For a very large comics release week, at least personally, this week didn't quite have as many stand-outs as I thought it would. The three that I did pick to write about after reading, though, had a lot to be said for. Interestingly, I chose to write about Superman, of the Future State titles, a character I rarely read and even more rarely enjoy. This alone shows you how good the issue was, so hit the links below to just to a specific review/discussion:
Batman/Catwoman #2 Future State: Superman Worlds of War #1 Black Cat #2 It's a short list, but they were each incredible reads that I'm happy to talk about! And if you prefer, just Continue Reading for the whole post!
Batman/Catwoman #2 by Tom King and Clay Mann, with Tomeu Morey
The quickest read of the week easily, Batman/Catwoman #2 holds up to the status quo set by the first, without breaking a sweat. The best way I've found to describe how the story plays out is cinematic. Once again in this issue, we have three era's of story being unfolded at once, so I'll go through them all individually to explain them. But it has to be noted, they're happening in the comic at the same time, so the timing of each reveal is perfectly worked out to be placed for the most dramatic effect. Again, there are no actual indicators when the scenes jump from era to era, it's up to the reader to pick up on changes of scenery, costumes, and in this issue, even background music to catch which part of the story is happening in which panel. It sounds complicated, and I have no doubt planning it out was definitely so. But once you get used to the signs, reading Bat/Cat becomes just like watching an episode of a beloved HBO drama. In the beginning of their romantic affair, Catwoman is lying to Batman. The Joker was just released from Arkham, and as we saw in #1, Selina is casually working with him. She's openly terrified of her lover finding out, but she also would never betray him to the Joker. It's a delicate balance; Selina is a complex woman. In her past, she tracks the Joker to his Christmas themed lair, and argues with him about their co-op job, explaining her concerns. Later, hanging out with the Bat while he tries to figure out the crime they committed, Bruce starts to question if she was involved. She offers explanations to his open-ended case questions, possibly a little too often. On a rooftop even later, he directly asks her, on her request: were you working wit the Joker? She denies it. In the closest-to-modern era of the story, Bruce and Selina are partners in life as well as work. After finding former lover Andrea Beaumont's son killed from Joker Gas in Gotham, Bruce was concerned that she might fall back on old habits, and become the vengeful Phantasm once more. As it quickly turns out, he had plenty of reason to be worried. As soon as the first few pages of #2, the bodies of former Joker henchmen start falling. The first two are sliced, the third dies mid-drink at a bar, and three is enough for Batman to figure out it's the Phantasm. The fourth dies by her blade in an underground train, and by then it's enough to have the Joker himself fearful. Using the Gotham PD's Bat-Signal, the Joker summons the Bat, who arrives with the Cat. As the two heroes stand over him, he cracks a joke and pleads for their protection. The last era of the story is just after Bruce's death, and Selina has driven to Florida to kill the long-retired Joker. They make pleasant chat about her intended method of murder--by claw to jugular. As he gets up for some water, the aged Joker brings up another King storyline with the two of them, during the prelude to her wedding. We see details of his actions in the kitchen and hers in the chair with her cat as he talks, remembering how she almost killed him, then. When he opens the freezer for ice, we see his true intentions--to go for his gun, hidden there. He takes it and returns to the other room, shooting through the cracked door. Bullet holes plunge through the back of Selina's chair, but it's already empty. She stands behind him, wild, villainous eyes excited, hand poised with one of his family photos. She strikes him from behind, knocking him to the floor. He tries to attack with a pocket-knife, but she's been waiting for this for years. Which she literally says to him, continuing the mystery of What Happened to Andrea? She continues that she "can't ever get Andrea out of my head; I keep seeing her..." She tells the Joker how she used to beg Bruce, on hands and knees, to let her come kill him. As she forces the Joker to submit, she removes one of her dainty white gloves, repeating from the first issue how she promised, on his death bed, she wouldn't do this. The old man laughs at her speech, calling it funny, must before she slices his throat with her nails. The issue ends with three panels of Selina watching him bleed out on the floor calmly, like she had just checked a box off her to-do list. This issue possibly starts to answer, but also digs deeper into the question of--what the hell did Joker do to Andrea? We know he killed her son, but we have ten more issues to go through. There MUST be more to it than that, especially for Selina to have SUCH an intense, life-long response. I also find myself asking if there is something more to the heist Selina pulled off for the Joker, which we're seeing play out in the oldest story. At this point, my best guesses to any of this is that something terrible will happen when Batman takes the Joker in to custody for his protection, and it might have to do with this family he has as an old man. But as I said, we have ten issues to go, still, and so much left to learn. We haven't even met a key character yet, Bruce and Selina's daughter, Helena the Batwoman. Mann's social media teases of her outfit are some of the coolest designs of late, perfectly combining the costume legacies of her hero parents. I had expected her to arrive and stop her mother from murdering the Joker, but she's on the cover of issue #4, and I can't wait to watch her official introduction play out.
