Catwoman: Trail of the Catwoman with Jane Parker
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Catwoman: Trail of the Catwoman! Our host this week is Jane Parker!
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Scored by Bret Eagleston
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⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
00:08 – Who Is Catwoman, Really?
02:07 – What Is Trail of the Catwoman?
03:27 – Selina's Big Score and the Heist Gone Wrong
06:02 – Trail of the Catwoman and Detective Slam Bradley
07:58 – Catwoman #1 and Selina's Reinvention
09:14 – Catwoman as Protector of the Invisible
11:16 – Why This Version of Catwoman Works
12:00 – Darwin Cooke, Brad Rader, and the Art
13:13 – Final Thoughts & Recommendation
14:22 – Digging for Kryptonite Promo
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School, where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it.
00:08
Hi, my name is Jane Parker. I'm a lifelong comic fan and general pretty princess. I do a little YouTube series called Jane's Books and Stuff where I show off interesting comics magazines and printed material that I've collected. You can also find me on blue sky at playingps2xyz, which is also the URL for my personal website. I've written plenty of articles about comics, but we also have guest articles and that's the really juicy stuff. And sometimes you'll see me write about video games or anime or something. Let me ask you, what do you know about Catwoman? If you're like me? That might sound something like this. She exists primarily in the context of Batman. She's Batman's primary love interest. She's the thief that you don't know if she's really good or bad, but it seems like she's mostly kind of bad.
00:52
She wears a skin tight costume with claws cat ears and uses a whip. And that's pretty much it. This seems to be the Catwoman that you run into most in things like video games and TV shows and movies. Or at least that was my understanding of the character until I read Trail of the Catwoman by Darwin Cooke and Ed Brubaker. This is the DC Compact Comics release, which is quite a thick collection of affordably priced volumes that I think we can all agree we love these. Dc please never stop doing them. But anyway, I came across this at my local Books A million I was purchasing some other things and I just so happened to see it on the top of a stack of books and I thought to myself this looks interesting.
01:32
The artwork on the COVID had a striking style I wasn't super familiar with. Yes, perhaps, shame on me, I was not ultra familiar with Cook's name. And the question I just asked you came across my mind in a flash. What could this be about? What do I know about Catwoman? Nothing, I guess. So maybe I'll check this out. I like cats. I'm sort of a cat like person myself. I wander around and look out windows when I need to relax. What I found was a book that really completely changed my view of a character and added so much depth and dimensionality to her that I really had no idea existed. And now I wonder how many other people don't know.
02:07
Now because this volume is so Dense, close to 400 pages, I won't be able to take you through the entire story of everything that happens, beat by beat. It probably wouldn't be that interesting anyway for me to simply orate them to you. After all, you could just read them, couldn't you? But I will try to describe how this new version of Selina was crafted and some of the storytelling techniques and interesting things that go down in Trail of the Catwoman. Needless to say, I will have to spoil a few things. So if that's your deal, I guess you'll have to step away now. Trail of the Catwoman is actually three separate things. It's almost like three different acts in a play, somewhat, very broadly speaking. And also, the collection is presented not in publication order, but in chronological order of the story.
02:46
I know this is a sticking point for a lot of people, so allow me to clear this up. And I had no idea the first time I read this and only discovered afterwards. Presented first in this volume is Selina's Big Score. This was a novel by Cook as a solo writer and artist, published after he began his work on the Catwoman series. In the middle is Trail of the Catwoman, which is backup material presented in the Detective Comics issues of the time. That's Batman's primary ongoing series. And lastly, strangely enough, is Catwoman 1 through 6, the 2001 relaunch that was done under this new crew creative team. It seems sort of weird, and it has the interesting side effect that you don't see Selina in her new costume and sort of her new status quo until over halfway through the book.
03:27
But it's one of the best things about reading it this way. There's a lot of buildup and empathy with who Selina is and how she's rediscovering herself. So when that taddily happens, there's a sense of satisfaction to it. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself there. Let's back it up. Selina's Big Score is basically a heist movie, and if you're familiar with heist movies, sometimes they don't go too well. And that's the big point of Selina's Big Score, at least in the broader context of things in the immediate. When you're reading it, Cook presents it like a noir film. There are sometimes 10, 11, 12 small drawings on a page, which, if you're familiar with the medium, is actually kind of insane. That's over double what you usually expect. Five, six, maybe seven at the most.
04:08
But there are a lot of quick cuts to help you give a sense of pace for the action and movement of the characters. It does almost seem like he's trying to make a movie. And it works. The cinematic style really works with the muted colors and his simple shapes. I really love it. After a failed heist in Cairo, Selina sort of slinks back into Gotham City to try and scrounge herself up some money. Legally, Selina Kyle is dead, so it's kind of hard to get some money or a job or do anything normal for her at this point. But it was an intentional decision by her to go off the grid, recollect herself, and sort of rediscover herself. Selina gets mixed in with a bunch of new characters, and the way the structure is presented is really great. We.
