Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Catwoman (Vol. 4), Issue #4 – “You… still in the game?”! In the previous installment, Catwoman avenges her friend Lola’s death by beating the unholy garbage out of some douche named Bone. She would have killed him, but Batman stops her before it’s too late. It was the best scene of the series so far and Batman ruined it.

In the end, she smartly decides to return to Lola’s apartment and burn anything that could tie her to Lola’s crimes. Dumbly, she gets caught be the police who break open the apartment door, catching her burning evidence while squatting over a dead body. Cliffhanger of the century! It’s going to get ruined by Batman again, though. Guaranteed.

This is not a terrible series so far. Dumb stuff has happened, yes, but at least it’s somewhat interesting. Not sure why this gets way more flak than something like Red Hood and the Outlaws, but time will make fools of us all!

Catwoman (Vol. 4), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Judd Winick
“No one can find any piece of me here.”

Is that the right expression for that context? A penny saved is a penny earned!

Three days later, Catwoman is obviously not in a maximum-security prison trying to hock cigarettes for contraband coins that she can use to buy other cigarettes. But she did jump out of a window and crush the roof of a car. I guess this is what the kids call a “hook”, but we are obviously not going to address this right now.

Three days earlier than three days later, Selina gets caught in Lola’s apartment by the police. “FREEZE!” says the police. Selina freezes for about six nanoseconds before she makes a move. “Okay. So this is bad on many levels. The cops have barged in to find a body. Burning evidence. And Catwoman. But I see the bottle of rum that the bastards who killed Lola were doing shots out of.”

So she kicks the bottle into the fire and jumps. The resulting fireball blows the cops away, which is some ‘70s action movie shit. Then she unties Lola’s corpse from the chair and jumps out onto the street.

“Batman told me I needed to stop ‘all this’ before I got someone hurt. Too late.”

Yes, yes, yes, we’ve already spent a good chunk of the comic book reiterating that which we already know. Get on with it! I’ve got snacks to snack on!

Later, there’s a funeral with a lot of sad people standing around looking sad, as one does at a funeral if he or she is sad that someone died. Catwoman goes on to explain that she had to give Lola up to cover her own ass, which is NOT AT ALL what she wanted to do, but them’s the breaks when it comes to self-preservation.

Selina met Lola when she was 16. Lola had a lot to teach her. Selina sucked at learning!

As she walks away from the funeral, Selina runs into an old friend…

It’s like, you know—and the thing with the—and, you know—like, and the thing—and, like, you know—and the thing–

Her name is Gwen, and she and Selina used to run around together performing relatively larcenous crimes until the thing with the thing happened. Then it was not happening anymore, so to speak! They catch up at a coffee house.

“Any idea how this happened to Lola? Who got her?” asks Gwen.

Selina ruminates upon her encounter with Bone. “No.”

“You… still in the game?”

Selina ruminates upon her tendency to be Catwoman. “A little.”

“You went through Lola?”

Selina ruminates upon going through Lola. “A bit.”

Gwen admits that she’s still in the game, too. Although a bit more clandestinely than the bull-in-a-motherfucking-china-shop that Selina is. Gwen offers to help Selina if she ever needs a hand, but Selina is already thinking that she’ll never call Gwen ever because a) she smells, and b) she smells bad. “Lola’s dead,” she thinks. “That’s on me. For now… I work alone.”

Cut to the police station where a certain Detective Alvarez is asking a certain Lieutenant Winston for a certain forensic technician to review some evidence. Winston is like “NO, BUTTHEAD, WE DON’T HAVE THE BUDGET FOR ONE MEASLEY LITTLE FORENSIC TECHNICIAN. INTO THE BRIG WITH YOU.” Actually, it’s because Alvarez needs this tech for seventeen cases he’s working on, which sounds like an awful lot of cases to be worrying about all at once. I’d quit my job if I had seventeen simultaneous cases. I’d never look back.

Detective Alvarez was good at Homicide. Now he’s in the Robbery division and he sucks major ass. And he’s there all because he caught the deputy mayor bangin’ some lady.

What’s up, you lovebirds? *wink*

Winston asks if Alvarez wants this forensic tech merely because he thinks all seventeen cases are connected. Alvarez says no, he thinks they’re all the same perp.

Cut to Catwoman, who is all the same perp. She just ripped off some drug dealers and is now doing cartwheels and backflips all over town. She’s fencing for a skeezy guy named Bertrom, who wants to hit that shit. “Lola usually vetted stuff like this for me. But I don’t have her now.” Get over it, sister.

As she does her dainty acrobatics, she suddenly gets hit with electricity mid-air and drops her duffel bag. Then she crashes on top of a car, which happened three days after three days earlier. Then she gets lifted into the air again by more electricity.

The assailant is some mutant lady wearing a denim vest with the arms cut off.

ISN’T OUR ENCOUNTER ELECTRIFYING, CATWOMAN??? MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

She knows Catwoman, but Catwoman doesn’t know her from Adam. And she knows Adam. West, that is. The sexiest Batman.

“I’m called Reach,” she says, continuing to zap Catwoman with enough volts to kill a herd of elephants and then turn them into elephant burgers. Catman feels kinda screwed right now, wondering what she did to anger this very strong, zappy woman. She tries to get a few scratches in so she can run, but it doesn’t work very well at all. “I just need—whu-oh. Aw crap! Crap! Crap! Crap! Cra-aaaap!” That’s the incessant whining who is getting zapped straight up into the sky, four times higher than Gotham’s tallest skyscraper.

“They say cats always land on their feet. But dying feet first doesn’t comfort me.”

She’s as high as an airplane! Must have been all that weed lmao lol lol

Final Thoughts

First Bone, and now Reach? What’s this now? Let’s just keep throwing villains at Catwoman for no reason. Who’s next? Stump? Beef? Crag? Chomp? Let’s keep ‘em coming why the fuck not.