I don’t think Tom King likes Batman very much. He makes him pretty incompetent a lot. He also seems to not give a damn about any kind of continuity. Besides that, I don’t hate this story. It has potential. I like Clay Mann’s artwork.

it seems Harley Quinn is now the most powerful character in the entire DCU.
this time she completely outfoxes the entire DC trinity.

characters act like complete idiots. dull robotic dialog. poor attempts at humor.
(why is everyone including Batman all of the sudden calling Batman’s utility belt his “Bat-Belt”?)
Batman carries Kryptonite in his *UTILITY BELT* he always has. everyone knows this.
so why does everyone act shocked at this reveal?

Tom King loves showing characters having emotional breakdowns.
another beloved character added to the list of the dead just for the sake of it.
trashy hack writing.

added points only for the art. more

THE GOOD:

-Great art. Clay Mann continues to deliver in this issue.

-I love the therapy session scenes. In a typical comic, I would usually knock those for being too repetitive, but for now, the emotion and character depth these scenes display is too remarkable for me to care

-Very funny issue. I laughed a lot. I honestly think Tom King is a better comedy writer than anything else. Except for Nightwing, which he needs to stay at least ten feet away from ever writing again at all times.

-Really cool title page. A nice juxtaposition to the first page and just a cool looking splash that I would love to have hanging in my room.

-Harley Quinn's singing has grown on me. By dialing it WAY down and making it a little more funny, King has successfully captured a lot of what made his previous "repetitive" concepts good.

THE BAD:

-The unfortunate thing about this issue is that I just am not at all intrigued by the mystery. To correctly be like Identity Crisis, which I would like to point out is one of my favorite comics of all time (sorry haters) the series has to make the reader feel like they're at the edge of their seat constantly. They have to be guessing every possible suspect until the last issue. This series so far, has barely even touched the whole "whodunit" angle despite highly advertising it. Yes… I'm going to say it. The advertisements ended up having a bigger mystery theme than the book.

-Now, you may ask, what is it about, if not a mystery? Well, good question. So far, I'd say an adequate description of the series plot so far is "Booster Gold and Harley Quinn Doing Stuff." All joking aside, the plot isn't appealing to me either.

-Wasn't a fan of the fan service of putting Harley in her old costume for no reason. Not only has it been done before, there wasn't even an excuse to do so, like in Batman #53.

-I'm not a fan of how choppy this issue is. King's flat defunct Wes-Anderson writing doesn't go well with the abrupt transitions from scene to scene this issue has.

-Is this series ignoring Bendis's Superman? I don't blame them, considering that last issue. Still the Lois Lane continuity errors are too distracting for me to enjoy the completely unnecessary scene that took place with her. more

****Spoilers*****

Heroes in Crisis #2 meanders a bit but manages to remain one of the better reads on the shelves this week despite its flaws. 

The bulk of the comic covers the Trinity (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman) and their investigation following the murder at Sanctuary and their confrontation with Harley Quinn.

The rest of the issue follows Booster Gold as he conducts his own haphazard investigation. Boosters search for answers goes about as well as can be expected as he totally botches enlisting Flash to help him. 

Harley, on the other hand, manages to get the best of the Trinity with relative ease. I'm not sure I buy the believability of the scene. In fact, I call bullshit. We've seen Tom King pull this trick before with Catwoman taking down 3 speedsters over the course of a few panels. Its a narrative cheat to establish a character's ability. It trick works in a vacuum but it strains the comics credibility when Harley almost immediately takes down Batman like a chump. 


None of the patient interview scenes are quite as interesting or poignant as the previous issue. It's not Tom King's fault that the first issue was so great but it really makes this issue feel lackluster in comparison. 

Outside of the gripes, Clay Mann and Travis Moore's art continue to impress. Penguin makes a cameo and looks just like Danny Devito from Batman Returns. This got a huge grin out of me. It was also cool to see Harley Quinn in her original TAS costume.


 
The good thing is that the issue isn't bad just mediocre and could easily return to form next issue. Let's hope that is the case. The premise is interesting, the art is great and the writer is gifted. I'm sure that this issue is a minor hiccup and the series will bounce back.... 


Rating C +

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This is gross. Let's just get it out of the way. The dialogue is still as bad as ever. It's like the writer has a dart board with, maybe, 3 different dialogue trees. There's the "character A says X, character B says !X" one, there's the "character makes innocuous statements, but break down, letting the audience know that this is *deep*" and there's the "character goes off on an unrelated tangent because they're incredibly single-minded, apparently". And these have to be broken up with way too many ellipses, by the way. As for the plot and characters, there's a lot of annoying things to talk about. First, I'm glad Harley and Ivy's relationship is basically a mother finding their toddler cute, that's all I can get out of "boop". Ivy is killed off panel, so that probably means she's the villain. I'm pretty sure the Justice League knows Batman has kryptonite in his utility belt (and yeah, it's not a bat belt). I'm pretty sure Batman has used said kryptonite on Superman in the past. But let's just act like that's not something they know. Harley Quinn takes out Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, because she's apparently as good as Batman. So good that Wonder Woman just stood there in awe after Harley flashed the kryptonite and let Batman go to make her escape. Harley's the next Deathstroke. I can't trust anything that snake in the grass, Skeets, does since he's apparently on Bane's elite Suicide Squad (watch them call it that). Harley was acting too competent, I guess, so Booster is now the WaCkY crazy one who can't shut up or take any social cues, or you know, words, into consideration. Which is not at all different than how he was before King turned him crazy, but whatever. Lois is a single track mind, and that only track is being an asshole, since someone's clearly trying to talk to her. But maybe it's the other person's fault for not realizing that Lois doesn't care. But then how would we know that Lois is a hectic and busy woman?? And what would we do without that dramatic "Wait, what"?? And finally, why is Superman so worried about the heroes being shown to be human? I know it'd violate their privacies, but he seems way more concerned with maintaining this air of perfection. But why? I'm pretty sure most people realize by now that the heroes are not perfect. In fact, they probably realized this the first time the heroes did anything and there was property damage and injuries left over. And if not, there's been so many stories about the public finding out that a hero is "just like you and me". I don't know, seems like a Superman only problem. Or it would be if Superman was never shown to be fallible, but that happens in every other story he's in. Anyway, I think this sucks, if you couldn't tell. more

Starts off action packed. Looking forward to more plot development as the story continues.

