Catwoman #44

This is what the Lantern Corps need! A cat on every team!

If Spoiler winds up taking the job as Catwoman's sidekick, I'm afraid she's going to have to change her name to Pussygirl. There's just no getting around it. Especially if Frank Tieri is taking on the writing gig after Genevieve Valentine. He's the perfect writer to set up that story arc that nobody else would ever set up! Because he's not very good at writing. He's also bad at writing. Plus he thinks emasculating a man by accusing him of looking at gay porn is an acceptable way of dehumanizing a person. It might be if those two people are really good friends and in junior high. Or really good friends who met in junior high and are now forty year olds named Doom Bunny and Grunion Guy. But it's not acceptable any other time for reasons which I won't go into because I can't remember why it's bad. Maybe this guy Rusty (unless his name is John!) can remember. I seem to remember he knows a lot about etiquette and proper standards of behavior. If you have any questions for him, you can send queries to trentresin_666@hotmail.com. But be polite! You wouldn't start letters to Ann Landers with remarks like "You're a huge piece of shit, Rusty, and I hate you forever for what you did to me that time!" That's just uncalled for. Although feel free to point out that The Boondock Saints was an awful movie and the opinions of anybody who liked it aren't worth the time to send an email asking them their opinions.

This issue begins with Catwoman headed into the sewers to recover Eiko from Killer Croc. It also begins with another letter from an old dead person. This one is about how grief makes you disrespectful or brave or something. I guess that means Selina is going to bust some heads because of what happened to Eiko. Black Mask may have finally made a major mistake. Unless he made a major mistake earlier and I just missed it because I don't really know what's going on in this comic book anymore. I'm just rooting for Selina to win!

Killer Croc offers to take Eiko home now that she's had a nap and recovered from her bullet wound and the fall from the top of a building.

You can't be careful fucking a crocodile man!

My cat just walked into the room screaming at me and I called her Fingercuffs. I think she disapproves of felines consorting with reptiles.

Black Mask gets footage of Killer Croc escorting Catwoman home to the Hasigawa residence. That's probably going to piss Eiko's father off when Black Mask uses it against their family. Although Black Mask can't cause any more trouble if he's being digested in the belly of a crocodile man! Hint, hint! Although maybe that wasn't subtle enough to be considered a hint. Suggestion, suggestion?

Spoiler goes from training with Eiko and being pissed at Catwoman to running into Catwoman and working with her. Stephanie just can't resist the call to action. She's tasked with stealing evidence from Keyes and Alvarez. The evidence consists of the information a murdered man named Bill Turner had on Batman and the Bat-Family. After getting Stephanie to sort of agree to help, Catwoman throws herself off of the top of a building because that's how people in Gotham City travel. Apparently this city was designed like a monkey cage in a zoo. You can get to anywhere from anywhere by simply leaping around.

Selina is just trying to find a way out of the mob style drama of Gotham now without losing anybody else she cares for. I don't mind if she loses some of them because I'm not really attached to any of them. Although I wasn't attached to Antonia's brother either and his death was dramatic and touching. I just hope Valentine writes the deaths of Keyes and Alvarez as comic!

I know I've stated multiple times I want Catwoman back doing her burglar shtick but I'd rather have Valentine's Catwoman in the mob than Tieri's Catwoman doing anything at all. Even loads of sex. Well, maybe I'll try that for a little while!

Even if I can't quite follow all the intricacies of the crime family plot, it's a thousand times better than any story in the pages of Catwoman since The New 52 began. And I could be completely lost until the end of time in the overall story as long as Valentine keeps giving me moments like this:

I have no faith that I'll get any scenes like this from Frank Tieri. His would have ended with Antonia saying, "Don'y listen to ward! He's gay and into gay stuff!"

Meanwhile while Eiko is out and about the city, The Black Mask uses the knowledge he gained from his surveillance of the Hasigawa building to sneak in and begin murdering everybody. He doesn't play fair but at least I don't have to wonder who is on whose side when bullets begin flying.

Apparently Black Mask assumed it was Selina Kyle in the Catwoman mask being taken into the Hasigawa building. He believed he had been betrayed by the Hasigawa clan and that they were working with Selina Kyle and the Calabreses. Black Mask confronts Eiko's father with a picture of Croc bringing Catwoman into the building and asks him to deny the partnership. Eiko's father puts it all together and realizes it's his daughter in the Catwoman suit. He refuses to betray her to Black Mask and accepts death instead. So another fucking death of somebody I didn't really give a fuck about but done in such a way that brings tears to my eyes. Mostly because Eiko will never know how much her father truly loved her, and what he now sacrificed simply to keep her safe from Sionis.

Eiko returns to find her father murdered and a message on the wall: "Play with the cat get scratched". Well, not if you're careful. And you own a pair of chainmail sharkproof gauntlets.

Catwoman #44 Rating: +2 Ranking. Most writers can't make the death of a main character emotionally moving but Valentine has killed off two nobodies in Catwoman and they've both been heart-rending and/or gut-wrenching. It goes to show how much can be accomplished when a writer treats all of her characters as three dimensional human beings moving throughout a realistic landscape with their own motivations. These characters aren't just set pieces for Selina Kyle's story. They aren't just a bunch of faceless xenophobes screaming for Superman to go back home to his dead planet. Valentine has built a world that, while maybe it isn't exactly the best fit for a "Catwoman" comic book, is a living, breathing landscape that is well worth reading. She's been a bright oasis in the deserts between Nocenti and, quite soon as we exit the other side of her shade and water, Tieri. I'll enjoy this while it lasts because I have absolutely no faith in a Frank Tieri Catwoman series.