I have to disagree with one thing our esteemed Greg wrote: that it's difficult to truly love Catwoman. You know what? This underrated book is one of DC's best. Certainly the best One Year Later storyline I've read — and I tried almost all of those books. This is the only one I've stuck with.

Every month I pick it up and the story draws me further in. And as I read the current ish, I thought, "This might be DC's best damn book!" It certainly hasn't yet disappointed me, which is more than I can say for Heinberg's Wonder Woman, Levitz's JSA, Dini's Detective, and Morrison's Batman (yes, even after only one issue). Simone even bummed me out with her BOP arc One Year Later. (Canary takes down an entire army? Come! on!) And whoever the hell those TV guys are ruining the Flash? Yikes. (I'm looking forward to JLA, but oh so very guardedly. Meltzer is the King of Disappointment thanks to that unbelievably, maddeningly botched Identity Crisis #7.)

But I looovz me some Catwoman. Along with Manhunter, it's probably my favorite monthly.

I've never really gotten the whole "Writes good [insert gender here]" thing. In my opinion, there are writers who are capable of creating and sustaining good characters period, regardless of sex, race, t-shirt size, etc., and ones who can barely write a grocery list. If the female characters are weak the male ones will be as well. Like most of the problems in comics it comes down to bad writing vs. good writing, but for whatever reason, folks prefer to pick at the edges of the issue and not see the crappy forest for the spindly trees.

Ennis is a great character writer(Check out his Hellblazer run if you haven't, as well as the Kit Ryan-starring Heartland special, one of the best things he's ever written), capable of creating living, breathing people on the page... but with that said, The Boys left me cold; at times it felt like I was reading Hitman(Whose popularity I still don't get*), as done by Mark Millar(Whose popularity I will never get). And the Simon Pegg likeness thing was distracting.

*Hitman felt too much like a dumbed-down Preacher or a bowdlerized Dicks to me.

Cassidy made passes at Tulip, she rebuffed them and then Jesse apparently died. She turned to the closest substitute for comfort.

That's pretty understandable to Jesse even once he thinks about it. No property at all in that thinking. If Tulip was Jesse's property, then Cassidy wouldn't even have had to have anything squalid in his past to make Jesse so completely angry at him. "Messing with his woman" would've been enough.

Cassidy's problem was he was an enabler and deliberately kept Tulip doped up far longer than her grieving period might have needed just so she wouldn't leave him. And then he tried to stop her physically from leaving him. What was Tulip's responsibility was taking the pills or not, but a real concerned person would eventually not give her the pills. Cassidy deliberately kept her in supply just to keep on to her. That's where both Tulip and Jesse get their anger at Cassidy from. Tulip was just lashing out and lonely. Cassidy's actions had intent behind them, and then as Jesse discovered, Cassidy had a pattern of doing this. Being afraid that someone you love had been in real danger and being angry at the threat is not "property of" behavior at all. It's normal.

It's also true Jesse has anger towwards Cassidy for having become such a good friend and then having this wholly unlikeable side to him that he never talked about and I think that's the betrayal Jesse really feels. That theme is repeated throughout the book -- is there a crime so bad that it overshadows everything else about a person. It was pretty blatant when Jesse met the ex-Nazi and I guess he felt guilty afterwards for making the guy hang himself. Heck, I mean his mom was finally finding some happiness again and he takes that away from her. Pretty crappy really.

Anyway, there are people out there who are so charming and you adore them and then they let you down somehow and you're angry at them for doing that to you and you're angry at yourself for falling for their act and so on. Jesse's anger at finding out Cassidy's unpleasant past was absolutely understandable and nothing to do with "he did my woman". It had everything to do with "being a woman-abuser is the worst kind of man there is and that kind became my best friend. WTF?" It's not that Cassidy slept with Tulip, it's what he was willing to do to keep Tulip in bed with him. There's a real difference there.

