DC Comics 10/19-21 – Batman #115, Nightwing #85

Batman Catwoman #8

Tom King seemed to have run out of ideas months ago.  Batman Catwoman is King’s vain attempt to leave some impactful final word on his Batman run. Instead, this reads like a scattered mess of thoughts with King switching through so many various time periods it’s hard to keep track.

In this story, Catwoman doesn’t want to rat out The Joker because he’s funny and it would be giving Batman some final piece of her. King doesn’t seem to think highly of Selina in this issue as she’s enabling a murderer simply because he feeds her ego better than Batman.

Liam Sharp’s artwork suffers from inconsistencies. Some pages look phenomenal while others lack cohesion. Sharp seems to change how he draws Joker on every page. Some of that is due to the time period hopping of the story, but Sharp also switches up his Joker repeatedly.

Batman Catwoman is at the stage of diminishing returns now. King hasn’t been able to make his three time period approach work and The Phantasm character has not been much of a factor now in eight issues. It’s asking a lot that this title will improve at this point. Now it’s just a matter it getting through for readers who remain remotely invested.

Rating: 3 out of 10