At long last, the final piece of The Long Halloween puzzle - until The Last Halloween debuted towards the end of last year. But that’s still ongoing, so we’ll put it aside. Initially intended to be published shortly after Dark Victory, Catwoman: When in Rome was delayed for four years; Hush, a very different flavour of Jeph Loeb, was published in the interim.  

This six issue run details what Selina Kyle was up to while Batman was investigating the Hangman in Dark Victory, a story which Selina only features at the start and end of. Realistically it’s an excuse for Tim Sale to illustrate Selina in a series of high fashion pieces - for the covers, at least. She spends a lot of the inner contents either naked or close enough to it. Combine this with an overtly lecherous Leprechaun-like Edward Nigma, and you’ve got a DC title custom-built for perverts. Sale’s art is excellent as always — and different to his previous titles, as always — but after a while the attention to detail is notable. 

 

Frustrated with Bruce Wayne’s distant nature, Selina Kyle takes herself to Rome to investigate the Falcone crime family, which she suspects she has deeper links to than simply an easy target for funding her lifestyle. Plagued by vivid nightmares, thwarted by overly familiar enemies, and abetted by Edward Nigma in heat, Selina has to hope that she not only solves her mystery, but survives her European sojourn. 

 

Loeb doesn’t have access to the full Bat rogue’s gallery that he loves so dearly, because he was using most of them extensively in Gotham at the time this is set. Still, he makes an effort: he borrows Cheetah from Wonder Woman, and various weaponry crosses Selina’s path in ways that she’d rather it didn’t. Thanks to the miracles of modern villain science, Sale's gloriously tetanoid Joker gets to make a guest appearance. 

 

Due to the holiday nature of When in Rome, Loeb doesn’t tangle it near so much as he did the other Long Halloweens or the famously twisted Hush (for which Loeb has admitted that one key element came out of nowhere). The solution to this one, such as it is, is less surprising than it is inevitable. It's a pleasant diversion from the dramas in Gotham, a sun drenched adventure for Selina and all that entails. 

 

Loeb and Sale were a formidable team, rarely using the same aesthetic twice - while Long Halloween and Dark Victory were of a kind, they look quite different to Haunted Knight, which is the platonic ideal of Batman art (to this reader, at least), and the luscious Italian vistas offered by When In Rome. The Riddler is some sort of grotesque, but everything else is beautiful. Selina has a lot of skin, and a lot of butt, but it's gratuitous in a completely different way to Jim Lee's take on the character in Hush. 

 

That's why it's so weird to end When in Rome with an epilogue taken directly from Dark Victory, with no changes to the art - Sale was in a different mode. 

 

The more comics you read - pretending to an unearned expertise here - the more you realise that they're not all momentous events. Catwoman: When In Rome has no sense of immediacy to it because it really does play like its title: it's a holiday from more serious stories, despite a relatively high body count. Loeb has written Selina as a credible protagonist, and Sale has lavished her with an intense amount of attention to detail. It all adds up to complete the character arc that was alluded to throughout the Long Halloween series and, while not a towering achievement, it's certainly a satisfying one.