Future State: Catwoman #2: The Cat of the Railway Traaaain

I don’t know who in DC decided to put so many of the very best Future State books in one week but perhaps they should get a talking to for being unfair to other weeks. It’s not that Future State hasn’t consistently delivered – it absolutely has. I have yet to be disappointed by a single book on the whole. It’s just that after two really solid, fantastic weeks you reach number three and suddenly everything happens… so much.

Future State: Catwoman is absolutely part of that unfair pile on. In fact, I said last month that Catwoman is my pick for “probably the best series in Future State, overall” and nothing has changed. At least not for me.

More on that later.

For now, let’s take a look at where we left these characters so that we can surge into where they are now. When last we met, Selina had broken into a passenger train heading to the Magistrates’ re-education facility. On board? Dozens of Alleytown children – her children from a certain perspective. Once inside, Selina freed the Batman villain Onomatopoeia, and together they fought their way through the Peacekeepers, looking for a way to commandeer the train. When we meet up with her, she is severely injured and exhausted, but draws her strength from a dream of Bruce so she can fight on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the train, Talia al Ghul has freed Bruce Wayne, and together they wreck havok. Having refused to believe Bruce is dead, Talia came looking for him and now that she’d found him, all that’s needed is the escape. The Resistance is waiting for her in the hopes that she was right to believe, and that Bruce will be with her when she returns. Fortunately, a “disturbance” has drawn the majority of the guards away, making their scape far simpler. That is, until Bruce catches a glimpse of Selina on the surveillance monitors and realizes that she is the disturbance drawing fire away from him.

What follows is a bittersweet roller coaster that sets the characters on their paths going forward in Future State; a perfectly appropriate note to go out on for this book about hope, loss, and determination.

While satisfying in itself, FS: Catwoman also opens countless options and threads to be picked up at any time. I assume many will ultimately be resolved in FS: Gotham, and I can’t wait. But for the moment, I’m content to just bask in the beauty of this issue.

Ram V is, without a doubt, one of the best writers at DC right now. I can only think of a scarce handful on his level. His dialogue is just over the edge to poetic, elevating his characters and plots without becoming unnatural. His characterizations are complex, layered. It’s rare that someone can capture all of Selina’s different colors so well, and to do so while maintaining her edge is quite a feat. I’ve seen the idea floated that V is the best Catwoman writer since Brubaker and I can’t disagree. That, in itself, is noteworthy considering he’s only had a chance to write a handful of issues so far.

It goes without saying that Otto Schmidt is truly one of the greats of comics today, not just because of his art in itself itself, though it is of course beautiful, but because of his coloring and storytelling skills. I’ve been told that he used to work for Disney and I absolutely can see the influence of not just Disney but animation as a whole in his work – the way the panels break and flow, the composition, the movement. Schmidt does not waste a single line, and as a result his characters can lack for detail, but that’s fine – detail isn’t the point with his style, and he’s more than capable of providing it when he needs to. Instead, his work is sparing, emotions conjured by a single pen stroke or a wash of color. His coloring in Catwoman is breathtaking – last issue, the grey tones brought us into the cold world of the Magistrate and today the washes of red effectively change the tenor of the entire issue.

Truly a great Catwoman story that whets the appetite for more of these characters, these relationships, and these creators. Thankfully Ram V is continuing on Catwoman going forward with the wonderful Fernando Blanco… and as for Schmidt, I have no idea what he’s working on next but I’ll tell you what: I’m buying it.

Just an outstanding job.