LATE REVIEW EDITION
I was at Comic-Con last week so I didn’t read this book until…ten minutes ago…ish. Seeing as how most of you have probably already made your decision as to whether or not you’ll buy this one I’ll keep things short and sweet.
Yes, it’s good. I never know what sort of quality I’m going to get from Peter J. Tomasi, but Batman and Catwoman is the best chapter that the “Stages of Grief” arc has had. For once he isn’t totally angry and the story actually has some real heart. Not only that, but we get a well-written Catwoman and possibly the best Batman/Catwoman scenes to come out of the New 52 so far. This issue is a nice stand-alone story and definitely worth your $2.99. Here are a few extra bullet points…
- Colorist John Kalisz is at the top of his game from the cover to the final page. Great atmosphere in this issue.
- Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray delivered a great looking issue with some really brilliant angles in some of the scenes. Some of my favorite moments were the silent takedowns by Batman and Catwoman working together to infiltrate the embassy.
- While the embassy break-in looked cool, it really wasn’t necessary to the story and the whole action portion of the book felt like it was shoehorned in just to make sure nobody got bored when in fact the depth of emotion over the loss of Damian and the extraordinary chemistry between the Bat and the Cat was more than enough to carry this story through to the end.
- The over-the-top baddies we see for a few pages had an awful lot of hype given to them but were brought down very easily. Basically they were built to fail. This all goes along with the “action for action’s sake” arguement.
- I’m still not sure how I feel about this Carrie Kelly character or what Peter J. Tomasi plans to do with her.
- We are given a single page teaser for Two-Face again, but it felt out of place and rather random. It would probably have been best to save the teasers for the final installment of the “stages of grief” arc since we’re not getting anything substantial from Dent until then.
- There are a number of really touching moments in this. Tomasi is at his best when writing issues that have heart like this, the Annual, and issue #18.
- I could’ve done without the reference to Ann Nocenti’s Catwoman #18 (I think that was it) where Batman punches her helmet a bunch of times and breaks it.
Overall
It’s a must-read if you love the Batman/Catwoman dynamic and a nice done-in-one issue but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready for this grieving process to be over so we can finally get to the Two-Face arc.
SCORE: 8.5/10
