Catwoman and Cleopatra: Inkblots of an Age

After Practical Cats, a reader asked me to summarize my Cleopatra theory as it pertains to Catwoman.  With shooting under way on The Dark Knight Rises, and Batman circles abuzz with speculation on what Christopher Nolan’s take will be, it seemed the perfect time.

Briefly: Cleopatra lived and died over 2,000 years ago, and what’s known about her life hasn’t changed.  There is the sensational Roman account, juicy but questionable material dating from a propaganda war with Augustus Caesar, and a drier but more flattering picture of her political accomplishments recorded by the historian Flavius Josephus.  That’s it.  It’s not like any new unauthorized biographies were unearthed in the 1300s, 1500s, or 1800s to account for the drastically differing images of her.  There is only one set of facts from which different ages have formed completely different Cleopatras: from “The Nile Slut” to a childlike innocent, from a murderous man-eater to a savvy politician, from a devoted mother to a tragic “slave to love.”   Obviously, they can’t all be right.  Obviously, what each era chooses to focus on—and what it chooses to ignore—says more about them than it does the real Cleopatra. 

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s fascinating Cleopatra: Histories, Dreams and Distortions does a remarkable job analyzing each of these incarnations and what they reveal about the eras which romanticized and vilified her.  Not surprisingly, it is the spin each age puts on the sexual aspects of her story that is most telling about their attitudes about women in general, and women’s sexuality in particular.   

Like Cleopatra, Catwoman is a sex symbol who has spanned many generations and gone through many incarnations.  From her first appearance in Batman #1, the draw between male and female has always been the distinguishing feature of Bat/Cat encounters.  Tame and subtextual under the early comics code: Batman saw through Catwoman’s disguise in that first appearance by noticing her shapely legs. Amusingly brazen by the time Julie Newmar donned her claws and Adam West’s Batman declared “You give me curious stirrings in my utility belt.”   Of course there is more to Catwoman’s appeal that the physical.  You can’t throw a batarang in mainstream comics without hitting a beautiful and voluptuous woman.  What made Catwoman particularly well-suited to the role as the Batman’s romantic foil was her playful free-spirited disposition.  In an era that was finally acknowledging that sex is fun, the Bat/Cat titillation reached its zenith in Batman #324 when Selina awoke naked in the Batcave after her costume had been torn to pieces.  Batman tosses her a replacement saying she was lucky he’d kept one of her old costumes in his trophy room, and she responds—just barely covering herself with the sheet—that she “got lucky in more ways than one.”

Approved by the Comics Code.  And that’s probably what made it so much fun: the tingle of being bad, of getting away with something a little naughty.  It is the appeal of Catwoman, and in scenes like that, the reader got a taste.

And therein lies one of the essential elements of a successful Catwoman portrayal that has often eluded DC Comics.  A simple comparison of the merchandise dating from Denny O'Neil’s day as Bat editor, where it seemed to be a mandate that her features be distorted by a hostile snarl, to the turning point when a Japanese company, Yamoto Toys, released a limited edition figurine based on manga artist Kia Asamiya’s design.  The sexy come hither pose and naughty grin sold out in days in many U.S. comic shops and was voted The Sexiest Batman-related Action Figure by Wizard's ToyFare Magazine.  After a second equally successful figurine from Yamoto, again featuring the Jim Balent costume with an appealing pose and smile, DC appears to have got the message.  Recent offerings of the Balent costume from DC Direct have certainly featured an attractive pose and naughty grin. 

But the detour into snarling hostility illustrates how, like Cleopatra, Catwoman has undergone reinvention after reinvention reflecting the insights, fetishes or fears of those doing the re-imaging.  Consider her Bob Kane origin from "The Secret Life of Catwoman,” an airline stewardess who suffered amnesia after a plane crash.  (Yes, amnesia. It’s a comic book.)  In the 1940s and 50s, stewardesses were incredibly glamorous figures.  Beautiful, svelt single girls, traveling the world, meeting exciting people and working side-by-side with pilots!  It is in this story that Catwoman’s real name is revealed to be Selina Kyle.  Selina meaning “daughter of the moon.”  Kane clearly gave his Catwoman a glamorous and romantic cache befitting her status as the Queen of the Night in Batman’s world.  This Catwoman, despite her criminal activities, was far from evil.  She bargained away loot to save Robin from Joker, and on regaining her memory, worked with Batman to bring down a crime boss and ultimately her own criminal brother. 

