I'm a fan of Zdarsky, you can tell when he is writing Batman that his voice is good, but its lost in the middle of uninteresting and bad storylines. You can tell when its Zdarsky or Tini Howard writing and thats a bad sign for an event...

I expected the worst and am still baffled as to how terrible this is.

The foundation of the event is still ridiculous. You cannot just pay the majority of criminals not to commit crime. You certainly cannot find the millions of dollars in funds (MONTHLY) necessary to do so by stealing jewels from a hundred or so billionaires in the city. They would leave the city. They would put hits out on you. They would hire armed security. These trained thieves would die or quickly be arrested, and furthermore how the hell are dozens or hundreds of thieves going to hit the same 100 billionaires constantly without stepping on each other's toes? And they're going to give away 15% of their earnings to charity? Bullshit.

The plan is stupid, Selina is stupid for coming up with it, and the Batfamily members that consider it are stupid. For some reason Howard and Zdarsky are on a mission to make Selina as cold and unlikeable as possible. She insults Bruce and blames the failed wedding on him, even though she was the one who left him at the altar because she thought it would be best for him and the city. Even though this conflict was already resolved and bringing it up again is retrogressive. Even though they got unofficially married sometime after this so what the hell is the point of bringing up the first plan to get married?

This event looks to be a contrived mess that disregards basic logic as well as basic understanding of the characters written within. The dialogue and conflict are forced, and Selina in particular is egregiously out of character to the extent that it feels like DC is actively trying to make people hate her. She has insulted or snubbed Bruce for no good reason the past three times she's seen him and as a big Catwoman fan it's extremely discouraging to see her written this way. The dialogue of the rest of the Batfamily leaves much to be desired as well, and as a whole I think this event was likely written with the end in mind rather than an actual desire to tell a good and comprehensive story. more

I can't think of a worse kick off issue to an event. Truly terrible from Tini and Chips idiotic premise to Hawthorne's very rushed and sloppy art. Nothing works and I feel this event will just get people to drop Batman. Since no one reads Tini's Catwoman I can only hope Gotham Wars' failure will cause DC to finally wake up and remove her from Selina. With a new writer being tasked to rehab the character. more

Absolute garbage

This is terrible. Selina's characterization in this is awful, but other characters come off poorly too.

It's really painful to read this and see how much all the things which made Catwoman likeable get destroyed. She comes off as a stupid, abusive, cruel villain in this. I cannot fathom how someone can take this character - Tom King's "love means caring for someone, that's all that love is" will play in my head forever - and turn her into this asshole who screams at her ex-fiancee and gloats that his parents' murder was justified because they were wealthy and their killer wanted money. Her denigration of Bruce's mission in order to promote stupid Twitter hashtags of "eat the rich" speak to her stupidity and ineptitude. His charitable works have done a lot more for Gotham than her campaign to teach Joker goons to be better criminals.

It kind of feels like Howard looked at all the critique in media of how certain female characters are received - like Skyler in Breaking Bad - and said "let me create a truly evil woman" in response.

It's really disappointing that Chris is participating in this or that DC allowed this to be published. Other than Valmont, the other Howard low point, I can't think of any place else where Selina was portrayed this poorly. Even when she was a villain, at least she was an honest villain, instead of emotionally abusive and dumb.

I don't see how they can bring this character back from this hell.
more

Zdarsky has lost his way. He himself is a good enough writer, but he constantly learns on poor writers to help him develop ideas and it shows. We saw how the Failsafe arc ended (The insane/dumb way Batman makes it back from the Moon was Ryan Norths idea as stated by Chip).

Now he works with Tini, a writer who books constantly drop after she takes over and who much of the time has her books cancelled due to how poorly they are written. It is clear this 'event' is being used to boost the faltering Catwoman sales and it shows.

This issue is a mess. I don't really want to go into more detail as it is depressing to contemplate this book, but skip it. Skip this event. Its not worth your money or time. Even if you are a completionist, just save yourself the money. Don't do this to yourself. more

I am going to be honest, I actually had some high hopes for this event. Batman usually has good comic book events, and unpopular opinion: I really liked Joker War, Fear State, and Shadow War. I think its cool that Batman had his own trilogy of good comic book events. This is going to be a long answer.

