Review — Batman/Catwoman — The Gotham War: Battle Lines #1 — Lover’s Spat
Batman/Catwoman: The Gotham War — Battle Lines #1 variant cover, via DC Comics.
Batman/Catwoman — The Gotham War: Battle Lines #1 — Chip Zdarsky, Tini Howard, Writers; Mike Hawthorne, Penciller; Adriano Di Benedetto, Inker; Romulp Fajardo Jr, Colorist
Ray — 9.5/10
Ray: If there’s one genre in superhero comics I’m usually tired of, it’s hero vs. hero battles. It’s been done to death, usually at the competition, and almost always relies on someone acting ridiculously out of character. So I wasn’t initially excited to see this story, which pits Batman and Catwoman against each other for control of Gotham. Catwoman might not be a hero in the traditional sense, but she’s played that role for years and I was worried about backsliding. So imagine my surprise when this first issue not only manages to deliver a compelling story without derailing either of the two characters, but also manages to maintain the stunning quality streak of Chip Zdarsky’s Batman run.
A day in the life. Via DC Comics.
It picks up with Batman after his extended nap post-Knight Terrors — an eight-week nap, in fact. He’s been increasingly unstable since his return from Failsafe’s parallel dimension, even concealing his new prosthetic limb and the fact that Zur-En-Arrh hasn’t quite left his head from his family. And he wakes up in a new Gotham — one where crime seems to have slowed down to a trickle. The source of this is Catwoman, who has essentially incorporated the henchmen around Gotham — hiring them at better pay and under better conditions, essentially freezing out the more unstable villains as part of a project that began with all the women she broke out of Blackgate earlier in the Tini Howard run.
She’s created a new status quo in Gotham — and she wants a truce with Batman, where her crew is allowed to rob the rich without harming anyone and she keeps crime under control. This not only angers Batman, it triggers him — as the idea that the rich are fair game to be robbed has some personal implications for him. This threatens to split not just Batman and Catwoman, but the entire Bat-family, with everyone having their own perspectives. Damian wants to crush crime no matter the type, Jason openly sympathizes with Catwoman, and Tim struggles to stay loyal to Bruce while the numbers aren’t adding up to him. It all comes together into a tragic conclusion that kicks off the war in fully, setting up what might be the most compelling line-specific event out of DC in some time.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
