Selina Kyle has returned to Gotham City. Circumstance has forced her into working with a few old associates. She doesn’t have to like working with them, though. And she doesn’t have to play nice. Selina’s return to Gotham City finds her making a couple of enemies and a few friends. (Not all of them walk on two legs.) Writer Ram V populates the 25th issue of the current Catwoman series with three stories brought to the page by three artists: Fernando Blanco, John Paul Leon, and Juan Ferreyra. After a brief sabbatical elsewhere, Selina returns to Gotham in a promising new direction for her series. 

Selina, Kyle is doing all the heavy lifting in a burglary job. She’s working with both the Riddler and the Penguin. One might expect a bit more aid. One might expect that Catwoman’s associates might expect that she’s going to attempt to double-cross them. Having dealt with them, Kyle moves back into her home neighborhood of Alleytown. She’s looking to transform the culture there. It’s gotten cruder. She’s looking to improve things by working with the local street thieves. Not everyone is okay with her, though. Some locals are taking a cautious approach to her. 

Ram V seems to be having a good time hanging out with Selina. That fun really transfers across the page. There’s a kinship between writer and character. He seems to be tolerating the Joker War crossover with exactly the same kind of crafty approach in which Kyle navigates through unwanted work with Penguin and Riddler. Having dealt with that, he’s on to a particularly clever story in which Catwoman goes undercover to pose as a victim in her own home neighborhood to learn a bit from the young, low-level thieves who have come to reside there. The final story is a clever little bit told entirely from the perspective of a black cat living in Alleytown who isn’t all that certain what to think of its newest resident. 

The art progresses through the issue. Each story is granted its own distinctive style. Blanco’s work is at its best in the visual poetry of panels showing Selena Kyle dancing with a tiger. The rest of the first story has a bulky indie comic feel about it. At the same time, Leon’s heavy inks make for a surprisingly sophisticated emotional story between Kyle and the local street kids. Ferreyra’s work at issue’s end is the most impressive by far. There’s a thoughtful characterization in Ferreyra’s delicate detail that lends ample atmosphere to the issue’s coda. This is absolutely essential as a story told from a cat’s perspective could have really fallen flat without Ferreyra’s cleverly expressive art. 

Catwoman’s recent adventures have been amplifying her loner status. With this chapter, she’s clearly ready to get back into a more social mood. Her new role as thief guru allows Ram V the opportunity to show Kyle from a distinctly different angle. Between enemies on both sides of the law and allies, she will be trying to train, Ram V has a wide range of different elements to work with in coming issues. 

Grade: A