This event however.... well lets just say the event started off on the wrong foot. Now, I am going to say that I'm not a corporate boot licker, or that I'm not one of those political people. I am a moderate Democrat, but I really dont care if you are going to put in politics in comic books. Just focus on writing a good story, then politics next.

First: The Art. I dont know what is going on, maybe Jorge Jiminez is taking a break. But the art here is not good at all. It's bland, mediocre, this is a comic book event, I expected better art at least. I do not like Nico Leon and Mike Hawthorne's art, and I am pretty sad and dissapointed that Jorge Jiminez isnt the one drawing everything. At least with Fear State and joker War, Jorge Jiminez was carrying that story. And howard Porter carried Shadow War.

Chip Zdarsky's Batman is good, he always finds a good Batman voice. But lets address the elephant in the room: Catwoman. I am not a fan of Catwoman, I never really found her books to be that interesting. That being said: She got ruined by Tini Howard in my opinion.

At least with Tom King's Catwoman, even though she was super powerful, she was still likable. But this event completely ruins her. I do not like Tom King's Batman run, but there were some good and solid character moments in that run that should not have been retconned. Why is Catwoman so mean in this run? She's rude, condescending, and harsh. The fact that Catwoman blames Batman for their marriage saying Bruce Wayne was so focused on the mission and Gotham needed Batman while Catwoman was the one who RAN OUT on their wedding is insane.

The second thing is that Catwoman plan for reducing crime is to steal from the rich and give to charity. I do agree that most of the time, the rich dont do anything and waste money while hardworking people struggle and have nothing at all. Just look at the WGA Strikes. However, what if the rich get scared of the robberies and leave? What if they send out armored bodyguards to protect their money? Catwoman's idea of turning petty robbers into robbers who steal from the rich isnt reducing crime at all. It's literally the same thing.

A lot of people are complaining about the Riddler being the bad guy, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

There's a lot of things wrong with this issue to start it off. The Bat-family considering Catwoman's idea. I will however give them the benefit of the doubt, as only Red Hood openly agrees on them. But it still leaves a bad taste on my mouth.

Overall, I didnt like this issue. However, what saved this issue from being 1 out of 10, is that Chip Zdarsky's writing for Batman is still strong and Batman isnt written out of character. So this issue tempered my expectations for this event, and I dont expect it to be good. I may be a DC Comic fan, who doesnt really like Marvel. But I am not one of those people who blindly follows DC and trashes the other company. I just want good comic book stories, regardless if you're from DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, IDW, and Boom Studios.

Again, I want to say this. I don't HATE this issue because it's "political" or it criticizes the rich. I dont like this issue because Catwoman gets butchered, the art isnt good. And so far, this doesnt look like to be a good story. Or I could be wrong. Who knows. more

Tl dr: We got played. This entire event is basically just a set up for the next event it seems. I am predicting it now: This is the start of the end of the Dawn of DC (I dont care how long it actually goes, this and the next event will kill the sales).

I didn't get my cool horror story I wanted (even if the art is sometimes great). Instead I got a pathetic villain with some heroes just acting silly to justify the villain. The conclusion that the villain 'won' was so stupid. Like how dumb does the world have to blame the heroes for this? The villain honestly just seemed like a whiny pathetic person who couldnt handle the dark world they live in so instead blame the heroes. This entire thing is terrible I dont want to ramble more about this.

This went worse than I expected. I almost had hope at the start. This being a line wide event that disrupted it ruined everything. Williamson should not be doing events. Really this event, plus the disastrous batman event and this weak looking up and coming beast world event. DC is dying from poorly written events. more

Schlock.

Worst Punisher ending that the Punisher ever had in more than 37 years (since he has an ongoing series).
Bad dialogues and bad direction. It's not about the skull or the weapons, it's about the pointless deconstruction Jason Aaron did to the character that at the end of this issue it was irrelevant. This new "age" Punisher isn't for me. I'm sticking with the old Punisher series and stories until 2020. more

A good and intriguing opening issue with original characters and a nice spy theme to the story. It does enough to pull you in despite not giving too much character detail. I look forward to learning more about the characters in future issues. The world building is solid and the action--when it comes--is memorable.

Ram V doesn't go overboard with his purple prose and Sharma's crisp art depicts the world and characters very well. This first issue left me wanting more which is a success in my book.

Recommended if you are looking for something a little bit different than the regular capes & cowls fare. more