With a perfect story touching on Selina’s past, One Bad Day paints the picture of a complex and powerful woman.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Batman – One Bad Day: Catwoman #1!The Batman – One Bad Day series of one-shots continues to paint complex, nuanced pictures of Gotham’s villains, and Catwoman’s turn at bat is no exception. With a story that is small in scope yet with great personal stakes for Selina, One Bad Day manages to portray each facet of Gotham’s most infamous thief with pathos and purpose. Touching upon her life as a thief, a sister, a lover, and a fiercely independent woman, One Bad Day manages to present the most holistic picture of Catwoman that DC has published in a very long time.
G. Willow Wilson and Jamie McKelvie’s Batman – One Bad Day: Catwoman #1 closely follows Selina Kyle as she seeks to steal an heirloom of great personal value from a high society auction. Through the lens of this heirloom (a brooch of a bird and a cage), readers are shown the ins-and-outs of Selina’s work as a thief, the value she places on family, and the bitterness she holds at the rules and systems that only seem to serve the most privileged members of society. When the brooch is revealed to be nothing more than a high-class forgery, it awakens Selina’s rage and vindictiveness as she tracks down the forger, as well as her conflicted feelings for Batman: a man she loves, yet seems to stand for preserving the same system that has wronged her for her entire life.
Batman – One Bad Day: Catwoman Highlights Her Life As A Professional Thief.
The story rings true as a deep expression of Catwoman’s roots. Born in poverty, Selina’s parents died when she and her sister Maggie were both very young. With little support to be found from the corrupt systems of Gotham, Selina struck out on her own onto the streets, surviving as a thief and developing her skills to legendary status. Despite her taste for high value robbery and enjoying the finer things in life, Selina has never been one for the limelight. Instead, her prickly nature has left her estranged from her sister, although she retains a soft spot for those she views as family – Gotham’s downtrodden and underprivileged.
This story expertly blends these threads of Selina’s life together. The overarching narrative is a high society heist in which Catwoman gets to display her skills as a fighter, actor, and thief. The target of the heist is an item of great personal value to her, tied to her troubled relationship with her family and her sister. The brooch itself, alongside her encounters with its creator as well as Batman, serve a recurring theme of worth and who in society gets to dictate what is of import and what isn’t.
One Bad Day: Catwoman Offers A Complex Portrait Of Selina Kyle.
Taken all together, the reader is presented with a stunningly complete portrait of who Selina Kyle is: an incredibly capable woman, striking out against a society that has tried to dictate her worth to her for her entire life. Her anger is justified, though it often turns Catwoman to killer rage and vindictiveness toward those she deems has wronged her, and her caring heart has internalized this pain into a desire to take what she feels is rightfully hers…or what she feels is wrongfully possessed by others. At her best, Catwoman is a stunningly complex figure, and One Bad Day captures each nuanced element in expert detail.
Batman – One Bad Day: Catwoman #1 is now available from DC Comics.
