First off the cover of this issue is brilliant. I love the jaguar stain glass windows in the background. They are very bright, detailed and really stand out. Then of course in the foreground we have Selina standing triumphantly over Mrs. Creel and her deformed face. A perfect summation of what is to come.
Before getting into the story, let’s discuss the layout for this issue. It is both incredibly cool and totally frustrating. Most of this issue ignores the page to page payout and goes with left and right pages being treated as a single page. Panels run from the far left of page 1 to the far right of page 2.
For those of you that read the hard copy issue this lends itself to some wonderfully drawn and larger panels. It does a great job of telling the story visually. To those reading the issue online, I highly suggest re-orientating your screen layout so that it shows two pages side-by-side. Otherwise this is a near impossible issue to read and follow.
On to the story, it is really quite simple. It can be summed up by what Selina tells Mrs Creel “I simply wanted to turn down your offer of employment in person.” Simple right? Of course let’s not forget Selina’s love of the dramatic.
Catwoman crashes the Governor’s mansion and proceeds to kick the crap of every bodyguard and thug that gets in her way. There is a great layout where the two-page layout is divided into top, middle and bottom. The top row is Catwoman interrogating a guy. He is so scared he pisses himself. The middle row is Catwoman busting into a giant room asking for a fight. The bottom row of panels is her kicking the crap out of all of them with ease, followed by her sauntering over to a television on the ground, showing an interview with Mrs Creel, and ending with Catwoman putting her foot through the TV.
Upon finally reaching her, Mrs Creel drugs her own son to juice him up to face Catwoman. The problem is Selina is still the better combatant and easily defeats him. Selina then begins to taunt Mrs Creel for all her failures even though Mrs Creel has a gun leveled at her. Things do not get out of control until Mrs Creel’s youngest son interferes. He tangles with his mother and in the end gets shot because of it. In come the cops and down goes Mrs Creel.
We get two quick epilogues. The first concerning Detective Yilmaz and his obsession with Catwoman. The second is a touching scene between Selina and her comatose sister. The final page teases the end to the Copycats story-line.
There is not a lot of deep story to this issue, but it is a beautifully illustrated, action-packed issue that uses the visual for most of the story-telling. This is also one of those issues that will take on more meaning once we get the whole story laid out. One issue left.