Catwoman #29

I can't believe she stole the Champagne Bucket's wallet. She's a master!

God damn you, DC! I just found a new project that I was really excited about! I called it "Scenes From Ann Nocenti's Catwoman." I would take one of her barely comprehensible panels and rewrite it into a longer piece of all text fiction. I was also thinking that maybe each piece could really use a nice black and white illustration to go with it! But visual art isn't really my cup of sake. Although I did once do a 24 Hour Comic and, coincidentally enough, it sort of starred Catwoman!

Click on the image to read, and then reblog, the entire comic.

Oh well! I guess I could always dig out my old Catwoman issues for "Scenes From Ann Nocenti's Catwoman." It should probably have its own Tumblr as well.

I guess I should look on the cup is half bright side of things! An issue of Catwoman written by somebody other than Nocenti! There's no way it could be worse. Seriously. The physical laws of the universe will not allow for an issue of Catwoman not written by Nocenti to be worse than an issue of Catwoman written by Nocenti. I've done the math. Or the science. Maybe both!

When people describe some piece of news as both good and bad, this is that.

I know the people that are always looking for drama are going to interpret the above caption as me saying I'm happy there is a guest writer but sad that it's Sholly Fisch. You know what? Go fuck the way you see the world. Fuck it one last time and throw out its number. Because not everything is about drama! The real reason I said it's good news is that we have a different writer! The bad news is that it's only a guest writer which means Ann Nocenti will be back. I'm sure most people on the internet read it that way because most people on the internet understand the dangers of Ann Nocenti with a comic book script. But if you read it the other way, calm down. Take a breath, Sholly Fisch's mother. I wasn't taking a poke at your son.

Oh fuck. I hope Sholly Fisch's mother is still alive! Nobody tell me one way or the other so I can continue on not feeling like an asshole. At least not for that!

Currently, Selina Kyle is crashing a wealthy party for Taylor Pharmaceuticals and talking to herself as if she were her own audience.

She might be talking to her breasts.

Every now and then, I have to mention how much I dislike this use of Narration Boxes. It's like the main character is telling the story to somebody somewhere in the future (or simply directly to the reader which is even more jarring). She's obviously talking to somebody else by her reaction of "No, no." And she's speaking from a place in the future as a narrator that already knows the outcome of the story. But that omniscient shit kind of flip flops back and forth to thoughts in the present that really should be thought bubbles. It's obviously a method of telling a story that's been brought over from scads of first person account pieces of literature. Nothing wrong with those but I feel comic books should be their own medium. And when they borrow from movies to try to be like movies and borrow from books to try to be like books and then just cram them all together in what should be a story told in the brevity of the NOW-space, it just comes across as a work of art that wants to be another work of art. Comics have a kind of thoughtful immediacy to them. Unlike a movie which takes place at breakneck speed through the now, a comic book can extend moments and fill empty spaces. It takes place in a world where action and words have differing timetables. That should be seen as a strength instead of an awkward byproduct. And unlike a book which often takes place in the past tense, the comic, even when flashing back, continues to take place in the present tense. We see the action as it unfolds instead of relying on a subjective narrator retelling the actions of a story which already happened. So when these Narration Boxes are used like a book, they fuck up the immediacy of the story in favor of trying to be more like a work of literature.

I think these Narration Boxes telling the story can work! They've been used in that way in places although I can only think of the first issue of Mister Terrific offhand where the Narration Boxes actually were Michael Holt telling a story from his past. Mostly, I've gotten used to the convention. I don't often bring it up because I accept it as the current trend in comic book writing. But occasionally, like now, I decide to express my completely and utterly objective opinion on the matter.

Back to the story, Taylor Pharma has been bought out by Wayne Enterprises because they invented a chemotherapy drug with no side effects called Mister 40. That sounds like a super villain! Is it some guy in a leather gimp suit sitting in a recliner? Then somebody that needs chemo walks into the room and sits on Mister 40's lap for an hour or so, uncomfortably ignoring his erection pressing up against their buttocks?

Oh! I'm going to be Mister 40 for Halloween!

Catwoman has come to the party to steal Mister 40! This is going to get steamy!

