Catwoman No. 10 review: Selina swindles The Penguin

Catwoman continues to do what she does best, steal things, as she continues to survive in Villa Hermosa after The Penguin stabs her in the back.

Catwoman as a series has had its ups and downs since it debuted, but over the past couple of issues, it had been trending up in quality. However, with this latest issue, it sinks back into its old ways and takes a dip in quality as a result of that. This issue is juggling so many different storylines and characters that it feels incredibly unfocused and scatterbrained, while also feeling like it’s trying to lead toward something. Leading toward an unknown something, but something nonetheless.

This issue flounders because of the narrative choices throughout the issues. There are time jumps, scene jumps, and character jumps at an abundant rate here and there’s way too much happening for twenty-two pages to handle effectively. Scene and time changes feel random and have very poor transitions as well as not presenting a clear picture of what’s happening in most scenes. The only scenes that really makes sense within the context of the issue are those involving The Penguin and the events stemming out of that, but even those feel kind of unfocused.

It’s also very unclear why this issue felt the need to include time jumps or the Creels in this issue at all. They do nothing for the story and, if anything, make the story being told much worse off because it messes with the flow of the story. It’s really disappointing because the concept of this story is good, but the execution just doesn’t work.

Image by DC Comics/Art by Fernando Blanco

Then there’s the fact that there’s a narrator present throughout the entirety of this issue. The problem with that is that narrator isn’t actually a character present in the issue and you don’t know who it is. Is it possible that this choice will read better in trade? Yeah it is, but here it’s often confusing because you often forget that it’s not Selina or her partner narrating this issue, it’s some unseen actor. It makes for a very awkward read and something that becomes less and less enjoyable as the issue goes on.

The art in this issue is lackluster as well. It’s not bad, but nothing much really stands out either which is a rarity for Fernando Blanco who has done such a great job on this series throughout the several issues he’s worked on. The reason for this though is that the actual story doesn’t call for much in the way of eye-catching art. The story just kind of moves along, not spending a whole lot of time on emotional beats or character beats, and thus an artist can only do so much. That said, there are several great pages in this issue because Blanco is a great artist, but this issue definitely doesn’t contain his best.

4.5/10 

This month’s issue of Catwoman stumbles through odd storytelling choices and the lack of emotional and character beats throughout the entirety of the issue.