Catwoman #61: The Melting Cat

Writer Tini Howard deserves mountains of praise for her character work for the eponymous lead character on the Nine Lives arc. Her Selina is made out to be witty, cunning, and even indecisive, which fits the character as well as the gray cat suit she sports, symbolizing her being in a gray, moral limbo.

First couple pages in of part three, the character is coming to the realization that she misses the city (Gotham City), and that she feels lonely, granted so does anyone that leaves a major city to live a life elsewhere.

So far, three of her nine lives have been taken. While the reader and the character herself are very well aware of this given the black marks on her back, she decides to embark on a dangerous mission to a nuclear power plant in the kingdom of a very very brute place known as Markovia where she must obtain black-glass corium.

As she ventures into the abyss that is Hell on Earth, Selina begins to feel the effects of the nuclear power. She begins sweating heavily as she climbs up ladders, feeling as if she’s melting on the inside. Even as she grabs corium gems, the heat melts her black glove, and gets a piece of her skin.

As she makes her way out of the plant, se is met with military force, even as she is still falling under the effects of radiation poisoning; pale skin, bruises, and a missing tooth. Her symptoms get worse as she tries to find ways to escape the army of men hunting her down, leading to an odd encounter with a cat-god deity, having it be difficult whether its real or not.

When she does make it out, outsmarting her adversaries, she finds herself retreating away from people before she passes, like an actual cat. She’s about to die from the radiation, as she’s being metaphorically eaten alive. However, she doesn’t die alone as Superman comes out of nowhere, keeps her company, and shows genuine concern for her as she begins to rest, but will come back in the next issue on her fifth life.

The art in this book is fantastic and keeps a grunge-like style that really flows with Catwoman’s character, even as her body begins to decay in the middle of the story.