Honestly I’m not so surprised that Catwoman Vol. 2: Cat International doesn’t measure up to the level of the book that preceded it. I’ve recently given my “endings are harder than beginnings” spiel here so I won’t repeat it, but it seems like that’s where we are with Tini Howard’s run. I’ve heard rumors of scheduling issues, and certainly this volume lacks the singular art vision of Catwoman Vol. 1: Dangerous Liaisons.

Also, though I enjoy how this volume is running parallel to Howard’s Punchline: The Gotham Game, I’m wondering whether some aimlessness in International doesn’t indicate having to wait to line up with Punchline. That book is far inferior to this one, and it seems to me Punchline drags Catwoman down a notch with it.

This is a tough one, and it might take reading the third volume before I can quite decide how this run is going, whether the first volume or the second was the exception. There’s parts I like, but then again the book’s big twist is predicated on a characterization of Catwoman by Howard that doesn’t seem accurate or well-considered. All of that makes for a Catwoman book whose premises I still appreciate, but that I’m ultimately just not sure about.

[Review contains spoilers]

Over the course of Howard’s two volumes so far, Catwoman Selina Kyle has taken up with Valmont, apparently late of the League of Assassins and Selina’s biggest fan. Dangerous Liaisons made a lot of Valmont having murdered two mob goons that had murdered a friend of Selina’s, and further Howard’s Selina had a pearl-clutching moment when she discovered Valmont was working with serial killer the Flamingo.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

This stringent aversion to killing on Selina’s part (it really keeps coming up, likely to foreshadow this volume’s ending) seems out of character, even overblown. Famously Selina has killed or tried to kill Black Mask a couple times (stories that are in no small part in the genesis of this book), plus the time she sentenced her cousin to death (in Catwoman Vol. 6: Keeper of the Castle, which this book references explicitly), not to mention the times historically she’s tried to kill Batman, that she’s been shown to have no compunction against teaming up with avowed killers like Penguin or the Riddler, or the car she ran off the road in just the previous volume. (Compare too with what seems a much more accurate portrayal of Selina’s killing morals in Tom King’s Batman/Catwoman.)

So that this book’s climax and denoument should turn on Selina’s guilt over having to kill Valmont before he killed Batman, and now Selina is jailed for her crime and despondent, feels awfully thin to me. Howard’s Batman at least makes noises like he’ll forgive Selina, not write her off entirely, but even that’s big talk given that Batman’s still working not only with Red Hood Jason Todd, but also Ghost-Maker and Clownhunter, killers all. I don’t want Batman to start killing his foes, but clearly we’re in a different paradigm than even the post-Crisis days when Batman would scold Huntress just for roughing up a crook too much. Howard’s depiction of Catwoman seems out of step with the character’s recent and past history.

The scene in question itself reads a bit funny, and that further muddies what’s happening here. The behemoth Amygdala has been working with Gotham mobsters, though suddenly he shows up in Punchline’s clutches (neither the Catwoman nor Punchline books offer explanation on this point yet). Valmont frees him specifically to attack Punchline, but Amygdala goes after Catwoman instead — though no one registers surprise at this, so as the audience we’ve no idea what’s intended or not, ruse or double-cross or etc.

To protect Selina, Valmont kills Amygdala. This makes Batman far angier than is reasonable, especially given all his murderous allies, and Batman attacks Valmont. Valmont manages to get Batman pinned under a beam, at which point Valmont prepares to kill Batman and Selina has to kill him in turn. But, it’s not as though Valmont has a quarrel with Batman specifically; Batman was the aggressor, Valmont the victim, and with Batman pinned, Valmont had really no reason not to walk away. Just the same as Selina’s guilt, the lead-in to Selina murdering Valmont also seems contrived, and the vagueness and odd character choices equally make it hard to get behind it all.

I should say I am enjoying Howard’s run in general, and the use of Selina’s once-overwritten mob past is still a joy. Indeed one of the better of these is the two issues that fulfill the book’s “international” claim, in which Selina and Valmont get involved in the affairs of crime families overseas. Points to Howard for working in a mention of “Selina Calabrese.”

But the trip is a detour in a plot that returns to Gotham almost immediately, and in that way seems like filler. I wonder if it’s not coincidental that this book’s ties to Punchline start right after; again, slowing Catwoman to coincide with the other book. Loving as I do shared comics universes, that Catwoman and Punchline are essentially one series handing off between issues (with no overt in-comic direction as far as I can tell) is great. But the art in Punchline reads a bit juvenile, as does the level of its faux-mature humor, and that carries over to the Punchline scenes in Catwoman. It underscores the power of the artist that Cat International isn’t as gripping as Dangerous Liaisons with the same writer, the difference being we didn’t get Nico Leon’s moody pencils throughout here.

So following Catwoman Vol. 2: Cat International, we’ll start with Selina in jail, and at some point we’ll end up in a war with Batman. My hope is that indicates Selina’s fortunes with Gotham’s mob will rise; that’s the direction of this book I’m most interested in, not another jailhouse story a la, actually, the Punchline miniseries one previous.

[Includes original and variant covers, character study]