Catwoman #24

The turtle looks confused. Probably by Ann Nocenti's dialogue.

Last issue, The Joker's Daughter was upset that she hadn't been invited to the wedding of Tinkerbutt and Cake. What she didn't know was that Catwoman stole Cake's father's test tube full of Airborne Goat Syphilis which caused him to call off the wedding because you can't have a proper Underground Warhog Wedding without any Airborne Goat Syphilis. And since The Joker's Daughter wasn't up to speed on the status of the biggest underground social event of the season, she waylaid Catwoman and Tinderbot as they escaped the Warhog compound.

You'd all forgive me if I just put this comic book in the trash and ended my commentary right now, wouldn't you?

I think November 5th should be Speak Like An Ann Nocenti Character Day instead of Guy Fawkes Day! So that's what I'm going to do! First I'll go out to breakfast.

Server: "You are the customers. What will you order?"
Me: "Chicken eggs are ovulations. Why would I eat those?"
Server: "We have bacon and oatmeal."
Me: "By that logic, oatmeal is a filthy creature."
Server: "That will be $12.50 plus tip which is the easiest tip to calculate if you were of a mind to tip 20%."
Me: "I have never been a calculator. Jack Tramiel sold calculators long before he sold home computers. His Vic 20 was advertised by William Shatner. Goodbye!"

Dammit. I just can't do Ann Nocenti dialogue! It's because I can't quite pick out what's wrong with it. The characters are basically stating non sequitors which work as facts to kind of set up their next statement. And the characters barely interact with each other. When Catwoman states the fact that The Joker's Daughter's face is rotting, The Joker's Daughter responds as if Catwoman insulted it. But she was just stating a fact! There was no judgment! She didn't call it ugly or nasty. And then Catwoman's argument against The Joker's Daughter wearing the face isn't that it's a disgusting, filthy hazardous piece of rotting medical waste fished out of a sewer but that "The Joker tortures people." Ick! I can see wearing Princess Diana's face...but The Joker's?! Gross!

Catwoman really can't get past it.

The above panel was a bit confusing because The Joker's Daughter began the encounter by calling Tupperbox and Catwoman "Girlfriends" and now Catwoman decides to use the term as well. But Catwoman's hatred for The Joker takes another twist as we realize it isn't his madness or his torturing people or his cackling or his insanity or his tormenting that drives Catwoman batty. Nope. It's because she has a short fuse for jokes. That's why she can't believe The Joker's Daughter is wearing The Clown Prince of Crime's face!

I hate to scan so many pictures so early in my reading (not really), but this next panel is a perfect example of how Ann Nocenti's Characters talk past each other.

To be fair, I probably wouldn't listen to an idiot wearing some other person's actual face over their own either. To be fairer, The Joker's Daughter does respond directly to the boiling pot of crabs analogy. But that part didn't back up my point the way this first part did.

Which one of them is going to pull that light switch in the middle of the sewer tunnel? It must be there for a reason, right?! I bet it opens up a passage to the conservatory.

The Switch drops a flood gate (or makes it materialize out of thin air (or creates a spinning death blade that The Joker's Daughter calls a flood gate. It's hard to tell. Rafa draws some nice asses but sometimes I can't follow the panel to panel story telling so well)) which knocks Catwoman back into a pit which must lead to lots and lots of water because The Joker's Daughter says, "Hope she can swim. Most cats can't." Oh bullshit. Cats can swim just fine. They just want to tear out the throat of everybody in a four mile radius when they get wet.

Except cats also sometimes grab things with their claws as they fall so that they don't have to land on their feet! (I'm getting better at talking like an Ann Nocenti character!) Catwoman apparently has Batgrapple technology infused into her whip and she winds up hanging in the middle of a deep shaft. And then the next panel, she's swung up into another tunnel above some Warhogs. Once again, I'm bemused by the panel layout. But Catwoman's Narration Boxes at least show she has an angle and an option and a way out of whatever's happening. So let's just pretend she did what I think we're supposed to think she did: Catwoman swung into a tunnel which housed a bridge crossing the shaft she was hanging in and landed on a ledge above the tunnel's floor where a bunch of Warhogs were marching.

Of course he didn't make it! You spent too much time hunting Corpse Diamonds for Alice Tesla and then running around with Princess Tenderbox, fighting with Warhogs, dancing with The Joker's Daughter, and following a stupid cat around! I'd hate for you to be my emergency contact!

I know, I know! A burnt body and some clothes does not make for a dead Rat-Tail. He could still be alive. I'd actually prefer him to be dead because that story is so far in Ann Nocenti's past now, why bring him back into it? Better to just kill him and move on. Although this being comic books, it's always best to leave things ambiguous, so an unrecognizable corpse and Rat-Tail's clothes is the perfect plot point.

It turns out Rat-Tail is actually one of the Warhogs carrying the body! It's the shortest red herring burnt corpse plot point ever! But that's because Rat-Tail's stupid haircut gave him away. Catwoman gets him alone so that he can yell at her for starting the war in the Badlands.

