Selina Kyle has upset some of the most dangerous people in the Gotham City underworld. That’s just her way of saying hello. Establishing herself as a fixture of the underworld is going to take finessing things with some very unsavory people. She begins to do so in Catwoman #26. Writer Ram V takes his time setting-up a criminal ecosystem that is rendered for the page by artist Fernando Blanco.  Ram V and Blanco navigate Catwoman in a new direction that finds her searching for the top of the heap from an interesting angle. Ram V places various elements into the frame with an architect’s eye for detail. 

Selena’s returned to her home neighborhood of Alleytown. Now she’s looking to find a firm foundation for herself. It’s not going to be easy. The Khadym mob runs meth and guns through the city. The meth gets processed right there in Alleytown. There’s a gunrunning operation. It’s a well-organized mess. Catwoman looks to play a couple of elements against each other. She may be too busy engaging in it all to notice an assassin has arrived from out of town courtesy of a certain disgruntled penguin named Cobblepot. He’s on the trail of Catwoman. Will he hit his mark before she does?

Given how little of this issue Catwoman actually appears in, it’s pretty remarkable that Ram V is still able to keep the spotlight so centrally on her. She’s got family to look after in the process of growing an empire that starts with looking after street urchins. Getting the meth out of the neighborhood seems like a good idea to keep those kids healthy and looking for work from her all of the other elements that Ram V is constructing fall into place around that. Catwoman is in control, but there’s still a sense of danger about her that keeps the pages turning. 

Blanco’s globby detailing gives the finer points in his panels a bit of a messy look, but the larger composition that he’s working with is gorgeous. A large action spread in the second half of the issue gives a refreshingly wide scope to a large operation that Catwoman engages in. The nonlinearity of it makes the action feel wild without crashing against the page in the chaotic mess it could have been. Kyle’s personality is distinct too. The steely certainty of her in combat is contrasted against more casual and emotional moments. The larger feel of Gotham is maintained through clever framing. With tall buildings occasionally in view off in the distance, Blanco firmly plants Allentown in the middle of a much larger city without making the neighborhood’s setting feel forced and exaggerated. 

It might have been nice to see Kyl start with absolutely nothing and work her way up to being the largest player in Gotham City’s underworld, but Ram V is showing a clever progression here. When she was away in Villa Hermosa, Catwoman was trying for something too elegant for her tastes. You can take the cat out of the alley, but you can’t take the alley out of the cat. She’s learned this and she’s ready to move. It’s an interesting development in her life.

Grade: B