The next origin revealed that the amnesia story was a lie.  Selina Kyle had been married to a rich man who beat her.  When she left him, he tried to ruin her.  Her first robbery was stealing back the jewelry he’d given her and, titillated by the thrill, she continued.  The attitudes expressed by this version of Catwoman are not at all difficult to decode, for the author puts it right in the text: Selina tells Batman she made up the amnesia story to get out of the life of crime because  “I was thirty years old and I didn’t want to die without love… without children.”  That Selina does marry Bruce Wayne and has a child with him: Helena Wayne.  While modern sensibilities may kneejerk at the notion that every woman must pang for motherhood, I submit that the root idea that all humans, both men and women, want love is a timeless and valid one. 

Things took a bit of a turn when the in-your-face feminism of the Sixties sent the comics boys into a tizzy.  Consider the mentality of a writer who had the Green Lantern’s girlfriend become evil Star Sapphire for 5 days each month.  How does such a man respond to images on the news of women shouting for equality and burning their bras?  Well, Catwoman donned go-go boots and snarled about “The Battle of the Sexes” and how “No man would ever tame her,” and that same writer gave Batman a new enemy/love interest, a submissive Asian who “was good company even when she was quiet.” 

Yeah.  Seriously.  Amazing, isn’t it? 

The Catwoman of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns is of a period that lost the most fundamental “Look, up in the sky” aspect of superhero comics: the wish fulfillment of a child, the adventures of characters we would all want to be if we could.  To fly, to be strong, to swing across the city on a silken Batline, to have exciting adventures in a world of larger than life color…  In the spirit of remaking all the known characters as damaged human beings that no sane person would ever want to be, Selina was a meek, repressed, overworked secretary whose boss killed her.  All of her ‘empowerment’ was a reaction to oppression and victimization, but it should be noted that this is not really a gender attitude.  The men in Burton’s world fare no better. 

Of Frank Miller’s Year One and subsequent comics based on its Catwoman origin, all that any enlightened reader need do is look at the body of Miller’s work.  The sheer number of prostitutes, rapes and castrations paint a vivid portrait of the man doing the writing and his attitudes, but just in case anyone doubts, Rob Bricken has taken the trouble to map it all out in 6 Hints that Frank Miller Might Have Issues with Women.   What all this says about Miller is – well, it’s Miller.  It doesn’t have to represent the rest of us.  We don’t have to be the generation that was so terrified of women’s sexuality they had to demonize it.  It was DC who let this guy with obvious issues about women’s sexuality define a woman’s icon.  It is DC Comics who refuses to remedy or even admit that error.  It falls to other media to do so. 

Mr. Nolan, I’m looking at you.  The 21^st Century is eagerly waiting to see what “Our” Catwoman will be. 

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Article first published as Catwoman and Cleopatra: Inkblots of an Age on Blogcritics.

A Look Back: The Year Everything Changed

Last year when I rolled out the ebook compilation of Book 3, I mentioned that one of my favorite TV shows was Joe Straczynski's Babylon 5. Each season, there was a different opening. My favorite of those was Season 4 which began "It was the year of fire... the year of destruction... the year we took back what was ours" and built step by step to "It was the year everything changed."

I never consciously shaped the Cat-Tales arcs to create such a year of change. I took the opportunities that came my way. It was time to establish Catwoman's true origin story, it was time for CT and JLAin't to do a crossover and for me to collaborate with MyklarCure on a tale that was neither his nor mine, but truly ours. It was time to look through Alfred's eyes and have a tale told completely from his POV, and a DC encyclopedia leaking the word of Stephanie Brown's death gave me the perfect opportunity to give that tale dimension and gravitas. Identity Crisis came along. What else can be said? It was an episode of such power, the counterpoint Identity Element simply had to be written. It was only after the fact, arranging the individual tales into that compilation and ending as usual on a Hell Month, I realized I had "The year everything changed."

