Catwoman #39

The oversized boobs are to distract you from finding Balent's secret kitty.

Previously in Catwoman, a whole lot of stuff you didn't understand happened between a whole bunch of people whose relationships you couldn't keep straight. But it was all done so well that you put the comic book down and thought, "I just readed some smartish stuff!" Then you played Candy Crush Saga for an hour after which you contemplated suicide for fifteen minutes. Ultimately, you dropped the subject, knowing you didn't have the nerve to ever actually go through with it no matter how pointless your life had become, and headed off to eat some Chicken Fries from Burger King.

I hope Valentine begins this issue with some correspondence from some historical personage that I can understand. Who are some stupid women who wrote a lot of letters?! I hope the opening quote is by one of them!

Surprisingly, the letter is from a man! And it's understandable because he's stupid! It's from Cesare Borgia to his sister Lucrezia and he thinks good news is as good as medicine for curing illnesses! What a dope! Of course, it was 1502 and they probably thought a lot of weird shit could cure illnesses. Back then, doctors would witness something like somebody farting a lot on their deathbed only to get better so they began feeding dying people lots of beans. Although I should be careful belittling people from the past! I'm not one of those people that equates ancient culture with innocence and naiveté. When people think aliens had to help the Ancient Egyptians build the pyramids because they can't understand how they could have been built without machines and modern know-how, it just shows a lack of imagination on the part of the modern thinker. Humans were not dumber two thousand years ago. Hell, they began building the ladder of knowledge which we stand at the top of looking down on them and their accomplishments. Maybe a letter containing good news is better than medicine! What do I know? I'm not a doctor or an epistler!

As quickly as Catwoman rose to prominence in the Gotham Underworld, she's falling just as fast to Black Mask's coup.

Black Mask gets the families close to him to agree to an assassination of Selina Kyle. But Lewis of the Forster Lane Book Club rats Black Mask out to Detective Keyes. Somebody needs to draw a diagram showing the relationships between the crime families and the police and who trusts whom because my head is too full of Spaghetti-Os to keep it all straight.

Ugh, I can't believe I used to love Spaghetti-Os as a kid. I'm sure I'm still paying, in some manner, for all the cans of that crap I ate thirty years ago!

The assassination attempt fails and the assassin is killed. It's one of Falcone's men, so Selina learns that the Falcones are no longer standing with the Calabreses. So who's left that has her back? Eiko Catwoman, Batman, Mason, and The Book Club of Forster Lane? That's not so much an army as a sparse cocktail party with cucumber sandwiches and mimosas.

Mason wants Selina to work with the Blask Mask now that he's in good with the Hasigawas and the Falcones. But it's way too late for Selina to work with the Black Mask. The possibility of that alliance died with Nick. But Selina has Mason's ear and he's Black Mask's right hand man. She also has Eiko's...I don't know, heart, maybe? And she's the daughter of the head of the Hasigawa clan, so she's got some pull there as well. And Falcone is a minor player at this point having hidden in Hong Kong for the past five years or so. All of this intrigue is too much for me! If I were Selina, I'd just put the Catwoman costume back on and go steal a famous piece of jewelry.

The Penguin hasn't made a move yet. I'm sure he's going to kill somebody in a few pages.

Smart! Selina's not a great hand-to-hand combatant. But she's a top notch fuckfighter! Now she's in a position to crush Eiko if they ever get into another fight! Er, fuckfight!

The Penguin finally turns up in Black Mask's office offering an alliance with him. It's going to be hard pretending that The Penguin and Catwoman don't already know each other when they eventually meet up again. And then all of those Nocenti stories are going to bubble up to the surface like murder victims in Slaughter Swamp.

The issue ends with Selina taking Falcone's man hostage when he comes to apologize on behalf of Carmine Falcone who claims he had no knowledge of his man working with Black Mask. She plans on holding him unless Black Mask sends Mason in exchange. This way she can put pressure on Black Mask to make a choice between Mason or his relationship with the Falcones.

Catwoman #39 Rating: No change. One of my hopes and dreams for next issue: The Penguin murders Black Mask. DC Comics killed Harvey Dent last year, I think they can let Roman Sionis go as well. The Mask can just find another face to sit on. Another more hopeful dream: Selina and Eiko both dress up as Catwoman and reenact the fuck scene from Catwoman #1. Plus less criminal underworld intrigue. I don't have any synapses left to keep the characters and relationships straight! Maybe a few of them can all die over in Batman Eternal to lighten the load on my brain.