Batwoman #25
Considering the circumstances of which this book came out, it’s really not that bad. From what I understand, this was very much a rush job, made after the original creative team of J.H. Williams III and H. Blackman left the book over DC not allowing them to let Kate and Maggie Sawyer get married. And it’s really easy to see, considering that there are at least four vastly different artists on this issue.
Still, it’s not a bad issue – the story of it is short and simple enough, it does what it needs to do. I liked the little scene that we get of Kate and Bruce interacting, if only because it was really a rare thing to see until Rebirth. But overall this issue so far feels the most unnecessary.
Birds of Prey #25
I haven’t read a lot of this era of the book – after Marx came in and suddenly made my favorite character in the book do a heel turn for literally no reason at all I gave up – but this issue is interesting enough. I get the feeling that if one is a Black Canary fan and is not a fan of how the New 52 took away her mother and JSA connections, you’re probably not going to have a good time.
Overall I liked it well enough. While it’s not the classic take on the character, this take on Dinah is interesting enough, and does a good job setting her up for how we would see her in previous issues of Birds of Prey, Team 7, and ultimately her (far superior) solo series.
Catwoman #25
I had dropped this book around this time shortly after Ann Nocenti got on the book, who did some…interesting things with the book, to put it lightly. In comparison to that, this basic, kind of paint-by-numbers issue is a godsend in that it actually made sense!
While I feel like Selina here was portrayed as a little too green than she should at this time period, it was still a good take. She has a good balance of looking for the next score to set her up, while still having her own unique code.
I also liked the story’s sense of continuity. Much like Layman’s criminally underrated run on Detective Comics, it takes bits that were already established in previous runs and slips them in a way that feels natural, from adding in Lola, Selina’s first fencer from Judd Winick’s run of Catwoman, to the Gotham Underground that was a big part of Nocenti’s aforementioned wacky run. It even references Layman’s own Detective Comics tie-in to Zero Year effortlessly – much easier to do since, y’know, he wrote the thing, but still pretty cool!
The art by Aaron Loprasti is also great – I normally associate his work with Wonder Woman, but he does a great job of making Selina very expressive, and pulls off the alleycat Selina, and the classy/sexy high society Selina.