For the Look Back to 2005, I wanted to share ceremony in which Ra's al Ghul dips himself in the Lazarus Pit (and his hysterical attack of the munchies afterwards as he analyzes the Gotham dispatches with hysterical results). I would have liked to share several moments from Deja Vu All Over Again - Eddie's pivotal scene in Chapter 1 coming on the day Frank Gorshin died, Selina's pangs at Dior trying on Red Goddess #4, Talia stumbling upon Catman after his disastrous Batman impersonation. There were more great moments, but sadly, none were in the running. The only possible Look Back was to the tale that was not only the most challenging and gratifying that I'd written, but the one that brought me such a wonderful new wave of readers.

Gothamites are a provincial lot. To the rest of the world, Elongated Man going public about his identity in the mid-80s was a huge event. So was Ray “The Atom” Palmer’s divorce from Jean Loring almost a decade later. It was the former story that produced the phrase “media feeding frenzy” and the latter which accomplished the then-impossible feat: ousting Monica Lewinsky from the cover of People Magazine for three weeks running.

But in Gotham, those were the silly escapades people in other cities got worked up about. No colorful cape, no Superman or Wonder Woman or Flash, could ever rank in importance with a denizen of Gotham City, and no exploit of the Justice League, no matter how cosmic in scale, would ever be as interesting as the happenings between the Hudson and Gotham rivers, between Wayne Plaza and the 10^th Street Bridge.

When Sue Dibny was murdered, it was news, of course: The wife of Ralph Dibny, Elongated Man, murdered in her home. It was treated in the Gotham press like any other sensational murder involving a famous person with no ties to Gotham: It was a headline. The funeral, peppered with mourners in masks, capes, and spandex, produced an extraordinary photo above the fold. Diana, Princess of Themyscira, gave the eulogy—and the 42^nd Street Borders pulled her book REFLECTIONS from “Last Year’s Releases” next to the discount bin and put her back in the display window for a week. Those were the only visible effects of Sue Dibny’s death as far as the public Gotham was concerned.

In more private corners of the city, it was different. There were stirrings, quiet ones. Nothing that could foreshadow the potent and terrible repercussions this one event would bring…

Criminals ducked in and out of the Iceberg Lounge. It was Hell Month and nobody wanted to risk being seen, most years they would have left town altogether by now. But everyone was anxious to hear the speculation: Batman was insane in January, every January, it was like he went on some kind of jihad against all crime and all criminals. Would this make it worse—or might it make it better? The wife of a long-standing member of the Justice League was dead: on the one hand, Bats might go straight over the edge and decide to wipe all criminals off the face of the earth. On the other hand, he might be so busy with this one case that he wouldn’t have time to put half the rogues gallery in traction. More than a third of them might reach February 1^st without a leg cast, more than two-thirds without a neck brace…

At the Gordon-Grayson home, there was a different undercurrent, just as tense with uncertainty… Dick had gone to Bludhaven for Hell Month, not because he was avoiding Bruce, simply because Batman’s tempers always drove more criminals across the river at this time of year. Bludhaven is where he was needed right now—the fact that it got him away from Bruce was a bonus. Or it would have been except that with Barbara left behind in Gotham, Dick’s situation hadn’t really improved. Every outbreak of the Hell Month Psychobat on the OraCom led to a sequel when Barbara called Dick in ‘Haven to say goodnight… It was January, Dick knew that. It had been like this since he was twelve. They would all get through it. But then Sue Dibny was killed, and Dick really didn’t know what to do. A death in the hero community—in the “family” of the hero community—in Hell Month—and so soon after Stephanie. Bludhaven still needed him, but Dick couldn’t help wondering if maybe Bruce needed him more…

In Wayne Manor, Bruce had “gone to Maui” as soon as the news broke about the Dibny murder. Batman had completed the initial survey of the crime scene before Ralph Dibny had even signed the paperwork at the funeral home. While Ralph was selecting his wife’s coffin, Bruce was organizing dozens of small glassine bags filled with carpet fibers, hair, ash, clumps of dust, lint and crumbs harvested from the murder scene. While Ralph selected the flowers to lay atop the coffin, Bruce was printing out a floorplan of the Dibnys’ living room.

Ralph decided against the white lilies the sympathetic funeral director had suggested. He went with red roses, because there was a red rose on the lid of that first Valentine’s Day box of chocolates he gave Sue, the one in which she kept her mementos… Bruce marked up the floorplan to indicate the location where each specimen and fingerprint was taken.

