Catwoman #4

This volume is issue #4 of the Catwoman series following DC's New 52 relaunch (US Catwoman Vol. 4 #4, cover date February 2012, published December 21, 2011), written by Judd Winick with art by Guillem March, who also drew the cover, under the title "Are You... Still in This Business?". The story opens on a misunderstanding: Gotham City police burst into Lola's apartment and find Selina Kyle burning evidence that could expose her ties to the fence—with Lola's body lying in the same room. Selina has no choice: she douses the room with the killer's rum, sets it alight, leaps out the window with Lola's body, and looks back as her friend's home and identity go up in smoke. She deflects the police by floating the claim that Lola was a fence, at the cost of tarnishing her dead friend's reputation. Few attend the funeral, but Selina unexpectedly runs into Gwendolyn Altamont, an old friend from their teenage years of petty theft; Gwen says she too is a fence now and offers her services, while Selina silently vows never to dial that number. In a second thread, GCPD Detective Alvarez proposes to Captain Winston that seventeen burglaries with the same methods are likely the work of one person, but having been transferred for stumbling onto a deputy mayor's scandal, he is not about to get resources allocated. The story ends with Selina targeting a drug gang's cash, using her informant Bertram to learn the courier's fixed route, only to run into the metahuman "Ricky," who fires electric blasts and hurls her into the Gotham sky—she cannot even be sure she will land on her feet. The issue continues the street-crime tone of the Winick era: a murder, an old friendship, a stubborn detective, and a mission gone out of control, all laying groundwork for the issues to come.