Catwoman #59

Issue Details

Synopsis

IT'S ONLY A MOVIE, TAKE ONE Film Freak stands in front of a camera, introducing himself and explaining how his alliance with Angle Man ended. He had thought this was Angle Man's movie and he was a supporting character, but then he realized that it was Catwoman's movie. Sexy, action-packed, a summer blockbuster. But he was wrong again. Now he knows it's a movie about himself, and when the credits roll, he'll be the last one standing. He ends the scene with a homage to The Great Train Robbery, shooting the cameraman.  Selina is dreaming. She dreams she's riding on the back of the Smart Bomb armor while Sam Bradley tells her to get off. A man in the shadows shouts out "Bradley!" and tells him to say his prayers before firing a gun.   Selina wakes up in Irena Dubrovna's apartment with Helena in her arms as someone pounds on her front door. Ted Grant tells her that Holly has been arrested. Selina immediately offers her to pay the bail, but murder isn't a bailable offense. Selina can't believe Holly wouldn't call her in that situation, but Ted reminds her that she has new responsibilities now. That might be true, Selina says, but she has old ones too. They have to get Holly out of there.   Holly is in the interrogation room with two black eyes. She calls out for Detective Lenahan, who is drinking a cup of coffee behind the glass. He tells Detective Worth that he'll hold Holly until either she confesses or the other Catwoman comes to break her out. He makes a joke about letting her sleep in a nice, cozy holding cell, evidently where Holly received her injuries. Worth doesn't think Commissioner Gordon will approve now that he's back in control and the war on costumes is over, but Lenahan is unconcerned. This is the East End.   In the hallway they run into a patrol officer who tells them that two rookies, Brent and Keenan, were killed during a convenience store robbery. They were chasing down a man who had stolen a stick of gum--Film Freak--when the man dropped the stick of gum, then pressed a detonator to take down a nearby building, which crushed them. Then the man just slipped away in the chaos that followed.   Inside Irena Dubrovna's apartment, Selina is figuring out how to free Holly from the precinct, but Ted says that's not how they do things. The Justice Society doesn't break people out of jail. They don't break the law. Selina scoffs at his concern for the law when they call themselves the Justice Society, and she hands Helena over to Ted while she changes into her costume. If Ted isn't interested in helping her, then he can at least watch her daughter while she does it herself.   Selina's first stop is Slam Bradley's office where she finds Slam passed out, drunk, with an answering machine filled with messages from Karon, who is worried. She hasn't seen her girlfriend in over a day. Selina wakes Slam up and asks him if he still has any friends left on the force.   One year ago, Selina and Sam were discussing Black Mask's death and how to handle the remnants of his organization when the conversation turned to the attraction between them.   In the present, Catwoman begs Slam for help breaking Holly out of jail, but he doesn't have any friends on the force left except his son Sam. A newscaster on TV interrupts them: A 29-year-old woman named Arlene Owens was severely injured when an unidentified man pushed an acid-covered grapefruit in her face like in the 1931 Jimmy Cagney movie Public Enemies. The assailant slipped away in the crowd and remains at large.   Slam says, "See, kid? It's a terrible world out there. And it's way past saving."   A taxi driver is driving Film Freak to S.T.A.R. Labs in the middle of the night. Film Freak asks the driver if he's ever seen the movie Taxi, but the driver thinks he's talking about Taxi Driver. The driver doesn't know who Jimmy Cagney is when Film Freak asks, which leads Film Freak to come at him with a knife while screaming out Jimmy Cagney's biography. The taxi crashes with the driver dead behind the wheel, and Film Freak gets out to walk to S.T.A.R. Labs.   Ted is changing Helena's diaper when Selina calls to check in. She's at the Gotham Department of Records, digging out the blueprints for the East End Precinct, and she thinks it will be another hour before she can get home.   Film Freak breaks into S.T.A.R. Labs using Arlene Owens's ID card. He notes that act one had silent slapstick and gangster violence, but act two needs something else, a twist--1933 was the year The Invisible Man, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The Mystery of the Wax Museum, and The Vampire Bat came out, but it was also the year that Hollywood learned that when it comes to drama and spectacle nothing tops a giant gorilla.