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Patsy Walker: Hellcat #2
Posted 24 Aug 2008
Writer: Kathryn Immonen
Artist: David Lafuene (interior), Stuart Immonen (cover)
Letters: Dave & Natalie Lanphear
Colors: John Rauch
Publisher: Marvel
5.00 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Adam McGovern
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Kathryn Immonen’s superpower is an inexhaustible cleverness
and an agility at wordplay and story-structure that well matches the
feline heroine in this utterly refreshing mini. Like a comedy version
of the canon-crunching Grant Morrison is doing in Batman,
treating the diverse eras and outlooks of the character through many
continuity reshuffles and stylistic fads as if they were all one guy,
Immonen fuses the Hellcat character’s superhero and
romance-comic pedigrees like a particularly daring asymmetrical
ensemble.
“Immonen fuses the Hellcat
character’s superhero and romance-comic pedigrees like a
particularly daring asymmetrical ensemble.”
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This cat dates from comics’ 1950s ice age as a
sitcom/soap-opera fashion model character, later made over into a
superhero in one of Marvel’s more dementedly inspired strokes of
universe-tidying. Along the way she diversified into horror comics as
a daughter-in-law of Satan, let herself literally go to hell and came
back; luckily she proved you can never be too dead and Immonen has her
once more in carefree mode, choosing a delirious storytelling style to
make the longrunning character’s many contradictions wear
well.
This is as plain as the first-ever fusing of the old- and
older-school titles of the book into Patsy Walker: Hellcat, and
Immonen amps the absurdity of the current trend toward headliners
whose civilian profession defines their superhero activities (as in
recent psychiatry-themed issues of Doc Sampson and
courtroom-farce versions of She-Hulk) with a Patsy who’s
sent alone to Alaska by Tony Stark’s Initiative to wait for
planet-threatening menaces but drifts through natural disasters and
attacks from mythical beasts as if she’s been booked into an
especially bad spa.
As time goes on she does have to make frequent costume changes into
her superhero look, becoming embroiled in a mystic quest by local
Inuit spirits who fancy her their prophesied champion. Immonen has a
great grasp of this lore, and a free-associative writing and dialogue
style that is both endlessly witty and accesses the dream logic you
need for the sense and excitement of such fables to sink in.
The supple and sassy post-manga art and color by David Lafuente and
John Rauch make all this dance even farther off the page, and the
closing column of satirical advice on fashion and boyfriends, titled
“Hellpcat” and supposedly staffed by the book’s star
herself just like in all those old Patsy Walker comics I pick up by
the pound in flea markets, makes the canon complete. This is scheduled
for five issues, but with a Marvel Presents mini already behind
it, I hope Immonen’s series is on a very long runway.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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