Catwoman #12 Review

Ocean's Nine-Lives

Written by: Joelle Jones
Art by: Fernando Blanco, Hugo Petrus, John Kalisz, and Saida Temofonte
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 12, 2019

I have been up and down with this series, but the recent turn to more of a "caper of the month" month feel with the regular story, the Annual and the V Ram one-shot had picked up the pace a bit.  We continue with Jones' main story and this one is more of a reveal issue than anything else.  What do I mean and is it any good?  Let's find out...
One of my complaints with the last couple of regular issues of Joelle Jones' main story has been not getting all the information surrounding Selina's big heist.  Thankfully, we do get it this month, but is it a little too late?  Well, kind of...at least for me.

Jones has been playing around with different storytelling devices as of late.  This arc has already had a Pulp Fiction style issue with the time of each scene being mixed and matched throughout and now this one is going back to the beginning to show how it all was set up.  We do get some good information here, but I think that it will be better suited when it's read in full than as individual issues months apart.

The biggest obstacle for me here is that the overall story hasn't been that memorable.  The heist itself is pretty standard fare and the big score is pretty ambiguous at the moment.  We do get some nice character work with Carlos, but it's nothing that mind-blowing after seeing the character for eleven issues prior and when we get back to James Thein, it's obvious we need more on him if he is to continue in the series.

The best part of the issue is when we check in on Raina and see what evil she is up to.  She looks as hideous as ever and seeing zombie Adam creeping in the shadows is...well, creepy.  The scene sets up a(nother) big showdown with Selina and I am all for that.

Other than that, we get the obligatory extended chase scene and the Ocean's Eleven type story beats to get us back to where we already were.  The pacing of each issue of this series has been a slight problem, but not as much as the pacing of the overall series itself.  I need more from this book storywise and characterwise and I really hope it shows up soon

One area where this book never seems to falter is the art and that's the case again this month.  Blanco and Petrus kick ass here and the whole art team deserve a huge shoutout.

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue fills in a bunch of things, I think it will read way better in trade.  As just a single issue, it kind of stalls the overall story, even as it sets up some things that I am looking forward to in the future.  The art is good and besides the pacing, this is one of the better issues of this series as of late.

7.0/10