Review: Catwoman Vol. 5- Race of Thieves

Quick Summary

Pros: The book starts out with some good stories. Buried under the chaos, the “Race of Thieves” story has some mindless action and a decent mystery.

Cons: The Gothtopia tie-in issues might be confusing for those who have not read the main event. The majority of this book is terrible and follows a chaotic and annoying storyline. The writing and dialogue has a number of places where it feels unnatural or just doesn’t make sense.

Overall: This is another installment in a series of bad Catwoman books. It starts out alright and even has a story that is good on its own. However, the rest of the book falls back into the same mess of confusion and awful writing that plagued the previous volumes. Readers looking for a mindlessly entertaining book starring Catwoman might be able to enjoy this collection, but even that will be asking a lot.

Story

Catwoman Vol. 5: Race of Thieves, by Ann Nocenti, starts on an optimistic note and initially appears to be a turning point in an otherwise poor series. Unfortunately, this does not last long and the collection quickly returns to the low quality level seen in the last few volumes. The quality drop sours the volume as a whole and leaves the entire work feeling like an uninspired mess. There are a few positives that might make this worthwhile as a mindlessly entertaining read, but this is the zenith praise that this book deserves. Overall, this is a bad book that most readers would be better off skipping altogether.

(spoilers start here)

The volume starts out with a few event tie-in issues and one standalone story. For the most part these work very well; all of them are moderately fun and engaging. The standalone story is also one of the best chapters in the past three volumes. The only problem is that the Gothtopia tie-in might be hard to understand for anyone who has not read the rest of Gothtopia.

Unfortunately, the rest of the collection ranges from bad to downright terrible. It starts with Selina Kyle burning her Catwoman costume, determined not to return to a life of crime. Seven pages later, she puts her costume back on and returns to her life as a thief; her departure from crime is never mentioned again. This bit of poor storytelling and lack of adherence to any sort of thematic structure is the first big hint that this collection is in trouble.

The rest of the book sees this trouble set in and then completely take over. The entire “Race of Thieves” is so chaotic that it is hard to understand what is happening at any given point. It starts as an Amazing Race style competition between a group of criminals but quickly loses any semblance of logic and reason. The first “step” in the “Race” is never explained, criminals jump in and out of the “Race” without explanation, and the entire escapade feels completely pointless. There are also a host of “Chekhov’s gun” story elements that feel completely out of place by the end of the book; these include: Gwen’s attempted suicide, Catwoman’s partnership with Volt, the orphan child’s relevance to the story, Selina’s job at the Suicide Hotline, and Hunt Stone’s flaming head.

Hidden in the very core of this story, there is an interesting mystery surrounded by some mindless, yet exciting, action. Unfortunately, enjoying these positives requires one to overlook a copious number of negatives and ends up being a nearly impossible task.

It is also worth noting how poor the writing is throughout this storyline. Characters constantly talk in ways that feel completely unnatural. For example, when Catwoman falls into Mirror World she exclaims: “Mirror World! I’m falling through Mirror Master’s infinity of reflections. But which ones are real? No. No! I can’t stand it!” This sounds terrible in any context, but sounds even worse when said by someone who is supposedly falling to their doom. In other places, the writing simply doesn’t seem logical. At one point, Catwoman claims to be able to “sniff out a bad cop like gum on a shoe,” which really doesn’t make any sense at all. This awful writing turns an already bad book into an even worse book.

(spoilers end here)

Art

Patrick Olliffe’s penciles and Tom Nguyen’s inks provide the basis for the majority of the book’s artwork. For the most part, this leads to an average looking book that does an alright job in telling the story. Characters look good, panels are laid out nicely, and the backgrounds and scenery are creative. One of the few negatives is that splash pages often lack an attractive focus, but this problem comes up very rarely. While the story might not be good at all, the artwork does a fine job in showing what it needs to show.

Continuity

Catwoman Vol. 5: Race of Thieves continues the story from Catwoman Vol. 4: Gotham Underground (Review).

The story here continues in Catwoman Vol. 6: Keeper of the Castle (Review).

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

• The beginning of this volume is a tie-in to the Batman: Zero Year event. This event stems from Batman Vol. 4: Zero Year: Secret City (Review).
• The second and third chapter in this volume are tie-ins to the “Gothtopia” event. This event stems from Detective Comics Vol. 5: Gothtopia.
• Mirror Master and Golden Glider’s appearance here continues story elements from Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion.
• The end of this volume alludes to Catwoman becoming a mob boss. This is a concept initially teased back in Batman Eternal Vol. 2 (Review).