One of the high points of Torunn Grønbekk’s Catwoman run has been a return to form, namely by giving Selina Kyle a life beyond Batman’s world, and especially outside of her given role as Bruce Wayne’s love interest. After being largely defined by her romance with Batman for the better part of a decade and a genuine struggle for the character to find her footing in the DC Universe since 2011, going back to basics was a much-needed change.
Previous Catwoman runs since 2011 have attempted to give the character a new origin (including reimagining her as a crime boss’ daughter at one point) before some version of her pre-Flashpoint history was restored during DC’s Rebirth era. For her run, Grønbekk is choosing to expand Selina’s world, complete with her own relationships, rather than revisiting some version of her origin or reinventing the character. Grønbekk achieves this by telling an untold story from Selina’s past that homages how she pulled heists in DC’s Golden Age. All of that pays dividends in Catwoman #75.
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Set a few years before the events of the main story, Grønbekk further fleshes out how Selina operated under her alias, Evie Hall, and the team she originally had for committing major heists in Europe. It plays out like a heist movie in which a team of friends with criminal records all plot together to infiltrate a highly secured location (in this case, a mansion) and rob the rich in plain sight. This is the part of the story that strongly calls back to Selina’s Golden Age Batman stories, in which she committed heists by assuming various aliases and even assembled her own gangs to assist her in those heists.
One thing Grønbekk does really well in Catwoman #75 is how she executes the heist itself. Not only are Selina’s skills as a strategist on full display, but readers are also shown which relationships are most important to her within her team, and which team members she trusts the least. It does a well enough job to establish that despite having a solid team to pull off a successful robbery, it’s not exactly a well-oiled machine. Disagreements within the team especially risk the heist going wrong, which Grønbekk foreshadows throughout the issue. This is largely achieved by establishing that Selina is not fully confident in a sudden change of plans – a concern that pays off in the issue’s final pages.
Another thing Grønbekk does really well throughout the issue is spotlight which team members Selina had close relationships with outside of Suzy, namely Frankie and Shota. The latter has especially been name-dropped a few times since the Tokyo arc started, and readers are finally able to put a face on the name. Though not explicitly confirmed, it is strongly implied that Selina and Shota had a romantic past, as evidenced by Shota’s clear attraction to her. For once, Selina is actually given a new love interest that actually feels organic and doesn’t feel like an attempt to “move on” from Batman.
DC
The latter was especially an issue with Valmont from Tini Howard’s Catwoman run. Apart from not being an interesting character, there was no chemistry between him and Selina. The same problem is not replicated with Shota, largely because the story takes place before Selina was ever romantically involved with Batman. This allows Shota to stand out as his own character and not as a potential rival for Batman. Without the latter hanging over Shota like a rain cloud, this affords Grønbekk the room to properly flesh out his relationship with Selina in a way that aligns with the events of the story and adds to her character growth.
The artwork and colors from Patricio Delpeche is another high point of Catwoman #75. Though not packed with high-octane action sequences, his use of shadows and bright colors help set the tone of the story. He especially achieves this by sharply contrasting warm and cool colors to either convey a sense of mystery or to spotlight happier times during this particular chapter in Selina’s past. In other instances, Delpeche uses pastel colors to effectively spotlight a sense of normality in the lives of the people Selina and her team are about to rob, which interestingly also works to forshadow the upcoming robbery.
On the whole, Catwoman #75 is mostly a self-contained story that begins to answer many of the questions that were first planted in Catwoman #69. Though the reader is nowhere close to finding out who wants Selina dead, Grønbekk is starting to put all the pieces together in a fun storyline that will be sure to please both classic Catwoman fans and heist movie fans.
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