Review by Sabrina TVBand

Catwoman by Jim Balent: Book One collected almost all of Jo Duffy’s writing on the 1990s series, with her final story starting this collection, followed by one from Doug Moench before Chuck Dixon stepped in as writer. Whereas Duffy leaned heavily into portraying Catwoman as a “thief with a heart of gold”, Dixon makes her a much more self-interested character. The supporting cast from Duffy’s run vanishes pretty much instantly and the sense of an ongoing narrative basically ends beyond a few multi-part stories.

There’s nothing particularly deep about Dixon’s writing, but he comes up with fun scenarios for Catwoman. He begins with a four-parter where Catwoman is forced into working for a nameless government agency, placing her into a spy movie context. Not long after there’s a two-parter where Catwoman is hired to steal a screenplay being written by a egotistical director. It features a lot of implausible stuff – Catwoman being attacked by a giant animatronic? – but it’s another amusing yarn.

Beyond Dixon there’s a three-parter written by Deborah Pomerantz concerning the disintegration of a crime family. The plotting is dense and the ambition is palpable, but it’s unfortunately hard to follow. The book closes with Jordan B. Gorfinkel’s tale of Catwoman becoming a martial arts expert early in her career. The narrative economy is notable, and the artwork by James Hodgkins, working over Jim Balent’s layouts, is spectacular. The sample art is by Balent and Hodgkins respectively.

Balent draws backgrounds with regularity, demonstrates an understanding of mathematical perspective, and places Catwoman into coherent and consistent environments; an important skill, considering this is a heist comic. Balent does have shortcomings; his figures can sometimes look stiff, probably because illustrating drapery is not his strong suit. The faces on his male characters occasionally look strained and constipated, which does the twisty storytelling Pomerantz was trying in her three-parter no favours. Balent’s saving grace is that his storytelling is clear and competent, which makes his deficiencies a lot easier to forgive.

This collection has higher highs than Book One alongside some middling portions, so it’s a worthwhile read for any fans of the character. Readers without a specific interest in Catwoman might want to look elsewhere.

This series was discontinued after this volume and supplanted by entries into the DC Finest line, with this content overlapping with the first half of Vengeance and Vindication. True to their titles, the Catwoman by Jim Balent volumes only collect material pencilled by Balent, which means they don’t include portions of multi-part stories he didn’t illustrate. For the right price used copies could be good finds, but otherwise any interested readers are best served by purchasing the DC Finest volumes instead.