Review: Catwoman Vol. 3- Death of the Family

Quick Summary

Pros: Some of the action in the book is fun. There are a few lingering mysteries that could pay off in the future.

Cons: The story is very chaotic and hard to even understand at points. Characters commit actions that often don’t make sense and talk in ways that feel extremely juvenile.

Overall: While the past two volumes maintained a decent level of quality, this volume goes in the opposite direction and sets a low point for the series so far. There are a few moments where the collection shows some promise, and even a few nice teases for the following volume. However, these are immensely overshadowed by a chaotic and confusing narrative, illogically written characters, and poor dialogue. This is not a book for fans of Catwoman or comic book fans in general.

Story

Catwoman Vol. 3: Death of the Family, by Ann Nocenti, takes any sort of progress made by the previous two volumes and squanders it. There is not a singular flaw that causes this book’s failure; in fact there are a few moments where things actually get pretty interesting. However, a host of childish actions and dialogue bring down every moment where this book starts to show potential. In addition, the narrative is so chaotic and unstructured that I had a tough time simply following along with certain portions of the book, and an even harder time finding any entertainment. Overall, this is a poor comic and a definite low point for the series so far.

(spoilers start here)

The book starts out with a tie-in to Batman Vol. 3: Death of the Family (Review) that mostly just features Joker tormenting Catwoman. He captures her, messes with her for a while, lets her go, and then captures her again. This happens about three times before the entire affair just ends and Joker decides to leave her alone.

What makes matters worse is how strange the encounters are between the two. Joker nearly kills a child and practically tortures Catwoman, yet she only lashes out against him once; she even lets him simply walk away at the end of it all. I had to read half of their encounters over multiple times to make sure I didn’t miss anything because I was so confused as to what the purpose of this all was. It is a bizarre narrative on its own and a pretty awful way to start out the collection.

The next portion of the story plays out in a similarly confusing manner. Catwoman infiltrates a A.R.G.U.S. facility, causes a bunch of trouble, and then breaks out with an ancient artifact. While there, a lab assistant helps Catwoman for completely unexplained reasons, a demon that feeds on violence is defeated by violence, and the entire arc ends with a tease to a story that never ends up happening. There is some mindless action mixed in with all of this, but it isn’t structured or entertaining enough to cover for all of the negatives.

The rest of the volume continues this trend of confusing chaos and poor writing. There are a few positives in this half of the book though. Catwoman and Batman have an encounter that is actually a bit sweet. Plus, plotlines involving Catwoman’s true identity and a child at an orphanage seem like they could have potential in the future. These are the moments where it seems like the book could have been something better, if it wasn’t heavily hampered by a host of other problems.

Throughout all of this, one major negative that consistently brings down quality is the way characters and dialogue are written. The majority of characters act and speak as if they are either children or cartoon characters. Trained solders try to shoot open a safe when it can’t be cracked with advanced machinery; a criminal tries to rob a museum while wearing fishnet stockings on his head; and every villain talks as if they are a middle school bully. Dialogue is also so on the nose that it takes away any nuance to the story, since every character seems to have a compulsion for verbalizing every action they make. These flaws permeate the entire book and make it hard to appreciate anything going on here.

(spoilers end here)

Art

The story isn’t the only thing that has degraded since the previous volumes. Death of the Family sees Guilliam March’s work swapped out for a new creative team, consisting of Rafa Sandoval on pencils and Jordi Tarragona on inks. There are a number of moments where this artistic team does well, Catwoman and Batman are almost always depicted nicely. However, the art mirrors the story’s enhanced cartoonish qualities, to the collection’s detriment. This leads to a few odd looking panels and some scenes that simply don’t make a lot of sense. The decline in visual quality is not as dramatic as the decline in story quality but is still something fans of this series will be upset to see.

Continuity

Catwoman Vol. 3: Death of the Family continues the story from Catwoman Vol. 2: Dollhouse (Review).

The story here continues in Catwoman Vol. 4: Gotham Underground (Review).

This volume also references and continues the stories from other comic books, detailed below:

• This volume starts with a tie-in to the Batman Vol. 3: Death of the Family (Review) crossover event. See our Death of the Family timeline here for more information.
• The Black Diamond was put under the care of A.R.G.U.S. in Team 7 Vol. 1: Fight Fire With Fire.