04:44
When you look at things from Selina and her new friend's perspective, where they're planning this heist on a train that's crossing into Canada, you can see how they think this is gonna go really well. You see how this plan is laid out, and it seems perfect. But on the other side, you follow the detective Slam Bradley, who becomes a very important character. And as he follows the trail of crime, you can see how they're onto Selina and everybody, and this is gonna go really badly. It makes for a fun dynamic. Ready? Even if you kind of think you know what's gonna happen. It is a prequel. Remember, this was published after you see Catwoman's big new debut. You could say the devil's in the details in Selina's big score. While I have to gloss over the details for you, the actual book does not.
05:25
You really get to know every character and what motivates them to do this kind of thing. There's a fantastic sense of empathy. When it goes down, you really do feel horrible. The final page, with Selina holding a body as she rides the boat back in, really haunting. It says everything you need to know about Selina going forward. It may seem like something you could skip, and I suppose you technically could, but I really don't think you should. And so, basically, that's Selina Kyle for the immediate. Someone who, in a lot of ways, does not exist and is trying to get back at the center of why she's doing what she's doing. This leads well into the Trail of the Catwoman material.
06:02
Trail of the Catwoman follows Detective Slam Bradley, hired by the Gotham City Police Department to try and find out Selina Kyle and Catwoman's whereabouts. Well, really, it's Catwoman's, and nobody knows they're the same person. But Slam Bradley quickly finds himself in a whole quagmire of Selina's life. I really love how this was done. You learn about Selina through someone else's eyes. It's kind of like the old metal gear solid 2 trick. As you see Solid snake through Raiden's eyes. If you've ever played that game, it seems almost too clever to be true. Learning about Selina in this way through a detective who uncovers her backstory, imagines what she might be thinking. It's basically the perfect setup to learn about a new character. Character or a reinvented character, I should say. Selina's hurting. She's been through a lot. People she knows die all the time.
06:46
It's hard to hang on to friends. Things are dangerous out here for this kind of lifestyle. It comes to a clever sort of head towards the end where Selina is the one who finds Slam Bradley, not the other way around. And of course, by this point, Slam has come to empathize with Selina's story so much that there's no way in hell he could actually turn her into the police. He even admits to himself, I kind of had a feeling from the beginning that I wouldn't turn her in. I'd like to make note of Cook's artwork here. Slam Bradley is basically Dick Tracy, or at least that's what Brutebreaker said. And once you hear that, you can't really unsee it. He kind of looks like him too, and his coat is just tan and not yellow.
07:21
But it means you get a lot of fighting, criminal interrogations and mumbling about things in the rain. Noir style. Much like Selina's big score. What's fun about this characterization of Slam Bradley is that there is a scene where he runs into Batman. It's sort of like the Phantom Menace. There's always a bigger fish. Here's the guy that really knows how to beat you up and interrogate you and mess with you. It's an interesting scene. After all, it makes perfect sense someone else would be investigating if she's really dead and gone. I suppose I should briefly mention Batman is in this volume. He's not in it a lot. He's only knitted when he needs to be. And he's only used to make important points. In other words, it's extremely tasteful. And I have to say, Cook draws an amazing looking Batman.
07:58
But I think it's a clever move to not totally divorce him from Selina in this case. The important point is that Batman does want to be part of Selina's life. He is happy to see that she's alive. But Selina is ultimately going to reject him, at least sort of in a flirty, teasey way, in Catwoman 1. It's one of the best scenes in the whole book, if you ask me. Getting into the main series, Catwoman 1 is where this new characterization for Selina really comes into view. It makes perfect sense. And all of this serving as built up to it is really good. I feel like if you don't read all this material beforehand and just start reading Catwoman at this new volume, you're missing all the fun and the buildup and the real reasons why she's doing this stuff.
08:38
I think you could read it that way, though. It wouldn't be bad or anything. And basically, as Celaena recounts to herself in the early pages of Catwoman, she used to do these things for good reasons. She used to want to help people. She used to rob the rich to give back to the poor. At least that's one aspect of her life. At the outset of Catwoman 1, Selina is still doing her soul searching. And you understand why she would be, to sum it up, at least so far, Selina's big score. You see how dangerous and hard this lifestyle is for her In Trail the Catwoman, you see how she's dealing with it. In Catwoman the Series, it all comes together. Someone comes back into Selina's life that she thought was dead.
09:14
It seems rather clever that this is what incites her to get back into action. Selina's friend Holly comes by to visit and informs her that there's a serial killer out in Gotham killing prostitutes. The two of them correctly posit that this is the kind of vulnerable people that someone like the Gotham Police and even Batman wouldn't normally help. This kind of thing flies under the radar. And so Selina is inspired to be a protector of the invisible. And this is what inspires her to put the costume back on, use her talents for good, and leads into a whole wild story involving, well, I'll let you read it. There's some interesting surprises later on. It's this aspect of Catwoman that really resonated with me, and it's built up to so well that I've just completely bought that this is who the character is now.