Ralph tried to remember the name of Sue’s high school for the obituary notice… Bruce used mobile phase chromatography to isolate trace vapors captured from the crime scene.

At first, Selina kept her distance, sensing that he needed space both physically and emotionally. She ventured into the cave only when CNN began covering the arrivals at the funeral. She found him in the cave, of course, but dressed casually, not in costume except for the gloves, and standing before a long worktable dense with neatly ordered clusters of forensic evidence.

The large main viewscreen that dominated the cave flickered with the same image displayed on the smaller monitor at workstation 1: the left half of the screen cycled through slides from an electron microscope, the right from an infrared spectrometer. A transparent grid was superimposed over these, and it sputtered wildly with a blur of digits and moving crosshairs as the Batcomputer executed incomprehensible analyses.

Selina stood quietly for a moment, waiting for Bruce to acknowledge her arrival. He went on preparing a slide for the microscope. When he set down the tweezers and still didn’t speak, she did.

“It’s on the news,” she said softly. “The arrivals at the funeral. It sounds like they’ll at least have some privacy inside the cathedral, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. You know what the press is like. Look, know you don’t want to watch this, but I did think—”

Bruce wordlessly moved to the workstation, punched a few buttons, and the CNN coverage appeared in a small window on the main viewscreen still dominated by the refractive indices and birefringence values of Sue Dibny’s turtleneck.

“I’ll check the video later,” Bruce growled, “to make sure the fools who went in costume didn’t expose anything in front of the cameras.”

“Well they couldn’t very well go in their secret identities,” Selina pointed out. “No matter how careful they were, somebody could notice—”

“Anything,” Bruce cut her off. “In costume or not, somebody can always pick out something from a photograph. I know all the reasons not to go in costume, Selina, and all the reasons not to go out of costume. And that’s why I’m here right now and not there. That’s the one advantage to being the cold-hearted bastard of the League, nobody expects me to do the touchy-feely stuff. I paid my respects to Ralph privately. The rest of them can assume I couldn’t be bothered.”

It was Hell Month. He said things like that in Hell Month that he wouldn’t at other times. Selina knew that, but she made few concessions to it. It seemed like all the others did: Dick, Alfred, Barbara, and Tim, even the Justice League—even the rogues—everybody changed when he got like this. Selina made a conscious effort to be different—she was the one person who would not bend to him and his Hell Month demons. She didn’t have a perfect record, but whenever she thought to, she made an effort to treat him exactly as she always did. And if he was going to spout gibberish like that, there was really only one way to respond:

“Pfffffffft. Bruce, I’m sorry, but with all due respect to Hell Month, Pfffffffft! We both know you’ve got a bigger heart than any of them. If they actually do not know that just because you grunt and scowl, then they are quite simply too stupid to live.”

“Doesn’t it bother you to say something like at the very moment four of them are carrying Sue’s coffin into the cathedral?” Bruce asked in Batman’s deadliest gravel.

“Not as much as it bothers me to hear you say you’re the cold-hearted bastard and they’ll assume you don’t care at the very moment you’re watching that funeral out of the corner of your eye while you pretend to fight with me.”

Bruce stared for a split second, grunted, and then turned to face the screen. He touched a button on the console and the image expanded to the full width of the viewscreen. They watched for a few moments.

“Did you know them well?” Selina asked quietly.

“Not really. Ralph fancied himself a detective; he likes to think he’s emulated my techniques. But we’ve never worked together much. He’s a showboater, that’s why he went public. He likes the attention. Eel is the better operative all around: longer stretching, stronger… unattached.”

“I’ve never heard you take something like that into consideration,” Selina noted, a strange intensity creeping into her voice.

Bruce turned away from the screen and looked at her in silence for a moment.

“When have we ever talked about this at all? Single is better. A crimefighter with a wife and family…”

“Is less expendable?”

“Of course not. It’s just that, strategically speaking—look at Clark. His love for Lois is a greater vulnerability than Kryptonite.”

“But he’s your first pick to partner with, Bruce. Always. So much for that theory, huh? In the whole League who are you tighter with or work with more, hm?”

“Yes,” Bruce admitted. “I work more with Superman—because of the man, not a flaw in the strategic principle. I trust him. I trust his judgment and his ethics and his decency. That outweighs any sweeping general guidelines about the qualities that make a good partner.”

