Catwoman Annual #1 - DC Comics

CATWOMAN ANNUAL No. 1, July 2019

Any fans of Selina Kyle’s alter-ego who hoped this super-sized thirty-eight page periodical’s pulse-pounding cover was just a taster of the excitement to come within the comic’s narrative, must arguably have been bitterly disappointed by “Joelle Jones’ first Catwoman Annual” and it’s disconcerting over-reliance to tell a truly dreary murder investigation “through a variety of points of view.” Indeed, apart from an all-too brief confrontation between the titular character and the Immortal Man, absolutely nothing occurs whatsoever which even vaguely attains the adrenaline-racing illustration of the jewel thief, resplendent in her Michelle Pfeiffer cinematic costume, stretched out across the bonnet of a fast-moving police patrol car as it hurtles down the road at break neck speed with its emergency lights flashing.

Instead, this ponderous tome contains an unconvincingly contrived concoction of “conflicting stories” which would have its readers believe the female burglar would simply bring back a partially-dead drug addict to her private flat so as to help the young woman go ‘cold turkey’ and then inexplicably train Chesa’s unwelcome friends to steal for themselves simply so they can all ‘stick it to the man’? Such motivation debatably makes little sense whatsoever, especially when the likes of the truly detestable Amanda Burress are initially caught by Kyle trashing her lodgings, breaking her ornaments, wearing her jewellery and drinking her champagne; “A lot of people worked very hard to get all these things. People that always did what they were told. People that worked a job, made good investments, just so they could have these things.”

Lamentably however, this publication's plot only gets worse once the thieving fiends decide to strike out on their own and steal a valuable antique spear from a seemingly insecure mansion with “outdated security”. This building unfortunately turns out to be the home of Klarn, a caveman who has lived for fifty thousand years, and who just happens to be inconveniently sitting deep in the shadows of his living room when the hapless intruders enter. Three broken wind-pipes and a mystifyingly surreal suicide pact frame-up later, and Catwoman is suddenly being hunted for their murders by the Villa Hermosa Police Department.!?!

Sadly, Jamie S. Rich’s decision to utilise the talents of a number of different artists only seems to add to this storyline’s sheer sense of befuddlement, with Elena Casagrande’s pages in particular proving a real disappointment. In fact, only Scott Godlewski’s clean-lined sketches seem to really imbue Selina with any of the dangerously lithe grace associated with her nefarious nocturnal activities, and even this prodigious pencilling is put to the test by Jones’ decision to have Superman make a bizarrely artifical cameo at the publication’s very end…

Story: Joelle Jones, and Artists: Elena Casagrande, Hugo Petrus and Scott Godlewski