Remember that HBO show Westworld? The one that started off strong but then the creative team got a bad case of the “I-need-to-be-smarter-than-my-viewers”-itis? For those who don’t know or have forgotten, the premise of that show was in extremely simplified terms was if humanity creates artificial life to do its bidding (which in an HBO show means a lot of sex, violence, and sexual violence), said artificial life would revolt against humanity. So in the first season of the show (which is the only one I watched in full), the first episode starts off with the implication that the robots will revolt and the last scene of the last episode shows the beginning of that revolt.

And while saying what I’m about to say at the time the first season was airing would have led to me being drawn and quartered, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of predictability. All those explorations of morality, human nature, and whether artificial life should be treated the same way as human life, all eventually led to a robot revolution against humanity because humanity mistreated them. It felt like the show decided to use its leg to scratch its butt so to speak.
Since I, unlike the creative team of Westworld, actually respect your intelligence, there’s no point in beating around the bush any longer. This entire run of Catwoman has felt to me like the first season of that show.
So, 200+ words later, let’s get into this oversized issue of Catwoman. Actually, the oversized nature is something worth looking into as well. Why does a series that has been telling its story for nine issues need to inflate its tenth for its conclusion? For context, we’re on our third artist on this series (with rather diminishing returns with each new artist). Ten issues is a luxury that most series never get. And most of them have more memorable plotlines than this.
We started with a murder mystery, where one of Catwoman’s old identities, Evie Hall was murdered. Except since Selina is alive and dealing with active attempts on her life, we have two questions driving the plot forward. Who was the fake Evie Hall and who is trying to kill Selina now?

Could this have been compelling? Eh, it’s debatable to say the least. But what doesn’t help the story is the fact that Selina is the only established character in this title. And we have to deal with her past which is also using new characters. The story really wants you to be engrossed by the Belov family and their drama. But you have to give us a reason to care.

This story also doesn’t help itself by telling itself backwards. With the help of context clues, it’s fairly easy to put together that the Belovs would hire talented thieves to work for them. Something bad happened and the gang split and Selina, a.k.a Evie went missing. But we see the crew first pull off a heist (a failed one) in a flashback far too late into the story. And we see how the Belovs recruited Evie last issue.
So now that we have put all that aside, does this issue answer those questions? Yes, it does. And the answers are what you would expect. By that I mean, very on the nose answers that are so obvious you would wonder why was this a plot point to begin with.

Makes you wonder, “Did I really read through all of that just to learn what I already knew?”
Recommended If
- You’re in too deep to get out now.
- You’re buying this just so Selina gets to keep her own title.
- You like this comic so much you are willing to read attempted meta-joke reviews on it.
Overall
Catwoman #78 tries to use its extra pages to do what it should have been doing all along – tell its story. However, all the navel gazing, pointless location jumping, and out-of-order storytelling in the past issues have taken its toll. This issue is better than some of the previous issues because we actually focus on the story. But multiple plot threads need to be crammed into this issue to wrap them up. While the art is great, mostly thanks to Patricio Delpache’s colors, there’s only so much leeway I can give this plot for how it looks when it has mangled its story structure so badly.
Score: 5/10
Disclaimer: DC Comics provided advance copies of this issue for review purposes