Putting the detective back in Detective Comics. I thoroughly enjoyed this issue. I hope it continues to build.

ok! first off, Kelley Jones’s art- WOW!!!

The Joker's voice in this story is pitch perfect!
the banter and antics between Batman & Joker was Gold!

and i love that Scott Peterson writes a really bad-ass Batman of action!
in this story, Batman is confident, competent, Man of few words,
and he don't take NO guff from NOBODY!
This Batman get's it DONE!!

this is some of the BEST story sequencing i've ever seen Kelley Jones illustrate thus far!
Batman comes off as menacing and someone you would not want to mess with.
and the Rogues of Arkham look GREAT!

Kelley Jones's Scarecrow also looks especially horrifying!

this comic for me is actually be more of a 9.1 or 9.2 in score.

Fast paced! Action packed! Terrific art!
i really enjoyed this comic SO much!
looks like it's going to be a fun ride!! more

Joelle Jones is on point. Her artwork is truly amazing.

Joelle Jones is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists. And finally, a female hero who doesn't sound like she's being written with a man's voice

The art is phenomenal! I'm interested to see what this big plan is. We continue to see the emotional toll that Selina has taken from recent events. Doesn't explain why she did what she did, but that's not really for Jones to do. So far I'm enjoying this book.

No! Lockjaw?!? Now Black Bolt?!? I just started liking Black Bolt after Ahmed’s series.

I am loving this!

This is really good. What a disturbing scene. I'm really looking forward to the next issue.

I enjoyed "Catwoman" #1 quite a bit. Joelle Jones' art is absolutely gorgeous--her backgrounds, her facial expressions, the movement in her panels--she's one of the best in comics. The story worked for me as well--Jones only addresses the wedding in subtle ways through the story, not giving us explicit explanation of why she did what she did, so that the plot with the Catwoman imposters and the heaviness of what just happened (or didn't happen) with the wedding work together well. Of course this series is in my pull list--this is gonna be pretty cool. more

SPOILER WARNING!!! (I mean Batman #50 didn't help did it?)

Writer: Joelle Jones

Artist: Joelle Jones

After the fiasco that was Batman #50, Selina must go back to her old ways of being on the streets. But with increasing pressure from authorities how will Selina fare? Is Joelle Jones's first issue on Catwoman a good one?

First things first, forget about the wedding. By disregarding it, you can appreciate the story that Jones's is crafting her with the cards dealt to her. But onto the book. From the beginning we can tell that this will be good run, with Selina being in her civilian identity whilst the wife of the local governor seeks for the press to be more optimistic and hopeful. This is interchanged with what appears to be Catwoman escaping from a mall, yet it can't be Selina because she's busy in a casino right now. This Catwoman proves to be ruthless and takes down the two mall cops chasing her with a pistol, which is soon directly juxtaposed when Selina leaves and is discovered by the police who immediately try to arrest her. Selina shows why her approach is different and shows off her skills, just barely making an escape from the cops.

Straight after this, we find out that the wife of the governor wasn't actually the wife and obviously someone standing in for her, before the Catwoman from earlier shows up, revealing herself to basically just be no-one which plays into the core character of Catwoman in that, to most people she is no-one. The two mall cops get discovered to be dead and the detective who previously tried to arrest Selina and who I think is the Governor but I'm not too sure state that this is now personal.

Selina arrives at a place to lay low and introduces two new characters that seem to be her supporting cast who own the shop at the front and they do fine. One looks like she is going to be the comic relief to the group whilst the other maintains the front they need. Getting into her room Selina catches up on the Catwoman story from earlier and recieves a parcel from Alfred with his usual wit behind it, giving her the Catwoman costume, which Selina decides to use straight away to apprehend the other Catwoman. The idea of what is Catwoman and can Catwoman be anyone seem to be the messages in the comic currently and I love it. Selina quickly finds the murderous Catwoman and chases her down, noting how out of practice she is. But just as Selina is about to capture this Catwoman, she chases her into a room of twelve more and at least 7 more masks that aren't being used implying even more that aren't shown.

Joelle Jones starts her Catwoman book on a strong foot, providing a Catwoman who is smart but slightly out of practice. The new characters all have an aspect of Selina in them and bring the themes to the forefront. All in all, I am looking forward to where his goes in the future.

Pros:
Themes - The themes behind this story of who is Catwoman, do the skills matter and can anyone be Catwoman look to be strong themes and thought provoking for the character.
Art - Joelle Jones's art is strong throughout the issue and works well with the comic
Character Choices - The character choices, make sense especially Selina's and the introduced characters looks like it will create an interesting dynamic against Selina so far.

Cons:
Continuity - Some continuity problems, namely Selina not wearing googles but that is mainly to distinguish her from the other Catwomens.

Issue Summary: Picking itself up from a fall

Score: 9/10 more

I was so disappointed about Batman 50 but as redemption we get Catwoman 1.
Great.

Really great #1 issue for Ms. Jones' first time (I think) writing for DC... and she illustrated it beautifully as well! Awesome start; I can't wait to read more.