Kicking off with a fill-in issue that soon blossomed into a full run spanning nearly twenty issues, writer Ram V’s Catwoman showed everyone’s favorite feline-themed larcenist settling into a new home in the charmingly named Alleytown neighborhood of Gotham with a new supporting cast. After the Bat/Cat sort-of break-up of Tom King’s run and Joëlle Jones’s road trip relaunch, this era allowed her to set up a solid home base for the first time in years, though it was not to last.
As Selina herself would be quick to remind you, standing still for too long can make you a target. Still, one thing that sets her apart from previous incarnations here is the way she accepts that danger as the price she pays for finding community. Asking Selina to settle down long enough to give herself a good long look in the mirror, this somewhat loosely constructed run remains one of her more complicated turns.
Catwoman #9, #14-15 & #25-38, Annual 2021, Catwoman: Future State #1-2 [Read more…] about Facing Down the Tiger in Ram V’s Catwoman
is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?
— Mark Waid, Alex Ross, and Todd Klein’s DC elseworld magnum opus — Superman makes his grand return from self-imposed exile in order to respond to a new generation of brutal, erratic “heroes” who do more harm than good. He travels to a seedy dive bar filled with punk rock aesthetics, disrespectful youths, and 90s armor clad brawlers, where we see a cameo of none other than Rorschach, from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen. The implication is quite clear: Waid, Ross and Klein are responding to the influence Watchmen has on superhero comics, by taking Rorschach on his face as a violent, morally gray, and compromised hero that represents a new normal. Rorschach in the same room as these characters, where our point-of-view, Norman McKay, calls them “kids,” “monsters,” and “beasts” all before Superman, very paternalistically declares “Party’s over” has the same weight as father coming home to set the children right, crashing their fun and wondering “What happened to the world? Things were better in my day!” 
, sending Bruce Wayne on a chilling journey into the blackened heart of Gotham City. Built on a masterful plot, breathtaking gothic visuals, and a terrifying new villain, Court of Owls is a story that cemented an entirely new era for the dark knight, as his mission to save his city gives way to a reality darker and more mysterious than he could ever imagine.