“And the fact that he can benchpress a planet doesn’t hurt either,” Selina remarked dryly.

Bruce grunted. Superpowers were a double-edged sword. Useful in a fight, but a terrible weapon sitting right in the heart of your operation that could always be turned against you… They could be turned, or they could simply turn. The old proverb was passed on generation after generation for a reason: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What kind of fool would a man be to work with those demigods day after day, year after year, and not consider the ramifications of that one fundamental truth:

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Superpowers corrupt… superbly.

Bruce only grunted. He didn’t want to get into this. It was unusual for Selina to take an interest in the League or his work with them.

Of course, it was an unusual day. He turned back to the viewscreen and watched the rest of the funeral coverage in silence.

---

At the Iceberg Lounge, Hugo Strange retreated to a corner booth, muttering how the others had got it all wrong. No one knew Batman like he knew Batman. Debating whether the Bat would devote himself only to this one case or wreak his usual Hell Month vengeance on Gotham. The fools! He would do both, of course. He would clone himself so he could do both.

The only real question was if the clone would take the same Hell Month next year or if the clone-Bat’s Hell Month would manifest in July…

---

After the unexpectedly discomfiting interruption of the funeral, Bruce returned his full attention to the investigation.

He had long ago disciplined his mind to block echoes like that—however grisly the discovery of a body, however poignant the interview with a grieving family member, he would set it aside and focus on the work.

Funerals were… unavoidable… every murder was a death, every murder meant a coffin. It was unavoidable. The world didn’t care if it was January, his personal Hell Month, and that it took much less than the sight of a coffin or a few bars of Mozart’s Requiem to throw his mind back to that other funeral.

He had to concentrate. Sue deserved that much and so did Ralph. He returned his attention to the fingerprints…

It was very different from Stephanie’s memorial, of course. Stephanie’s was private. Because her identity as Spoiler wasn’t known, the heroes were able to come together in privacy and dignity to mourn their loss… honor her contribution… support Tim. None of that was possible here because Dibny was such a fool. It might be brutal to think that of a man who’d just lost his wife, but Bruce didn’t mind being brutal, especially during Hell Month. It was foolish, letting his name and face be known, putting those he loved in peril. For what—for the attention—because some hack at the Gotham Post made up some lies about her. It was so dangerous—she could make all the rules she wanted, they all knew, all his enemies knew whether they’d say so in front of her or not, that something existed between Batman and Catwoman. Getting to her was a way to get to him. Hurting her was a way to…

Hell Month. It was just Hell Month.

Of course it was Hell Month when Ra’s took her—when Ra’s al Ghul took her from him as a way to—he was afraid she was dead that whole flight to Mongolia. Ra’s took Selina as a way to get to him and they were just dating. Now they were living together. It wasn’t just a bottle of shampoo in his shower anymore, she slept every night with her head on his chest—she picked out the sheets they lay in.

Bruce wondered suddenly if he had paid for those sheets or if she had. His mind flashed on the penthouse, the fop act, trying to bait Poison Ivy… “Tim was under age, so he imposed on one of the other groomsmen to buy the liquor. They went a little overboard. Always happens the first time I give someone my credit card.” …Reminding Poison Ivy that she had a rich man in her snare (or so she thought) was one thing. Selina was a very different proposition. She might playfully sneak his wallet to pay for lunch at d’Annunzio’s when he and Clark had to leave on an emergency, but apart from that shopping spree to Paris, she had never to his knowledge spent his money. Now that the manor was really her home… his house was her home… and she was starting to buy little things for it… Bruce felt himself burning with curiosity to know if she charged those sheets to him or paid for them herself. He could access the credit card statements easily at the computer and—

And a wave of nausea rose as he looked to the workstation, thinking only of Selina and those stupid sheets, and saw spatter-analyses of the scorch marks surrounding Sue Dibny’s head flashing on the viewscreen.

Weak. He was so weak. He had to stay focused. Sue Dibny was dead. Ralph was in agony because his wife was dead. He had to stay focused. This was bigger than Hell Month and who paid for a pair of goddamn bedsheets.

Except the bedsheets were blue, a deep rich royal blue, because Selina bought them and Selina knew he liked the color. And he wanted to know if she charged them to his account because he wanted to know if she would spend his money as if she were…

The mental image of that coffin returned.

