Catwoman #3 and Red Hood and the Outlaws #3

Well, I'm packing stuff to move, so I haven't had as much time to blog. I finally have a little bit of time, although it will be back to packing again tomorrow and for the next couple of weeks as I try to get everything together to move back home to Louisiana.

Anyway, this week, I thought I would return to Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws. These are two series that I wrote scathing reviews on for their first issues. I stand by those reviews today. I will say that the series have improved for the most part since those issues.

Catwoman has not only improved, but I think has become a more mature title without debasing itself with paltry sex scenes as it did in the first issue. The strength shown in Catwoman by the end of the third issue is the strength that the writer (Judd Winick) should have conveyed in that first issue. Catwoman has grown from someone that I felt had been turned into a bimbo in the first issue back to the character I always thought of her as. She still seems to have a thing for the Bat, but she now uses her wiles to trick him as much as knowing that inside she feels something for him, something that she knows can never truly work out between the two of them.
At the beginning of this issue, we see a Catwoman who has been pummeled unmercilessly by a mob figure who didn't like her stealing his stuff. This is after the aforementioned mobster has killed Selina's seemingly only friend and fence in cold blood and left the body for Catwoman to find at the end of issue 2. It doesn't take long before you see the true Catwoman finally come to the surface at this point. The scene is gorgeously set as the boss leaves and tells his thugs to finish Catwoman off painfully, and even more so, when she says nothing to them as they begin to beat her again (a beating that they intend to end in her death). The silence is deafening as each panel slowly reveals to us that Selina is looking at something and then that what she is looking at is the body of her friend. Finally, when one of the thugs hits her so hard it knocks over the chair she is tied to we hear her speak...and what she says is louder than the next few moments she spends beating the thugs senseless.
Even better is the final scene when the mob boss is begging for his life and apologizing to Selina about how he over-reacted over things and shouldn't have gotten so emotional. As Catwoman pulls out a baseball bat and commences to explain to him how it was ridiculous that he killed her friend over things, we see the true Catwoman we all love finally revealed. This is a woman who values friendship and love more than things, which is why she has no qualms with her cat burglary lifestyle. In some ways, it is a statement to us, the readers, that we should value people more than we value things. In time, all things will pass from this world, but friendship is forever, the writer seems to tell us. Obviously, we shouldn't take it to Catwoman's extreme of whatever I can lay my hands on belongs to me until someone else takes it from me, but the sentiment is there.
If this book continues in this vein, I recommend Catwoman to those who like Catwoman. If Winick returns to the use of unnecessary sex visuals to sell his book, my opinion to skip it will quickly return.

Red Hood and the Outlaws is a book that has grown on me as well. I still am not in agreement with the way Lobdel portrays Starfire as someone who doesn't remember her loves and those she was once passionate about, but Lobdel's portrayal of former Robin, Jason Todd (Red Hood), is definitely worth the read at this point. I also am not enamored of the new origin and character of Roy Harper (Arsenal) to put him where he is in this series, but maybe we'll get more on these two later as well that will make me like what Lobdel has done.
In this latest issue, Lobdel shows us the heart of Jason Todd in the DCnU. He is a former Robin turned outlaw after being murdered by the Joker and resurrected from the dead, and we learn that he is not completely immuned to the time he spent with Bruce Wayne/Batman. His heart still exists despite his death and return and despite the training that Talia Al'Ghul gave him to turn him against Batman. We see in this issue that his most cherished memory is a time when Bruce Wayne stayed home with him from patrol when he was too sick to go out with Batman. At first the memory makes it seem like Jason is being punished until we see Batman walk in with his cowl pulled back to select a "sick day" movie for the two of them to watch while Jason gets some rest. Granted, it is a memory that Jason Todd gives up easily at the end of the issue, but it still shows that inside of him is still the man he could have been if his life had not previously been cut short by the Joker. I hope Lobdel continues to use this type of storytelling and reveals further insight into Starfire and why he is now portraying her as a shallow nympho whether than the strong woman who had a caring and loving heart despite her time as a slave in the future. We do get a brief glimpse into some of the origin areas of both Starfire and Arsenal, and I definitely want to see more of Starfire's as it seems like it might explain better the changes we see in her now. With Arsenal, I just hope Lobdel matures him in the book before I write in and ask for him to kill him off because right now I'm tired of his high school antics attitude in all that he does.

Thanks for reading!