Darwyn Cooke had made a name for himself with his piercingly powerful psychological take with Batman: Ego. Few would have believed that such a powerful and engrossing story would have been his comic book debut. Unsurprisingly, Cooke’s name was quickly noticed, and fame soon came. Seasoned DC readers would know that The New Frontier is his mammoth tale – a beast to be truly celebrated – but his creativity spread to other realms of the DC Universe too. In 2002, Darwyn Cooke’s eyes turned to the feline thief of Gotham City. Since the 1990s, Catwoman had been the focus of a few miniseries and even an ongoing series (inevitably penned by the ubiquitous Chuck Dixon). Frank Miller had breathed new life into Selina Kyle’s previous image of a predictable socialite jewel thief in his Batman: Year One storyline. The tough street life of Selina and a troublesome past transformed her into an anti-hero with depth. With Ego taking such a psychological perspective for the Dark Knight, how will Selina’s Big Score go down?
Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score was released in September 2002, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. Published as a one-off nearing a length of 100 pages, it has been reprinted in the brilliant Batman: Ego and Other Tales collected edition, compiling all of Cooke’s Dark Knight-related stories into one volume!
In Cooke’s introduction to that collected edition, he reflects on Selina’s Big Score far more fondly than he did on Ego. He describes it as his ‘favourite book that I have written and drawn.’ Extracting such high praise sets a high bar for Selina’s Big Score, especially after the colourful creativity of Ego. However, it should be noted right from the start that Selina’s Big Score is a very different story to Ego. Both have their psychological explorations, but Catwoman’s story is far more subtle, less on-the-nose, and perhaps even a more conventional type of comic book – not that conventional suggests a lack of quality.
Selina’s Big Score is a one-shot special, but it has helpfully been split into four parts. Each section has a different narrator, with its overall plot including a vast array of characters and detail. Book One begins with Selina, as it should. An impressive robbery in Morocco ends in disappointment when Selina realises that her pinched goods are fake. Life is difficult for Selina at this stage. With the events of Batman: Year One beginning to fade into the past, fame has still escaped the cat thief. Everyone in Gotham believes that Selina Kyle is dead – all part of a plot to protect herself from her masked alter-ego. However, times are hard. Catwoman must return to Gotham. It all begins in a pawn shop run by a scrawny character named Swifty. His contacts in the underworld have led him to discover an opportunity. A crime near the Canadian border, with a train carrying millions of dollars to be exchanged with a large supply of Asian heroin, is soon to occur, with the Falcone crime family heavily involved. Picture this – a mass of money, a train, and the potential for a robbery. All of this gleams inside Catwoman’s mind. Cooke mentioned in the introduction that the idea of a heist was so suitable for a Catwoman tale, and he is right. A heist, with great risk, would naturally feature as the core of a great Catwoman story. However, as Cooke mentioned, he also wanted Selina’s Big Score to have ‘a cast to kill for.’ Swifty’s positivity and vibrancy is a complete contrast to Chantel. A lover of one of the Falcone crime lords, she has found herself a victim of a troubled life and now holds a child destined to enter a life of amorality and crime. Chantel is the whistleblower, simultaneously hardened but also incredibly vulnerable. Cooke makes a point of returning to her perspective and the risks she takes, with the consequences leaving an emotionally gut-wrenching impact on the reader. But without a doubt, the deepest and most important of characters introduced here is Stark. A villain with great wealth and crimes to his name, Stark is effectively Selina’s mentor in those early days. He is as cold as ice and is frankly a nasty piece of work. I suppose that with Selina being a more emotional character in these early years, Stark grounds her and helps transform her into the more resilient hero of the present. Overall, the first book is a solid introduction to the plot, with the very idea of a heist building some excitement. The start is slow, but promising.
Book Two is the most substantial section of the book, with Stark taking the lead of narrator. The story of Selina and Stark is ultimately about trust. Stark cannot trust her because of a past mistake, one which jeopardised Stark’s professional world of crime. The details are quietly buried under the flirting from Selina and the coldness of Stark. Cooke puts this relationship centre stage; perhaps it would make for better reading if Stark was actually an interesting character. He is just a very dry no-nonsense master criminal. His resistance to love and any emotion but misery makes him into a very boring sidekick. The writing dedicates far too much space and time to a partnership of past tension and now present banality. There is little to get excited by. Stark can never be warmed too, nor can he ever trust Selina. Their relationship never expands into anymore more intriguing. Thankfully, the plot begins to deepen with more characters. With Stark in on the plot to loot the train, he takes us to Jeff, an arrogant joker who is not quite the fool he looks. He is a resourceful fellow, and one who aids plot a creative train robbery. It all revolves around a rocket that will speed above the moving train and allow Selina to invade its storage holdings, before then using nets and floaters in a river beneath a bridge to safely obtain the goods. Cooke can be credited for an entertaining, if very ridiculous, heist plot. Along the way, Cooke inserts some very minor humorous characters, but sadly the middle of the story just feels rather barren. The excitement of a potential heist begins to dim as Cooke goes in circles with Stark and Selina. It’s only with the ending to the second book – the spine-chilling moment when Chantel is caught by the Falcones – when some drama returns.