09:56
Catwoman, being a protector of those who are vulnerable and invisible under normal systems of justice, or even vigilante justice, reads as something nice in our modern day, especially as pornographic material and sex workers seem to be under constant strain of new laws, payment processors, and just general buffoonery. It's this aspect of the new Catwoman, or I suppose it's the old catwoman. This was 20 years ago. It really appealed to me as a transgender woman living in America right now. I like the idea that someone like her could look out for me. It seemed so appropriate, and it seemed like she had been through some of the things we had been through, disappearing legally, not being seen or recognized, and then coming back to protect each other.
10:36
But with all that, you can kind of see why this aspect doesn't come up too often in auxiliary media. You can't bring up that she's done or does this kind of thing all too often in something that's rated, say, T for Teen, like a video game. It probably wouldn't come up injustice or something, but it seems like a shame. It seems like Selina and Catwoman really have this interesting niche in the DC universe that I never thought about before, and I'd like to see it explored more often. I'm not an ultra Catwoman expert. I don't know how many of these things have continued into the modern day or past this run with Brubaker, but it seems really damn good. Behind a lot of D.C. heroes, there's a particular fantasy now. These characters get reinvented all the time.
11:16
But, you know, I think part of the fantasy of, say, Superman is that someone with all that power could actually be a nice and good person. It's something that seems nice when we think about how difficult our real lives are. In Batman, the fantasy is that someone who has been wronged, his parents killed, could take matters into his own hands and do things outside of the usual law and justice system. This, too, is probably empathetic. For a lot of people, it's something they could understand and desire to do themselves, even though they actually wouldn't. And now, for me, Catwoman slides in nicely here, too. She's a protector of vulnerable, invisible people. I can very easily imagine her protecting people of color, queer people, sex workers, everything. And all the work was done in this book to make me feel that way.
12:00
It doesn't feel like a cheap gimmick or something slapped on to try to get people like me to read a series. I'm not an ultra Catwoman expert, although now I wish I was. Maybe I'll do some more reading, but Trail of the Catwoman is really one of the best comics I've read in recent memory. There is one more name I'd like to mention in this before we wrap it up, and that's Brad Rader. Or maybe It's Rader. Darwin Cooke actually leaves the book in issue four. There's an absolutely beautiful sort of send off page and you'll know it when you see it. It's unmistakable. And in the last few issues presented in this book, Brad Rader takes over penciling duty and doesn't exactly try to match the Cook's style, but he has a sort of interesting and admirable take that's his own.
12:40
Not sure how you quite put it in artistic terms. It looks different. You can tell it's a new artist, but you can also tell there was a lot of attempt to maintain some of the consistency and style. After all, this was only four issues in. I wonder how many people were promised on that final page by Cook. Catwoman looks up to the sky and says, you can't really argue with happiness, can you? It's a satisfying sort of ending, even though the story continues. This was a story about someone finding themselves from the darkest depths of their own lifestyle, their own choices, their own needs, wants and desires, the loss of their friend and others. It's tough.
13:13
So while Trail of the Catwoman this volume may seem a little disjointed, and I suppose in some ways it is, thematically it's about as airtight as I think you can get. It's really just the matter of ending on a cliffhanger that leaves things feeling somewhat unresolved. From a character perspective, the transformation is complete. Selina is relatively divorced from the Batman world. We know what she wants and why she wants it, and the emotional work was done to help us understand her. But as the story goes on, Selina uncovers a plot that Black Mask the supervillain is behind. And it just sort of ends on a the end for now note. And it can be a little disheartening, especially when most of the book is so satisfying. But I really don't want that to discourage you from reading it. It's a fantastic read.
13:56
After all, it's only $10, so what do you have to lose? Trail of the Catwoman made me wonder. What other things do I not know about other characters? What other depths are there that you don't usually see? What other brilliant reinventions are out there that are waiting to be discovered? I can't help but wonder. But right now I think I'm gonna go read some more Catwoman comics. Once again, my name is Jane Parker. Thanks for joining me here on Trade School. Happy reading.
14:22
Digging for Kryptonite is a weekly podcast series hosted by yours truly, Anthony Desioto examining Superman's vast mythology across time and media. If you have a favorite story, creator or adaptation, chances are we've covered it over the past 200 episodes. I've interviewed creators including Mark Waid, Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, and many more. Whether you're a Superman fan like me or you're new to the character, we have you covered. Subscribe to Digging for Kryptonite wherever you get podcasts. And remember, it's about what you do. It's about action. CPOV certainpov.com.