Gotham War 2: Electric Boogaloo — Reviewing ‘Catwoman’ #67

Gotham City streets are struck by war. Not a single ounce of shock exists since that’s just a Tuesday in Gotham. Hell, it’s the second Gotham-related war involving Catwoman in less than a years’ time.

Catwoman #67 stands as the penultimate issue of the Nine Lives story arc and for this creative team’s time on the series. Nothing gets easier as Tini Howard, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Veronica Gandini, and Tom Napolitano put Selina Kyle through hell.

Once upon a time this was easily one of my favorite series to read each month. That feels like a lifetime ago at this point. Not just because this current storyline is ten issues long. Everything was thrown off by that previous Gotham war mentioned above, and it never recovered. Having the series ending with the next issue (delayed to September because of a four-part Gotham City Sirens return) is almost merciful.

While the main character is not really in any danger of dying (though with Hush involved who can say) this version of her series is about to pass. Which is probably a good thing, as there is a spark that is kind of missing right now. It will be very intriguing to see what is to come for the series with DC Comics massive relaunch in October, that they are calling All-In.

As usual, I appreciate what Howard was attempting here, but it just misses the mark. A giant chunk of this issue, and previous ones, are characters sitting around for pages recapping everything from previous issues. Treating each issue as someone’s first doesn’t mean actually acting like no one read the issue before.

That being said, there are some good character beats here. Selina and Dick Grayson had some good moments, and so were the moments she had with Dario and Eiko. In those spots the series almost felt like it did in the past. Where character and relationships were at the top, more so than wasting extra lives and possible godly hallucinations.

Being a heavy action piece, outside of the aforementioned recap scenes, the rougher sharper style of Di Giandomenico still works quite well for the series. After sharing duties last issue, it’s all back in their hands for this one. Plenty of heaviness, a bit of lightness, and good emotional work all around. Characters and moments have a solid presence on the page, keeping the audience in the thick of things.

Gandini’s colors incorporate a lot of that heaviness, shooting for a lot of mid-level but darker palette choices. Plenty of shadows and darker tones help to emphasize the tougher parts of this story, playing into the darker personality that Gotham has.

As usual, for this arc, Catwoman has a lot of exposition to dump out caption wise. Funny enough those captions recap almost as much as the actual dialogue. So, it’s like double dip recapping going on, which is already one time too much.

Working on the letters this time around is Napolitano, who was a stalwart on the series for quite some time before stepping away. Now he’s back and bringing that visual letter magic back into play. Always love the way Napolitano makes SFX truly feel organically part of any scene, not to mention the visual care put into really going all in on lettering. That really poppy Hush name drop is the type of comic book stuff I dig big time.

Catwoman #67 is now available from DC Comics.