Book Three is the shortest, but easily my favourite. Taking the narrative is both a new face, and a very old one. After all, who can be older than Slam Bradley, the great snooper of Detective Comics 1 back in 1937. He was DC’s original star before the likes of Superman and Batman came along. Created by Siegel and Shuster, this is a detective with attitude and black humour. Cooke, especially with his retro style of art and storytelling, makes Slam fit right at home in this world. He has been tracking Selina and co. for quite some time. Although always one step behind, Slam’s story presents us with one of the most emotional and darkest of all scenes. He is the one who hides Chantel being tortured by a Falcone. Although Slam kills those criminals that have made her life hell, Chantel’s cannot be saved. As she slides into death, her final thought is of her daughter. Slam can only stroke her stomach as she dies. This subtly and drama from Cooke’s writing and art makes her death a moment of true impact. Although Chantel barely features, her tragedy is the emotional centre of Selina’s Big Score. It has far more resonance than the revelation that Selina, as Catwoman, foiled one of Stark’s criminal plots early in her career as a vigilante, explaining the tension between the two of them.
Arranging a heist is no easy feat (not that I’d know). The build up to it has been involved and often entertaining, but now it is time to execute the plot. Book Four is a rapid read, which makes sense given the necessity of speed for Selina’s plan to work. And work it does! It is almost dreamy, but it would never have made sense for it all to have gone smoothly. With mere pages left, you can read on with some shock as Swifty and Jeff are killed off by a lone agent who featured previously in the story so scanty that he barely registered, nor does he hold much weight of character. An impact is felt much more strongly when that lone agent murders Stark – who characteristically kills his assassin before he himself falls into endless sleep. In the final panels of Stark’s life, he actually gains some emotion, telling Selina his real name, before he dies. Why is that Cooke had to kill him off just as he was becoming interesting? In the end, only two characters remain. Selina survives, as does Slam Bradley. He arrives late on the scene, aiming to put Selina behind bars for the robbery. She apprehends him with a bullet to his stomach, but happily the story ends with a message of some positivity. With this stolen money, Selina will not build herself a selfish paradise. Instead, that money will go to rescue Chantel’s family from the depths of poverty. This is a suitable epitaph to Catwoman. She may be a thief and a villain, but she has a heart. She has the plight of destitute women (and helpless cats) in her heart, and it makes for a warm ending to Selina’s Big Score.
In that sense, Selina’s Big Score does have some psychology to analyse. Although some of that selfishness of Stark may be apparent in Selina’s personality in the present, that ending solidifies her true spirit as a hero. Selina’s Big Score doesn’t aim to be the novel exploration that Batman: Ego was, nor should it ever have attempted that. Batman’s unique personality and traits meant that such a tale could only work for him. A heist was always more fitting for Catwoman, but I would struggle to claim that Selina’s Big Score is a great or hugely enjoyable read. That is mainly down to one aspect, and it’s a feature so large and intrusive that it minimises the impact of the more energetic and exciting elements of the tale. The dominance of Stark and his yawn-earning scenes dries the liquid drama of such an impressive and dramatic robbery. The preparation of the creative heist could have been executed with so much more tension were not all the oxygen of the story removed by one of the dullest characters in comic book history. Cooke claimed that the story ‘had a cast to kill for.’ Perhaps it does, but Stark just doesn’t let the others shine. I like Swifty acting as a father figure, and I like how Jeff’s irritating tendencies add some flavour to the dialogue, but they really needed to feature more to leave a long-lasting impact. Stark – and the fact that the ultimate villain is a nobody with little context provided – blunts the success of Selina’s Big Score heavily. That all said, it must be said that Cooke shines in his storytelling and use of settings. The grimness of Gotham adds novelty to when the characters leave the grey city for the greener pastures of money. Witnessing the evolution of Selina’s character from here to what we view in the present adds more weight to Cooke’s writing, as does the importance of Chantel. But however good these qualities may be for Selina’s Big Score; its most prominent problem cannot be ignored.
The aesthetic plays a huge role in any of Darwyn Cooke’s stories. With crimes and heists taking the spotlight here, his 1940s artwork naturally seems to reflect the drama of such a plot. It is like reading a classic Golden Age tale, a feeling doubled by a slightly rougher style of inking which helps add that gritty feeling to such a story. While I do feel that Cooke’s storytelling is a tad sloppy in some parts, especially with an abundance of panels on some pages, such a complaint is mild. Overall, this is Darwyn Cooke at his best, reflecting the themes of the story with his gorgeous visuals.
VERDICT
Overall, Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score is a decent story, but by no means a great one. The idea of a heist fits right at home in the world of Catwoman, and the plot’s creativity does work in its favour. However, Cooke cannot help himself by creating the dullest of side characters. This isn’t helped by his over-exposure and tendency to drown out the more interesting features of the story. That all said, with its brilliant artwork, Selina’s Big Score is a good portrait of the complex character of Selina Kyle. With its ending and Selina’s heroic morals, readers can no longer regard Catwoman as a generic villain…
Next Week: TBC.
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