Actually, The Penguin began the war by selling drug-laced Popsicles to the people in Rat-Tail territory. Catwoman just happened to have a beef with The Penguin and decided to help the Rat-Tails defend their turf against The Penguin. I don't think very much of it was Catwoman's fault at all! She just decided to join in because she doesn't like The Penguin's criminal business ethics. Although, allowing for my faulty memory, I could be completely wrong about all of that!

Meanwhile Doctor Phosphorus is busy making more Corpse Diamonds. He's seeding them all over Gotham by pretending they're made out of the corpses of people's loved ones. But they explode when exposed to the perfect power chord! Then they'll all explode and turn Gotham into a fiery pit where he and his daughter, Bendertocks, can live peacefully above ground.

Did I mention Tinkerbust was kidnapped by The Joker's Daughter? The Joker's Daughter points out that Tankerbucks should have married Rake but Kindereggs has suddenly done a complete 540 on her marriage stance. Now instead of wanting any husband at all, even one that beats her, she has decided that she doesn't want a husband if it means she has to be sold with a bunch of goats. So fucking picky. That's the best way to be sold! With goats!

The Joker's Daughter wants to team up with Tinseltits to take over the Gotham Underground. Her plan is to flood a section of Charneltown so that everybody knows who's in charge now! I guess the statement is self-evident because the Nethers must be the only part of the Underground capable of flooding the rest. So everybody will know The Joker's Daughter was behind it. But when The Joker's Daughter begins the flood, her Ugly Cat is caught in the water! What an amateur super villain! Don't you know you always sit down with the cat in your lap, stroking it, as you enact your evil plan? What a jerk.

Meanwhile, Alice Tesla is an idiot. Let me show you why.

Example A. She knows just what to do!

Example B. Even though she had her "a-ha" moment and knows exactly what to do, she continues to use guess work.

Example C. She blows herself up.

The issue ends with Rat-Tail, Catwoman, and Ugly Cat drowning while Tinderbox and The Joker's Daughter team up to take over the Underground.

Catwoman #24 Rating: -1 Ranking. I really should have thrown it in the garbage immediately.

Joker's Daughter #1

I have never read a Joker's Daughter story before. I'm glad it's going to be written by such a skilled auteur.

Here's my prediction about this story: misfit, rebel, outside society's norm girl hates her parents and everybody and stomps around in big boots being angry. She finds The Joker's Face floating in the Gotham Reservoir, puts it on, and gains her new identity! Nobody is going to tell her how to live her life now! Fuck 'em all! Plus, she decides to go live underground because why the fuck not? At least nobody down there will keep asking, "Why are you wearing a mask made out of human skin?"

Score! Girl that didn't fit in in the suburbs runs away to the sewers. That was an easy one, though. Cliché and Nocenti go hand in hand.

At least the artist on this one is attempting to make Ugly Cat look ugly! Although it might be a bit too Gollum-like here. And where the fuck did she find a C-3PO head? Is it actually a Star Wars figure carrying case? I preferred the Darth Vader head carrying case myself. But that's because nobody ever bought me the AT-AT so I could just shove them all inside that.

Even though I already knew Ann Nocenti would be writing this issue, I would have been able to guess just from her writing style in the dialogue between Joker's Daughter and Ugly Cat. I'm not sure how to describe Nocenti's dialogue style except as "not human." It's as if somebody programmed a Commodore 64 to try to make small talk with strangers and it's really doing it's best be understood.

I'm not sure The Joker's Daughter actually knows the real history of The Nethers or she just believes the rumors she's heard. She seems to believe that The Nethers was flooded to make way for the Gotham Reservoir while citizens who refused to move were still just going about their daily lives. Although it is Gotham. I suppose if I wanted to believe it, I could easily believe some corrupt officials gave the go ahead knowing that people were still living down there. But it just feels like The Joker's Daughter is the kind of person that lives their life via their confirmation bias. Flooding innocent people is the sort of thing Up Worlders would do because they're shallow, selfish assholes. She wants to believe she doesn't fit in not because she's regularly snotty and a jerk to most people but because they're clique-loving dicks that have never given her a chance.

My confirmation bias is that I don't like Ann Nocenti's writing so I'm not going to give The Joker's Daughter the benefit of the doubt with regards to the truth of anything she says. She's just a spoiled brat that probably got grounded from Facebook for a weekend and she wasn't going to put up with that! Fuck them all! They'll see how wrong they were when she disappears underground with her ugly cat and they never see her again!

Score! Big boots! But what rebellious young girl doesn't wear big boots, right? I love them!

Only Ann Nocenti could get me to turn on an anti-social young teenager just trying to escape the system and stick it to the man. I'm not even giving The Joker's Daughter a chance because I can't stand Nocenti's writing! Although I do like Ugly Cat. But I hate that The Joker's Daughter calls it Ugly Cat! I thought she was above judging things by their appearances?

