The Complete "Omaha" the Cat Dancer Volume 4

by Reed Waller & Kate Worely   

Publisher: NBM Publishing (July 1, 2006)

Softcover, 128 pages

Amazon Listing

Here we continue on with the erotic graphic novel soap opera that was Omaha the Cat Dancer. This particular series (not this book, but this reprint series) is significant because the writer and artist came back together to finish the story of Omaha and Chuck in the celebrated (sort of) eighth volume in this series. It should also be noted that the artist here, Reed Waller, is also the artist for another great series from the 90s, Kings in Disguise. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you do so. Copies are going cheap on Amazon. 

Volume four collects issues 10 through 13 of the 80s comic series. And the drama continues full steam ahead. The pot against the morality crusading senator comes to a full halt when he is assassinated in Joanne’s bedroom just as she is getting blackmail photos on him. Omaha stars in a music video. Chuck and his mother begin to reconcile for abandoning him. Kurt becomes nurse to a Mr. Lopez who may be involved in organized crime. While Chuck discovers that Omaha had been married before and had never bothered to get a divorce. This leads to a big fight and Omaha storms out to another city, where she struggles to find a place to live and a job. 

The art as always is crisp and clean, done in a sparing comic realism style. While the characters are anthropomorphized animals the rest of the art is straight realism. Granted, similar to most soap operas, many of the scenes involve two characters sitting around in a restaurant, at a bar, in an office, or on a couch talking to each other. Not wildly action orientated stuff, but still fun. 

One of the only distracting things in this story is the male characters facial hair. When this comic was first published it was still cool for men to have big bushy mustaches, so many of them are drawn with them. Nowadays they look like gay porn stars (it’s then ironic that the only gay character doesn’t have one), so when they talk about a character like that being a manly-man, I can’t help but laugh.

For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.