DCU Comic Book Reviews

CATWOMAN #72

Crime Pays, Part 1

December 2007

Written by Will Pfeifer

Pencils by David Lopez

Inks by Alvaro Lopez

Cover by Adam Hughes

Synopsis

Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) calls Zatanna and asks for help.  She wants Zatanna to wipe away all of the memories of her daughter, Helena.  Selina relates how she decided that the best thing for Helena would be to give her up.  With the help of Batman, Selina gives her daughter up for adoption.  It has been a month and Selina can’t deal with losing her daughter.  So she wants Zatanna to make her forget.  Zatanna pleads for Selina not to do it.  Selina decides to walk away.  The next morning, Selina awakens to an empty apartment; everything had been stolen and taken away.  Except for a bomb.  Selina makes it to safety before it destroys her home.  With everything gone, Selina realizes there is no reason to act like one of the good guys.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

There really is nothing surprising in this issue; it seemed fairly obvious a while ago that Selina was going to give up her baby, so seeing it happen is just the culmination of what Pfeifer has been writing since the One Year Later leap.  What makes this issue work, however, is Pfeifer’s characterization of Selina after giving up her baby.  Being a parent is not easy; it involves contradictory set of emotions.  You want to be the one to protect them, guide them, and nurture them.  But on the other hand, you need to step back and let them develop on their own, to allow them to make their own mistakes and learn from them without their parent’s interference.  As a parent, you want to hold on tight, but at the same time you know you must let go.  This conflicting emotion shines through in this issue, showing how much it hurts Selina to let go even though she knows it was the right thing to do.  It is gut-wrenching to read this issue and in this case, that is a good thing. 

The key to the issue, however, is that Pfeifer manages to avoid using Zatanna as a way to reboot the Catwoman character while at the same time actually managing to reboot the character.  It would be easy for Zatanna to wipe Selina’s mind, which would allow Pfeifer to start anew with any baggage.  But with Zatanna’s refusal and then the bomb, Pfeifer manages to get Selina where he needs her to be without sacrificing the character that he has written so well for the past several years.  It shall be interesting to see where this leads...

The previous issue was a titled “Mother’s Day, Part 1” but there was no Part 2 as this issue is called “Crime Pays, Part 1”.  Obviously this is some kind of mistake, but is the title to this one a mistake or should the previous not have been labeled as part 1?

 

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