Apparently Pat Olliffe and Tom Nguyen's Catwoman has severe hip dysplasia. You don't often hear about that in cats but since Selina is a catwoman, I'll allow it.

Catwoman makes it all the way to Mister 40 so that I can be disappointed. It isn't a dirty jerk in a leather gimp suit at all. It's just a small phial of bullshit medicine with no side effects. That's what makes it bullshit! All medicine has side effects! Even the main thing the advertisers tell you it's good for is a side effect! It all depends on how you look at it! If you smoke pot to get high, suppressing nausea is a side effect! But if you take it to suppress nausea, getting fucking balls high is a side effect! You know what I have noticed on some of those bullshit medicine commercials? You know the ones for made up shit that people will tell me isn't made up because they've bought into it? They've begun touting them as curing symptoms. You know what actually needs to be cured? The thing causing the symptoms! The symptoms are a fucking warning sign of impending doom, assholes! You don't want to obfuscate the symptoms just so you can go back to living with some disease eating up your guts without pain. The pain is there to say, "Hey fuckwit! Something is eating up your guts!"

Here's a good example for everybody that has one of those things those fucking medicine commercials tells you you might have: Viagra. I'm not going to name any others because everybody has something and they'll hate me for telling them they're just Munchausening up the room. So let's just talk about Viagra because we all know what bullshit that is. Impotence is a major symptom for several things that can be seriously wrong with the body. One of those is heart disease! So when you can't get a fucking erection, that could be a symptom! Just popping a Viagra so you can pop a boner doesn't make the reason for the impotence go away. We live in a country where there's just too much money to be made with pharmaceuticals to not sell any fucking thing made in a lab that can be wedged into a supposed cure. "Hey, this pill stops shaking when you're dying of hypothermia! Put it on the market to cure 'Whole Body Shaking Syndrome!'" You can make up more of your own stupid examples because I'm tired of writing about this now.

Oh yeah! Catwoman sets off an alarm. Probably because of that severe hip dysplasia. She should take some medication for that!

A security guard tries to stop Catwoman but she throws some other pharmaceutical in his face to distract him.

Too bad it was Adrenaline 17! Side effects: inverted penis/everted vagina.

Catwoman tries to escape in the chaos caused by The Incredulous Hulk but she fails. Not because she couldn't slip out while the monster kills lots of civilians but because she would feel a little bit bad about being the cause of all those civilian deaths. So while everybody else slips out (and by "slips out," I mean "stampedes like a bunch of motherfuckers"), Catwoman taunts Mr. Innie.

The nerdy creator of Mister 40 stops Teenie Weenie with a bunch of sedatives and that's when the comic book catches up to the opening page where Catwoman is crashing through a window followed by dozens of bullets. So her heist was successful but it wasn't much of a professional burgle. In and out without anybody noticing should be the goal. I think Catwoman has a fire raging in her loins and she's trying to attract the attention of Batman to hose it down.

"Success! Vagina don't fail me now! Unless it's one of those other nights and then anus don't fail me now!"

The big twist is that Batman is the buyer. And he wasn't as concerned with securing Mister 40 as he was getting Adrenaline 17 destroyed. He also set off the alarms that alerted everyone to Catwoman. And he erased the research data on Adrenaline 17. In the end, Catwoman doesn't mind because Batman put her at risk. And that means Batman owes her big time. Next time they get in a fuckfight, it's going to be all about the cunnilingilism.

Catwoman #29 Rating: +2 Ranking because the dialogue made sense! And Catwoman was doing a burglary job instead of spelunking. Although if Wayne Enterprises just bought out this pharmaceutical company, it seems like an easier way to get rid of Adrenaline 17 is to order all of the researchers and technicians to stop researching and technicianing it. I'm sure Bruce Wayne could have gone in with a nice tall Scotch, looking over the computers. Then he could have drunkenly spilled his alcohol directly on the part of the computer that remembered the Adrenaline 17 composition. That's how computers work, right? That can be done, right? Oh! I think I'm going to write a 007 script now! I have a great idea about Bond seducing a super market checkout robot! After he jizzes in the change receptacle, the computer will forget the price of Cheez-Its.