Future State: Superman Worlds of War #1 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Mikel Janin, with Jordie Bellaire
Before I start talking about this comic, I have to mention another, because it becomes relevant in this one. During Future State: Superman of Metropolis #1, Jon Kent is the new Superman, in a Metropolis at-arms. After the apparent success of Gotham at the hands of the Magistrate, Metropolis PD is trying to set up a similar entity. Jon Kent, using power from a Braniac creation, bottles the city. That's right. Superman Jr thought it would be a good idea to Kandor Metropolis--to cover it in a dome so they can't leave, make them tinier than tiny, and leaving a giant crater where it once was. He thought that was his best option. Needless to say, Metropolis turns into a war zone, Kara almost kills Jon for it, and now he doesn't know what to do. This World of War issue makes one thing clear, unsurprisingly: no one likes Jon Kent, especially after what he did to Metropolis, which, at the point of this story, is still missing. Back in 2020 or late 2019, some Warner Bro's executives are reported to have made the ridiculous claim/excuse for not having made a better Superman film, because "it's hard to fit a character like Superman into a story that will be interesting for a modern audience." Cue several minutes of laugh track, eye rolling, and exasperated comics fan moans. Let me break it down for anyone who's new. Superman stories will ALWAYS be relatable in any era, because of what he stands for: Hope. Always has been, always will be. It's the cornerstone of his character, around which everything else plays out. Humanity, at our core, is flawed. Until the day comes that Earth is a Utopia and every corner of the universe has reached peace and prosperity, hope will always be necessary to keep society pushing forward, in any way. The hope of Superman will always be relevant. So, I was thrilled to see Johnson and Mann take Clark Kent in this new direction, where they address the long-lasting effect of the hope he stands for when he's gone, and how humans would really react to someone like him in the real world. It starts simply, with a small-scale, Las Vegas-style entrance to the "new" Smallville, heavily marketed as the hope of Kyrptonian Superman. In the middle of nowhere Kansas, this small town has hit their moment in the rat race of making a buck off peoples' fleeting interests. But what starts as an innocent reaction to the knowledge of Superman's true identity, paired with humor stemming from America's capitalistic nature, quickly gets more serious in content. A young traveler walking through Smallville's main street takes in displays of Kryptonian musical instruments, sight-seeing tours, and new local celebrity meet-and-greets. But as she goes through the town, merchants start peddling almost certainly fake meteors, protesters arguing Superman is un-American, even a "Church of Krypton," reading the "teachings" of Kal-El--his high school essays, and other menial, true-life writings of Clark Kent. The man in charge calls himself a prophet, and peddles the "words of Kal-El" to cult-like followers. Superman "worshipers" have made an appearance in the past, but never on a scale that allowed lost, innocent people to be taken advantage of by false prophets. That being said, it is the most likely reaction for our own world, should a man like Kent really live. The traveler continues past the main part of the town, into the outskirts, to the massive monument resting at the place baby Kal-El crash-landed on Earth. She joins a group surrounding it, maybe twenty people, all of who's lives have been saved by Superman. In turn, the first few tell their near-unbelievable stories of survival. The stories are of different locations and scales of threat, but they each have unique details that stuck with them: never even seeing Superman as he rescues a woman's entire family, and the corner of a town, from a suicide bomb; the calm in his voice while he searched for a little boy's father during a Magog attack; the hole in the sky he flew through to push back an alien monster, before he reappeared in Metropolis perfectly fine a few days later. When the group leaders asks them what they think happened to Clark, reactions are mixed. One follows off the last survivor's story, guessing that Superman just never made it back from the fight, this time. Another looks to current events in Metropolis, and guesses that the hour of Kryptonian rule of Earth has only just begun, since Clark Kent was the only one of them good enough to not rule humans. A classic hippie says he thinks Superman reached the next level of consciousness, and is currently in the air all around them. One guest assumes Kal-El has came and gone from planets dozens of times, leaving each on better than when he arrived. And still, another remembers Superman as the Kansas farmer he was in his youth, claiming that he left the planet of tedious humans to let us kill one-another off, and will return to reseed the planet from the inside of the sun. At one point, the travelling young woman--Sadie-- bursts out with frustration, exclaiming that as survivors of near-death accidents thanks to Superman, they, of all people, should have more hope. She