It's sexy, fun, engaging and highly recommended. 'When In Rome' is a vacation from current comics that take themselves too seriously while wrapped in ridiculous looking spandex. This colorful hardcover has a great story inside with a French and Italian couture/film noir look and feel to it, and it'll look great on your shelf. I always thought she looked a bit odd in Long Halloween, but I'm happy to say she looks great in here. Kyle is drawn as a curvy, buxom strong sex kitten with long curly hair. The art is, as usual, unique and gorgeous. This is a valentine to Selina Kyle and her prior jet-setting lifestyle, and also to the stylish Rome- and they fit together like a glove. I can only assume the abusive/suicidal parents we've been shown for so long as her backstory happened after the events shown in this book. There IS a major revelation in this book about Selina's real parentage, which tweaks her entire backstory. All in all this was a fun read, and while I love the current Catwoman series (don't get me started on issue #50 though, oy!) it was nice seeing Selina as a self-absorbed socialite-type for a bit. You could pick this book up and enjoy it if you haven't read Long Halloween, but Selina's contacts in Rome are all related to the Falcone family, whose exploits and various murders happen in that book. She takes the Riddler with her, which is pretty unusual, but after explaining why he's there he becomes a nice piece of comic relief for most of the book. After the grisley events of Halloween, she decides to hoof it to Rome to find out the truth of her past and maybe pick up a priceless gem and a hot local guy or two. This follows Selina Kyle after the events of The Long Halloween (probably Loeb & Sale's most popular book together.) It's very early in her Catwoman career, and she's still dealing with her attraction to Batman and even her own identity. Sadly I missed collecting the original miniseries so I snapped up this hardcover the minute I could get my claws on it.

I love the projects Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale team-up together on (Superman for All Seasons being my absolute favorite) and Catwoman is my all-time favorite comic book character, so when I heard about this project in the summer of 2005 it sounded like heaven.

Catwoman tim sale