The StoryCatwoman attacks Dollhouse, who just picked up another hooker. He goes after her with an assault rifle, and it’s only thanks to Spark’s intervention that she is able to get out alive. She tries to go back, revealing that she was “taken” in the past, but no one came to save her. Spark kisses her, to stop her from heading back.
The kidnapped prostitute wakes up in a closed off ward of what looks like some kind of underground hospital. Dollhouse talks to him, saying how he just wants to help, that he’s providing food, a place to wash the drugs out of the system. Dollhouse gets off the PA, and reveals that he’s been harvesting organs from his rehabilitated prositutes, and has been keeping their bodies, posing them as dolls.
Catwoman meets Detective Alvarez, having heard that he was looking for her. Meanwhile, Spark reveals himself to be working for the crooked police officers who Catwoman stole the money from.
The Review
Holy hell Dollhouse is creepy! While I question the financial viability of his plan (who knows, maybe rehab is cheaper than black market organs, I wouldn’t know, and I’m not going to bother finding out), the fact that Dollhouse is obivously insane takes care of that concern.
Spark being a traitor is hardly a surprise, sure I didn’t predict exactly that he was going to betray her, but I did in fact predict that something would happen that boots him out of the cast. In super hero comics only very few among the supporting cast are consistent. This reveal is hardly surprising, nor does it promise any thrilling future development. We all know how it will go, Selina finds out he’s a traitor, she’s hurt and angry, something, something, and then he’s gone forever.
Still, I’m loving that we finally get to see Selina move towards being the anti-hero that she was in the initial run of her series back in the ’90s. The first several volumes of that series were what got me invested in her character, and I’m glad the we’re starting to move back towards the anti-hero Catwoman.
The art continues to be ludicrous, with the pose she takes while kicking Dollhouse’s window in being one of the silliest things I’ve seen in a while. I’ll be honest, the news that this series is getting a new creative team gives me hopes. Sure I’ve found Winick’s writing to be perfectly fine (the few odd decisions in the first two issues aside), but after seeing the teaser image for Catwoman’s new art style I’m looking forward to a book I can read without feeling like a pervert.
As with Nightwing the Court of Owls interlude didn’t hamper the story all that much, and we get to see the plot move on fairly organically. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Dollhouse, he’s the kind of psychotic killer that the Batman books seem unwilling to touch. We need a little more dark, a little less costumed normal people fighting super powered villains. I feel that Dollhouse is a move back towards a more classic type of villain, the kind of villain that is legitimately terrifying for the readers, mixing murder and sex in a way that is truly unnerving. Now if only Batman could take a page out of his sometimes lady friend’s book.