…his wife.

---

My first Hell Month with Bruce, I didn’t even know what was happening.
The second, he sent me shopping in Paris.
This year, this one was new, he asked me to come down to the cave. He asked me to help with a case. We’d worked together before, of course, but we’d always backed into it somehow. It had never started like this:

Alfred came up to my suite. He’d brought me tea earlier—there is simply no way to stop Alfred from bringing tea, particularly in times of crisis—and I assumed he was just back to collect the empty cup. But he said Bruce had rung on the intercom and wanted to see me in the cave.

I raised an eyebrow, because that had a certain ring of “Here, Fido. C’mere, boy” which cats simply do not do. But I went anyway. Hell Month, I guess. Or maybe I just felt, what with the funeral and all… anyway, I went down to the cave. He was in costume this time, except for the mask.

“Little early to be suited up, isn’t it?” I remarked.

“I’m going to patrol early tonight, just in case they’re emboldened after the coverage of the funeral.”

“Hey, no need to make excuses to me,” I told him, “I like you like that.”

“I know.”

When he didn’t say anything more, I reminded him “You summoned me—like a spaniel.”

“I asked you to come down. I need you on this, the Dibny case.”

“Meow,” I answered. Because there are one or two highly special circumstances when it is permissible to take a cat’s cooperation for granted, and this was one, and I was pleased that he knew that.

“This is the security system made available to the family and friends of Justice Leaguers who request it.”

“Different from our system here,” I noted.

“Very. You’ll find all the same modifications I made to the Phoenix on the ground floor, and the bodyheat detectors are similar to our alpha perimeter defenses on the grounds. That’s where the similarities end.”

“Because you don’t want any family and friend of the League who request it to have the blueprints to get into your bedroom.”

“This has Thanagarian, Martian, Apokolitian and Kryptonian technology as well, and—”

“Hey, I’m not complaining. It’s also my bedroom and I don’t want any of those over-sugared virtue-jockeys having the key either.”

“Selina, this system is unlike anything you’ve seen before.”

It sounded like fun, running barefoot through the Justice League’s idea of ultimate security.

“Somebody beat it,” he growled—it was a Batman growl, but a particularly menacing one. “Figure out how.”

Read the complete tale now on theCat-Tales website or mobile-friendly Cat-Tales.mobi.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Practical Cats

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
–Inigno Montoya, The Princess Bride

At some point when DC Comics was still trying to sell their new direction Catwoman comic, they introduced the idea that the goggled costume which debuted at the same time was “more practical” than its predecessors.  Obviously the person putting this forth had never worn a body stocking, leotard or pantyhose, because there’s nothing difficult about putting on form-fitting garments after you’ve done it twice.  And that’s in the real world.  In Catwoman #1, the comic where the Jim Balent costume debuted, Selina manages to get out of her costume and slip into a towel to impersonate the wife of the man she was robbing, then re-costume and slip away with the jewels as soon as he returned to the party and before he can realize his wife is already out there mingling with the guests.  That certainly seems like it must be an easy process to get in and out of costume, but more importantly it illustrates the appeal of Catwoman: the hot cat burglar.  The episode is sexy, it’s brazen, and it’s fun.  That’s half the appeal of Catwoman: men want her, women want to be her.  The illicit fun of being bad—not too bad, not evil, just bad enough for thrills—that’s the woman’s half of the equation.

The men’s half, that’s where the practicality idea really goes off the rails.   Because even if we accepted the idea that the Jim Balent Catwoman was harder to get in and out of, does it deliver benefits that more than make up for the extra trouble? 

Answer: Hell yes. 

I was talking to a friend recently about possible Catwoman costumes in Christopher Nolan’s next Batman installment The Dark Knight Rises, and he immediately brought up his ideal for the hot cat burglar: Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment.  “If I was Connery I'd have passed out from blood loss,” he said.  “There wouldn't be any left to power my brain, that's for certain.”

And that’s the value of the Balent costume that transcends any notion of practicality.  The rest of the world has to deal with Batman.  100%.  Bat.  Man.   Bruce Wayne, most dangerous man in the world, devotes his life and his fortune to protecting his city and fighting the criminals who prey upon it… Batman. 

