The Good
I have to say that for the most part I felt that Adriana Melo's art in this issue was pretty good. Catwoman is drawn to be really pretty and the panels are really well organized. She is depicted as sexy without being too gratuitous. I definitely prefer her work over that of Guillem March. I think she is better suited on this title. I am also really glad DC opted to change the cover a little bit.
The Bad
If you want to find out how Catwoman came to be Catwoman, all you really have to do is sit back, grab some popcorn and pop in you 'Batman Returns' DVD. You know, the Tim Burton directed Batman movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne? Yeah, that one. There is literally a word-for-word scene in this issue of Catwoman that was used in that movie. Now, I have nothing against Tim Burton's Batman films. In fact, I think they are great. But they are also a complete departure from the characters in the comics.
Okay, so if you are going to take a series and change everything about it and the central character in that series, then you damn well better have a good reason to do so. I am so disappointed with this interpretation of the Catwoman character. It's a bunch of scenes we've already seen. Here we have Selina who is confronted by a man who is in control of her life. She asks too many questions so he decides to throw her off the roof of a building to solve his problem. She falls several stories to the ground and is then licked back to health by a bunch of stray cats. This is a great scene in Batman Returns. It is one of the most memorable moments in that film for me as a fan of the character. Which is why I recalled this scene so vividly because I have already watched it a dozen times over. It was a great moment in the film, but now it is cannon in comics? Really? Couldn't the writer come up with her own version of Catwoman's story? Does she really not have any ideas of her own? If you're going to disregard 40 plus years of canonical comic book history, you better have an adequate story to replace it with instead of a rehash from a movie that everyone reading this comic book has already seen. I am incredibly disappointed in this book.
In addition to the fact that we've already seen this scene play out in the movies, there's also the issue of Catwoman's motivations. Is she that much like a cat that she is enthralled and entranced by shiny things? Is that the basis for all the stealing? There has to be more to her motivations than this, right? This series was never very deep, from the very beginning. Yet, at least at the start there was some direction. This issue just read like a bunch of scenes were thrown together at random, and you get the sense that Nocenti doesn't really have a grasp of who the character is and what her motivations are. Selina has come too far in the years she has existed in comics to just be a shallow girl who likes to steal because she likes to collect shiny things.
I was also hoping to see some mention of Lola, who we saw in the first couple of issues of this series, but that didn't happen.
The Verdict
What exactly happened in this issue? I feel like a good zero issue is one that gives the reader a better understanding of who the character is and what their motivations are. After reading this book, I don't have a better understanding of Catwoman, who she is, why she does what she does and where she came from. I understand that Nocenti is taking over a book from a different writer and thus she will have a different vision for the character and the series, but there needs to be some kind of consistent vision for the character when you relaunch an entire comic book universe.
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