The Batmom

CATching up: Catwoman 6, 7, 8

COVERGIRLS: I like all three! Hip Hip Hip Hooree!

#6 claims top spot, for it not only places Catwoman in the power position, but also visually transforms two Gotham personalities into one Gotham gargoyle. Genius, Guillem!

#7 and #8 mark the departure of Guillem and the arrival of Adriana Melo (pencils) and Mariah Benes (inks). Goodbye grey, hello #7! Your colors make me long for cotton candy and candied apples. #8’s all shattery-glassy action. Catwoman’s face — especially the screaming red lips — draws eyes down-doobie-do-down-down, in the same direction Catwoman is falling.

INSIDE STORY: Catwoman has the police’s dirty money and the dirty police have Catwoman. They can’t ID her — someone’s wiped computer systems clean of all evidence of her existence — but they can beat her. Or have evil giantess-for-hire Reach do it for them. If there are ways to talk about biting off ears without mentioning Mike Tyson, you can pretend I’m using them … NOW.

Catwoman pulls a Mike Tyson, biting off Reach’s ear before running out the open door being held by Detective Alvarez, conflicted in the face of his boss’s dirty copitude.

Catwoman’s old friend/new fence Gwen Altamont helps her break into automotive thievery, which is all fun and games and cars and cash until Detective Alvarez catches Catwoman. Who is immediately saved by yet another spark-shooting Gothamite with a one-syllable name, this time male and regular-sized: Spark. He’s cute and he likes to steal stuff.

Spark and Catwoman plan a heist involving the Penguin, but while performing recon they see a hooker being drugged and dragged. They save her and talk to her trick-turning buddies, who say the perp is doing this to women all over Gotham. Catwoman vows to save the streetwalkers, thereby turning a neat little trick herself: transforming from bad guy to good.

RAMBLE: Okay, I just read three issues of Catwoman and then wrote about them. Also, during this same time period, I folded laundry, washed 3 dishes, liked 17 FB status updates, wrote 1 FB status update, ate >afew chips, had a conversation about electronic devices in elementary schools, replied to a sad Tweet, and cut up two apples for two children who really just wanted to delay bedtime.

I got nothing left.

Go away.

Who the Hell are These People?

Catwoman: Selina, a hooker-esque thief with a heart of pawn-shop gold and a weakness for the Batman

The Batman: The Batman, alter ego Bruce Wayne

Gwen Altamont: Selina's old friend and new fence, introduced issue 4

Detective Alvarez: Clean cop who has recently realize his co-workers are dirty

Reach: Giant bad-guy for hire, can shoot electrical shocks from her fingertips

What the Hell is Going On?

Catwoman's long-time fence Lola is dead, so she's working with old friend Gwen Altamont. Gotham Detective Alvarez is pursuing a string of robberies he thinks he can link to Catwoman, but when he discovers the cops are crooked and Catwoman has hidden some of their stolen money, he grows conflicted. For a moment, and then returns to his mission: Capturing Catwoman. Batman shows up on occasion, sometimes to mack, sometimes to lecture.

Catwoman 5

COVERGIRL: Catwoman’s goggles brought to my mind some ’70s buggy horror B-movie that I watched in the '80s on Boston’s Channel 56, and which aired before or after one of the daily showings of Clash of the Titans. Really, I don’t remember watching any such bug movie but if it such a movie exists, Channel 56 played it in the '80s.

Also, this cover, while not doing much for me except bringing up fake teenaged memories, at the least doesn’t look like the last few.

INSIDE STORY: Catwoman defeats last issue’s Big Bad Reach but ends up surrounded by crooked cops with straight-barreled guns. Turns out the drug bust she busted up wasn’t a drug bust but a transfer of nearly half-a-million dirty dollars stolen by Gotham’s men in blue. They know she has it. They want it back.

Detective Alvarez, who spent last issue trying to convince his boss to let him pursue Catwoman, learns his boss and compatriots are laundering money that lawfully belongs in an evidence locker.

RAMBLE: Solid issue. Reach we hardly knew ye, but since we hardly knew ye, we don’t care so much that ye got yer arse kicked, probably out of Gotham forever.

Might Alvarez’ discovery lead to a working relationship between he and Catwoman? I hope so. A Cop/Catwoman partnership would make for meaty reading.

Catwoman #4

COVERGIRL: The covers are all starting to feel the same to me. If you look at the details, they all represent different activities (falling, beating, prowling) but upon first glance, they feel very same-same. I like connectedness across covers in a series but I’m missing the sense of exciting-and-new I get not only from the Love Boat, but also from a great cover.

INSIDE STORY: After escaping the police, attending Lola’s funeral, and catching up with old friend Gwen Altamont, who offers to be her new fence, Catwoman heads out to plunder.

Acting on intel from a bearded hipster named Bertrom, she successfully crashes a drug bust. She’s in the process of walking away with a bag of cash when she’s electrocuted skyward, literally shot into the air by a giant lightning bolt zapping from the giant fist of a giant human woman named Reach. The issue ends with Catwoman high above Gotham, succinctly commenting on her situation: “Crap.”

Should she survive the gazillion-foot fall, Catwoman needs to worry not only about big ol’ mysterious Reach, but also Alvarez, a homicide detective trying to convince his boss that a string of burglaries were all committed by the same thief, a sneaky someone who ascends through roofs and leaves barely a trace.

Ramble: The covers may look the same, but Catwoman’s been cat-walking up a steady incline since issue 1. Best issue yet.

Catwoman occupies a strange liminal space between Good and Bad. She messes up the typical comic universe black-and-white dichotomy. As of this issue, she’s got folks coming at her from both sides of the Gotham-verse: Detective Alvarez representing the Good Cop, and electrifying Reach representing the Big Bads.

(Digression: I notice that comic book baddies tend to have short names: Reach, Reign, Bone, the Mirror. Where are all the villainous John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidts? Dah dah dah dah dah dah dah!)

What’s got me most curious about New 52 Catwoman is how Judd Winick and Guillem March are going to pull her forward. Because for all my kvetching about her too-cozy relationship with Batman, Catwoman is a Batman spinoff. She sits solidly within the winged outlines that mark his universe. So now that she’s got what I presume DC hopes is a long-running book, what’s she going to get up to, and who’s she going to become? And can she come out from under the storied batwings?

My hope for Catwoman is that she spins off-off-and-away from Batman and becomes a franchise in her own right, or at least a solid comic book. Let her be to Batman as Frasier Crane was to Sam Malone, as Mrs. Garrett was to Arnold Jackson, as Laverne and Shirley were to Richie and the Fonz, as George Jefferson was to Archie Bunker.

She can drop by the Batcave for the occasional book-jumping adventure, but DC, it’s time for Catwoman to be movin’ on up.