Part of an ongoing series revisiting graphic novels and collected editions from days gone by....

A "smart" gun with heat-seeking bullets is on the streets, and Catwoman is the No. 1 suspect for a mass shooting involving the missing prototype.

Of course, Catwoman didn't kill anyone, but that's the setup for Trail of the Gun, a Catwoman story (only tangentially involving Batman) and commentary for gun control.

And that's what this is, really, since the idea that there's a one-of-a-kind gun out there that cannot be replicated and which, if found, will make killing people indiscriminately even easier is, well, sort of ludicrous. This is a platform for an anti-gun campaign -- which is fine, certainly, since it fits neatly with Batman's long-standing anti-gun philosophy, but c'mon, let's be honest about what it is.

Batman's not really in this story very much. It's about Catwoman, who thinks she'll be lauded as the greatest among thieves if she finds this gun first (even though it's more of a treasure hunt than an outright theft, but let's not nitpick). So she assembles a team of people she doesn't like or trust, and she sets out to find the gun and claim the reward.

Trail of the Gun is a two-part graphic novel first published in 2004. The story, allowing for a certain suspension of disbelief, is fine, and the dark, highly detailed art by Ethan Von Scriver is excellent, even if this isn't quite Catwoman's usual (in any era) look.

Throughout the story, the political leanings of writer Ann Nocenti's are bared proudly on her sleeve, but her prose isn't likely to sway readers one way or the other; it will either earn a nod of agreement from gun-control supporters or, more likely, a cry of outrage from gun enthusiasts. Batman's passionate speechifying won't change hearts and minds on the subject, nor will the bloody comeuppance of the book's primary trigger man, Trip.

"A rabid gun nut like Trip ... no way he can pick up a weapon without testing it," Catwoman opines. So he squeezes the trigger, firing "scores of rapid-fire automatic bullets" into the room -- forgetting, apparently, that they are heat-seeking bullets and he, at that moment, is one of the biggest hotspots around.

Once those little hunks of lead were airborne, it was quiet. They hesitated, hovering birds poised on an air pocket. ... They had buoyancy -- until they turned on us. So graceful, like a bullet ballet ... that quickened into a ballet of blood.

OK, so that was a bit turgid.

I'm not complaining, because the book is fine, overall, and if even one person's opinion is swayed to prevent some gun violence in the world, that's a good thing. But it's not the game-changer I suspect Nocenti was hoping it would be. In the hyper-violent world of comics, who's even going to notice one more devastating gun?