And more than that, Tulip does get herself out and doesn't get magically swept away by Jesse. Man, that would've pissed me off. But instead she shoots Cassidy through a door out into the sun and runs over his toes with a truck. Worked for me.

This is what drove me nuts. The affair is isn't portrayed as Cassidy taking advantage of Tulip so much as it is Cassidy taking something from Jesse, which reduces Tulip to a piece of property with no agency whatsoever. And even Tulip tacitly accepts this status because she's being written by a dysfunctional misogynist.

However, Featherstone is about the weakest woman in the whole book considering the abuse she willingly puts herself through for Herr Starr and dismissing it as "just his funny way". I liked her despite all that, but I didn't like her blindly sucking it all up until he has to spit in her face to drive it home that he really doesn't care one bit about her. Oh, and then he kills her. Strong female character? I'll stick with the one who comes out of it alive, thanks. And who has all limbs accounted for as well.

Featherstone is a lot like Harley Quinn in certain regards, and darned if I don't absolutely loathe Harley Quinn and find her fandom a bit creepy at times.

I'm not saying everyone has to have the same tastes as I, but when Tulip's flashback revealed that whole out-of-place world she occupied as a child where the boys didn't want to play with a girl, even one who had the same tastes as they, and the girls didn't have any of the same interests Tulip had, man, I felt that. And that's what a good character does -- relates to the reader in a very personal and true way. A character doesn't have to be iconic to be excellent.

Still, there's something that has always bugged me about saying certain female characters are just being written as men with breasts. Maybe someone like Lady Death is, but Tulip I found fully realized and human (but a bad-ass too, since it was Preacher). Not manly or girly, just a human with a really good shot. Not to get all Simone De Beauvoir here, but keeping in mind her quote "Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male" seems quite relevant in these discussions.

Just sayin'!

Tulip was a good character. Occasionally, I think Ennis wanted her to be a "man," though (his idealized version of a man, that is), which is why I like Kit better.

That said, why is it disappointing to read what Ennis did and then disappointing that a woman won the Black Knight's trial in Checkmate? They shouldn't be written as victims, bitches on wheels, or the most competant? So what does that leave them with for roles to fill? If society in general was creating the expectation that a woman has to win being Black Knight, then presumably there'd be less gratuitous "kill the girlfriend spectacularly" or "punish the bitch" moments, yes? I suppose there are those who think Rucka's penchant for writing women is overcompensation for the misuse of women elsewhere, but I'll take a little overcompensation for a change, thank you.

Mr. Moose, I would argue that Kit Ryan in Hellblazer, Tulip in Preacher, and Tiegel and Wendy in Hitman are are decent characters. Tulip is probably the weakest one, as she's just a man in female disguise, but Kit is a great character and Tiegel and even Wendy act logically in a wildly illogical series. Ennis does know what he's doing, but if he's going to do this with women, I'd rather he not do it at all. The story wouldn't lose anything if women weren't involved in any way.

As for the thuggery, I wouldn't go so far as to call it that, but he does like tough guys. Fair enough, and I can deal with it to a point. If they're stomping superheroes, fine. Like I said, I'm waiting to see how the next few issues play out to see what he does with the characters.

Be careful what you wish for, Jordan. I mentioned this with The Next from DC - the characters all belong to DC or Marvel, so they'll probably be cannon fodder in the next big crossover because DC and Marvel don't know what to do with them.

Same with the X-Statix, actually. I live in the hope that Mr. Sensitive is going to be resurrected and made into a regular in X-Men. For some reason I like that sort of thing, when some sort of goofball zany idea is twisted around much later into something serious. Treated as though it were real, in some way. Now, I don't mean retconning things, that I cannot get behind. But just... saying, yeah, the X-Men comics where millions of people died in Genosha takes place in the same world as Howard the Duck fighting Doctor Bong.

And yeah, I wish people would send me free comics, too. Of course, to do that they'd need my address and I'd probably have to write actual reviews or something. Pffh. Screw that, then.

No unread mini-series this week?