Score! She hates her parents! I wonder if Nocenti believed she was writing a character that would be a Champion for Young Girls everywhere who didn't feel like they fit in. As if anybody feels that way.

After Joker's Daughter surfaces, some kids throw rocks at her and call her ugly. The Joker's Daughter believes that they'll stop being cruel to her if she finds a mate. Then nobody will think she's ugly! But for once, one of Ann Nocenti's female characters doesn't want a partner in her life! Maybe there's hope for The Joker's Daughter after all! Unless she decides that she wants Catwoman as her partner so that she'll be accepted among the shallow, rock-throwing assholes.

And, lastly, score! These correct speculations all feel so hollow, though. They were all just so obvious.

One thing I'm glad to see is The Joker's Daughter didn't disappoint me with just how shallow she is. Rejecting conventional society does not automatically make a person more profound, more insightful, or smarter than those that don't reject it. Sometimes it just makes you a different kind of asshole. There's a difference between being oneself and acting in a rebellious manner. With The Joker's Daughter's declaration that "ugly is the new beautiful," I see that she is just another shallow twat.

The Joker's Daughter was just coming up to the surface to trade or look for some food or books. But now she's suddenly ready to hold a bloody revolution because she sees one dick treating his partner like shit. Obviously that means everybody else acts in the same manner because she's the only person capable of breaking out of society's shackles and thinking on her own.

I hate her so much!

But not as much as I hate Nocenti's plots!

So now apparently enough fairly normal people escape Arkham on a continual basis to create this tribal society where women are handed out like gift bags.

I have a feeling that the editors gave Ann Nocenti this mythical Gotham Underworld to fuck around with so that she wasn't fucking up Gotham at street level with her stupid Penguin and Rat-Tails Gang Wars. Once Ann Nocenti stops writing for DC, Gotham can have another cataclysm which will collapse the Underworld for good and destroy anything that Nocenti had created.

The Joker's Daughter's story that she's going to tell this man is The Lysistrata. I think that means she's going to institute some kind of plan that results in the men walking around with gigantic erections and the women going out of their mind from lack of sex. Or something. But the first part of her plan is to use her half-moon to burn a gigantic smile on the man's face. So that was why she just had to pick up the crescent moon on the way to the surface! It was awkwardly placed in the narrative that I really didn't know what the fuck to say about it.

The Joker's Daughter tries to overthrow Charon the leader but winds up being beaten by him because he's good looking.

Christ. It's like Nocenti is making excuses why one sex should rule over another.

Patriarchy. Matriarchy. Who fucking cares? Nocenti has already set up the history of this place as if the women couldn't possibly have built the tunnels or done the hunting or fixed everything up. "Naturally" the men did that! So now they get to sit back and relax and have the women wait on them. How about not switching from the rule of one sex over the other but just allowing people to do the things they're best at and the things they want to do. Can a guy cook in this society? Can he raise the children? Why can't a woman go about fixing things? Who the fuck cares who does what? Stop with the pendulum swinging, Charon! It doesn't have to be one way or the other.

Fuck it. I don't know who to be angry at anymore. I think I'm just mad at Ann Nocenti for constantly writing stereotypical, cliché bullshit.

The Joker's Daughter (Duela is her name. I remember that from somewhere. But damned if I can remember any previous encounters in my comic book life with The Joker's Daughter) lies to Charon about her childhood. She was a lot like The Ventriloquist in that she was ugly as a baby and it shocked everyone. I have no idea how people tell when a baby is ugly. They're all fucking ugly for the first few weeks. Maybe longer! But she did weird and impossible things like trapping spiders in light bulbs. So it was off to the insane asylum to try to make her normal! Goddamn fascist parents trying to cure her of her mental illness where she believes she can trap spiders in light bulbs! Crazy! She also loved to cut up her face and that's not really very healthy. She also brought in stray dogs that probably had more rabies than love. So I guess her parents were assholes because they wouldn't allow her to keep putting her own life in danger. Jerks.

Duella's mom was twelve years old.

None of Duella's story matches up with her first declaration that she only survived her idiot parents by hiding in books. I know she's offering lies to Charon but it feels like these are lies that she tells because she wants to believe them (and maybe even does believe them). Which make her earlier statement about her parents being idiots incongruous.

Oh, it's probably just me and my Anti-Nocenti bias! I bet this is actually a really terrific story on its own!

The Joker's Daughter gives Charon his Joker Face after he goes all Jesus on her. And then the men appear to declare they want the women to run things because they're tired of fighting to hold on to their power. Oh bullshit. They just want the women to do more work! Now they'll all just sit around and shrug their shoulders and say, "Hey, you're in charge. You fucking deal with it." And The Joker's Daughter thinks she's changed things! Ha! Ha ha! Ha ha ha!

I hate this comic book.

The Joker's Daughter #1 Rating: I already told you I hate this comic book! Now leave me alone!