Catwoman: Lonely City

 

Catwoman: Lonely City

by Cliff Chiang

DC Comics

2022

 

 

Catwoman: Lonely City is an excellent superhero comic, one of the best I've read in the past few years. The 'present day' of the comic is set 10 years after a traumatic event that separates it from the main DC comics continuity. Like The Dark Knight Returns and Old Man Logan, this is a comic that follows a protagonist who's come out of retirement to travel through a dystopian near-future world for one last job.

 

On 'Fool's Night,' the Joker arranged for a flash mob of ordinary but aggrieved Gotham citizens to don Halloween clown masks and commit a wave of robberies and assaults all over the city. Meanwhile, Joker himself put on a bomb vest, and committed suicide by blowing himself up, killing Batman and Commissioner Gordon in the process. Catwoman was helping Batman, but was blamed for his death, and spent a decade in prison.

 

Lonely City starts at the end of that decade, with Catwoman released from prison, returning to a Gotham that's been transformed by the city's response to Fool's Night. A reformed Two-Face is now the mayor, and looking for an excuse to re-arrest Catwoman to help his reelection campaign against a wheelchair-using Barbara Gordon. Masks are banned citywide (even on Halloween), everyone's movements and spending are tracked by their G-Buck wristbands, and Bruce Wayne's donated fortune has funded numerous good works ... and some incredibly heavily armed and armored police. Barbara Gordon's campaign promises to reduce the over-policing of the Gotham's communities of color, and inspired by Catwoman's release from prison, protesters wearing illegal cat masks turn up to picket sites of gentrification.

 

For her part, Catwoman wants to break into the Batcave, to try to understand Batman's last words to her before he died in her arms. She needs to practice her gymnastics and get back into shape, (and do so without wrecking her aging knees), and she needs tools and allies, and the funds to pay for both, if she's going to get past the Batcave's elaborate security. It's the last thing of Batman's the city hasn't been able to claim, even after his real name and life story have become common knowledge. And, oh yeah, she needs to avoid getting arrested again before she finishes this final heist.

 

This dynamic, of Catwoman gathering allies and committing smaller crimes to collect the resources she needs for her one last big crime, while trying to stay out of reach of a mayor and police force who know she's guilty but can't prove it, yet, defines much of the action of the book. Early on, she connects with a costume designer to get a new outfit, and tries stealing an abandoned Green Lantern ring to circumvent all the Batcave's defenses at once. When that fails, she reconnects with Killer Croc, the Riddler, and some other familiar faces.

 

Eventually, there's a climactic race to the finish, as Catwoman makes her attempt on the Batcave, and learns the meaning of Batman's last wishes, while Two Face sends the cops en masse to Wayne Manor to catch her in the act. Without spoiling exactly what happens, let me say that Catwoman makes a kind of personal peace with the conflicted emotions that have been driving her throughout the book, and that she's able to make an impactful decision about what to do with Batman's legacy.

 

Lonely City is part of DC's Black Label line of comics for mature audiences. Beyond the violence and swearing, what's most adult here is really the themes - surveillance and control and over-policing, scapegoating the poor and racial minorities for political benefit, and the emotions - regret, mourning, and ultimately acceptance of human mortality. Plus, Catwoman defeats a lot of the police profiling simply by being more analog than the system is prepared for - using cash and a flip phone, staying off social medial and away from electronic banking, which I think you maybe appreciate more if you also used to do the things she still does, because her habits were paused by her time in prison.