I Can't Even... Anything...
I can't even.... I can't this time. I don't want to flip back through the issue to find each and every single moment that pissed me off or made me confused or just hurt my brain. There were WAY too many, and at least half of them were actually deeply layered and spiderweb-connected to others. Seriously, Nocenti's horrendousness is as deeply layered as Morrison's quality. It's like a whole new world of new levels of awful. Literally everything in this issue falls into one of three main categories. It doesn't make sense at all, it doesn't flow for crap, or the dialogue is so completely awkward and inhuman it just.... ugh.
There's a bunch of stuff loose in The Black Room. Or maybe there's only three. Except not. One of them, literally, is a demon called "Escalate." "He needs to escalate everything." And a blob tentacle of the living map reaches out to spank Catwoman on the ass. I thought that kind of crap was the reason Winick was kicked off? Except, the difference is that most if not all of Winick's sexualization of Catwoman had MUCH deeper meanings and was pretty essential to the psychology and tone of the story, this here was just "HEY LOOK TENTACLES ARE SPANKING THE SPANDEX CLAD WOMAN!"
The events are all smushed together into a time frame so ridiculously impossible to unravel I can't even begin to comprehend it. The guards were all outside the room waiting, except they were in the tank at the end when they made no appearances before; and Catwoman was fighting stuff for no reason and then not and then was and then I don't even know. And Darwin was something?
The dialogue is also beyond atrocious. Catwoman says some of the dumbest lines I've ever read in a comic, and Darwin's not far behind her. Everyone else takes a collective close third.
In Conclusion: .5/5
The art was good. That's all I can say positive about this issue, and even that makes me feel dirty. Nocenti's shown a semblance of talent in occasional issues of Green Arrow and the first of Katana, but so far her Catwoman run is the worst writing I've ever seen. It really is on the same level as Rob Liefeld. Just don't even LOOK at this series until Nocenti's off. I've got my dedication and professionalism, so let me take one for the team here. I can almost guarantee vomiting or cancer as a result of reading this issue unless you've got sever mental problems or have built up a critic's tolerance for reaching into the absolute s***pile of what passes for entertainment.