calls out the Smallville shops, cults, and fake friends, arguing that Superman wouldn't have wanted any of this, because he's the best of us. She tells them about the words he stood for, alongside hope (you know the ones), and how they should all be doing better in his memory. But her speech, however spot-on, fell to deaf ears, and she walks off, into the darkness. Behind her, a clueless survivor argues, again, that Superman was the best because he was physically the most powerful, which is why he always won. Cut to War World. Think--ancient Roman coliseum, packed full of angry alien beasties. Mongul orders the next fight begin, and a metal crate of captives is pulled into the arena of raging monsters. A voice from inside tries to calm one of the fearful captives, as Mongul proclaims they be sentenced to fight to death. You guessed it, that's none other than Clark Kent in the cage with the rest, trapped on War World from...killing Mogul's father? I'm fuzzy on the details of Superman's long history, but it's something like that. The issue ends with Clark charging out of the cage to fight for not only his life, but the lives of the other prisoners. Mikel Janin's art is, of course, near-perfection. His background are much like that of Clay Mann, where even the smallest details matter. His faces are stunning, even when they're meant to be unattractive. An on War World, I'm delightfully reminded of his time on Batman with Tom King, where he drew Bruce to have such thick, beef-cake thighs, the Joker made a joke about not being able to see over them while in a head-lock. If you're lost, I'm saying he draws sexy men. Johnson continues to write stories for Superman post-Future State. It's been a while since I've found Clark Kent comics interesting, but if the next issues of this mini-series work out as well as this one, I'll certainly be picking up his ongoing series.
Black Cat #2 by Jed McKay and CF Villa, with Brian Reber
Jed McKay and CF Villa astonish me—and add McKay to my list of male writers who do female characters justice. In a period of ridiculous King in Black tie-ins, Black Cat is consistently superior to even the main series. It isn’t just the fact that it’s a well-written female lead, supported by a creatively characterized cast of side-kicks and associates representing a wide variety of real-world AND fictional types of beings, although that’s the root essence of it. McKay and Villa have found a beautiful balance together in the series, with dialogue and action flowing naturally through the panels. Villa’s art captures the accurate expressions of Felicia and her crew as much as McKay’s writing captures their personalities and dynamic. Together, they write a Black Cat for which I mourn the previously cancelled issues, much like Clay McLeod Chapman’s Scream. Truly, they deserved longer runs, but at least Felicia is getting a second chance, now, and Scream is popping up again soon, as well. I read a fan complain online before the first issue of this rebooted series began, offering his distaste that Felicia appeared to be written like a thief and a criminal, and how “his” Black Cat would never act in such a way. For a lot of reasons, this was a ridiculous and inaccurate complaint, as the core of Felicia’s character is her being a major kleptomaniac. But it was also unfair for this “fan” to claim that Black Cat belonged to him, and he has a say in how she should act. With that in mind, McKay impresses me with how well he does write Felicia Hardy. A complicated woman, we’ve now seen many aspects of her character played out in her comics. She’s a thief, a leader, and a sometimes-hero, but she had a soft center. She’s attuned to the emotions of others, and responds sensitively to them. She’s smart, but not to a fault. She’s funny, but takes her work very seriously. She fights like a lioness, but cares deeply for others. And she can always handle herself in a sticky situation—possibly the most advertised characteristic of her recently, and for good reason. There was a single page that summed up the life and times-slash-adventures of Black Cat, what I expect of her series, and how it’s exactly what we’re getting. While Felicia and Bats, the ghost dog, flies a Goblin sled across the New York City skies to where Doctor Strange is being kept atop the Empire State Building, she ponders the absurdity of the situation to herself. “If I die, at least it’ll be how I lived. Outrageously.” It’s what I would hope to get from a Black Cat series, and McKay and Villa have made my inner Sapphic dreams come true! In the coming third issue, we'll see just what Doctor Strange's magic staff has turned Felicia into. Based on appearances of her in the final panel, I feel pretty comfortable assuming she's some kind of goddess. Black Cat and her crew are still stuck in the middle of King in Black tie-ins for the third issue, so I'm hoping her new status as Asgardian fill-in-the-blank will end up being as useful as it is just plain cool. After that, there are at least two confirmed issues of Black Cat continuing through April. Solicitations for May won't come out for some time, still, so it'll be a few weeks until we know for sure that the series goes forward.
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