In tone, art, and general concerns, Torunn Gronbekk and company’s Catwoman Vol. 1: Who Is Selina Kyle? bears resemblance to Genevieve Valentine’s short DC You run, which is good company to be in. The Tini Howard run that just ended also spun off from the Valentine volumes, though the resemblance was less pronounced as time went on, up to the rather flat Catwoman Vol. 4: Nine Lives. I also increasingly disagreed with Howard’s conception of Catwoman’s morality; on this, Gronbekk and I see more eye to eye.

It won’t be until after the second volume that we know what Gronbekk’s Catwoman is really about or what she’s trying to say. Who Is Selina Kyle? reminds me of those other first volumes we tend to see (Wonder Woman Vol. 1: Afterworlds is another) where a writer new to a character finds their footing by, first, not writing about the character at all. That's here in a story about Selina’s past, when she was not even called “Selina Kyle,” and which has nothing to do with her Catwoman persona aside from that the character here just so happens to wear a costume. Whether that continues or abates into the second volume will tell us much more.