YMMV / Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham

• Complete Monster: Batman himself, Bruce Wayne, is a completely homicidal maniac, who commits horrible deeds simply because he can. As a teenager, Batman gunned down two innocent people to steal their jewelry, leaving the young Selina Kyle orphaned. In his adult years, Batman begins murdering criminals all over Gotham, to eliminate any competition for his crime spree, during which he steals and murders to his heart's content. In his public persona of Bruce Wayne, Batman seduces Selina Kyle, and manipulates her into marrying him, at which point he murders Kyle's best friend before attempting the same on her, gleefully mocking her about how easy it was to manipulate her.
• Creator's Pet: Doug Moench, as usual, spends massive amounts of time talking about how awesome Batman is and how no one can come close to defeating him. This is particularly odd since Batman is the villain in this story.
• Fetish Retardant: It's commonly assumed that pretty much the only reason for the book and its squandered premise is to act as an excuse to draw Catwoman in skimpy outfits and sexy poses. Unfortunately for the comic, Catwoman's costume rivals the infamous 2004 film adaptation in the "trying too hard" department (including her leather corset-leotard and prominent boob-socks), and all the female characters so frequently bend over in provocative poses with wonky spines that they end up being bizarrely distracting rather than titillating.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The idea of Catwoman taking Batman's place as Gotham's protector is an interesting one, but rather than having it based on Selina's particular characterization — i.e. "What would happen if our favorite Classy Cat-Burglar and Anti-Hero has to step into an unfamiliar role while the Bat's away, and using only resources similar or identical to the ones she has in mainstream comics?" — the comic instead goes the route of very directly transplanting Selena Kyle into Batman's life. Surprise, surprise, this basically just ends up resulting in Batman, but cat-themed and with more cheesecake.
  • A related problem is how the comic characterizes Batman/Bruce Wayne, where despite the obvious Swapped Roles setup, he is neither any semblance of his usual billionaire Pragmatic Hero self, nor does he even occupy the original Catwoman's role as a classy anti-heroic thief, and is instead a completely nasty, irredeemable villain apropos of nothing. What's more is we learn nothing about his backstory and motivations relative to his desire to marry then inexplicably kill Selina — he's simply evil for evil's sake.

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