from this comic, but I wasn’t expecting writer Ed Brubaker to take care of so much old business at once. Because even if he does an at best middling job of it, there’s all that middling at once. Like a greatest hits of tepid songs. This…
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It’s an all-action issue, which works out strangely well. Dylan’s drug dealer, Rex, who has been selling him fake antipsychotics—why Dylan’s not just getting real meds, given he’s got a trust fund, is left unexplained—is used as bait by the Russians. They’re after Dylan for something he did early in the series; they got a…
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I wish I hadn’t made the fumetti joke about last issue and the photographs; in this issue, when there are newscasts, artist Sean Phillips just copies and pastes some video captures. Sigh. This issue’s back to Dylan’s perspective, starting before Kira’s experiences last issue but covering them. When she’s hiding out in his closet during…
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Wait, what just happened? Writer Ed Brubaker just took Kill or Be Killed on a seemingly unplanned detour, bringing back Kira—the friend who started dating Dylan’s roommate but then started sleeping with Dylan (in the first arc)—and entirely redefining the character. Not to mention giving her a character. Also, she’s got blue hair now. And…
The Stop Button 