Selina only has to contend with 1/5 of Batman.  She gets Bruce’s brain on auxiliary power, what’s left to maintain breathing and blood pressure while the rest of him battles the spectacle of a vibrant and beautiful woman poured into skin-tight purple, black thigh boots, silver claws shimmering in the moonlight, a holstered whip at the ready, and eyes you’ll dream about forever, teasing playfully from behind an enigmatic mask.

That, on a Gotham City rooftop, is practical.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Article first published as Practical Cats on Blogcritics.

A Look Back Year Four: An Iceberg Tale

Another tough call, because Year Four saw some amazing moments.  The Cat-Tales debut of the World's Finest in Red Cape, Big City and the emergence of Alfred's voice in Polishing Silver: The Journal of Alfred Pennyworth are the fan favorites.  One or the other would undoubtedly have been picked for the Look Back spotlight if only there had been a single scene to focus on.  But both tales are packed with so many developments and so many heart-race moments, a snapshot wasn't quite possible.  In contrast, there was one tale where the climactic event not only had repercussions in future stories, spawned an entire Alternate Universe, and inspired the first Cat-Tales fan art, it also contained the most memorable laugh line of Book 3. 

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting this week's look back... AIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE   Purple Mannequin

Sly looked carefully at the new arrival—masks were the norm for the Iceberg crowd, but face painting was not unheard of.  This girl—in a pair of furry tan-colored cat ears, with her face painted in tiger stripes, feline noseleather, and whiskers—had a more elaborate look than the typical groupie.  But there was something beyond that, something unusual.  What it was clicked into place when she placed her order:

“A Diet Sprite, please,” she squeaked, “with a tequila chaser.”

“Ms. Quinn?”

“Shhh, I’m here incognifty.”

Sly poured the drinks with a shrug.

“Whatever you say, Ma’am.  One Diet Sprite, one tequila.  What you chase with what is up to you.”

Harley took her drinks to a corner booth near her quarry, sat down without appearing to notice him in any way, and then began a jerky motion with her wrist underneath her chin.  She paused occasionally to sip her drink and spy on the next table.

“What is she doing?” Tom Blake asked finally.

“Trying to get your attention, you silly ass,” Nigma replied.

“My attention?”

“Tiger stripes, cat ears, she’s not here for me.  And I’d assume that thing with the chin is meant to be licking a paw.”

Catman looked at the girl in disbelief, then back at Riddler.

“Well that’s just great. That is just what we need around here.  Another goddamn cat-broad trying to steal the show.  THE LITTERBOX IS CLOSED, SWEETIEPIE!” he said loudly.

“Blake, you’re an ass,” Eddie whispered harshly, “she’s here for you, you stupid schmuck.  She’s trying to get picked up.”

Blake looked back at Harley, who was again performing the bizarre wrist-jerk.  He looked back at Eddie.

“That looks nothing like licking a paw.”

“So she’s a bad mime.  She’s cute.  She’s here.  She’s dressed like a cat.  What’s your problem, man?”

Blake picked up his drink, grumbling, and walked to the other table as if performing some odious duty to pacify a tiresome friend.

Nigma shook his head.  “Cats.  The eternal riddle.”

***

Selina’s brow furrowed, she swallowed, then looked up at Bruce, confusion etched on every feature.

“I have a feeling I don’t want to hear this,” she said carefully.  “Just about anything to do with Hugo tends to make me queasy.”

“I visited their camera truck last night, setting this up.  It will allow me to monitor all of their raw footage as they’re taping.  If there’s anything of concern…”

“Oh,” Selina broke in, suddenly getting it, “Not the Bruce-Wayne-is-Batman theory again.”

Bruce noted, with some amusement, that she spoke of it with the same weary-dismissive contempt that all rogues did.  That she knew it was true—that she was actually standing next to him in the Batcave as she said it—made no difference whatsoever.  It was Hugo, and therefore a laughable embarrassment to all roguekind.

“…if there’s anything of concern,” he continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “I can zap it.”

“Won’t that look suspicious?”

“No, it’ll look like the cameras experienced a momentary atmospheric anomaly that corrupted the sound record.  I perfected this technique last year when the JLA considered that reality show nonsense*.”

“Ah.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I love it when you go all bad-ass technophile.”

Bruce’s fingers paused for a split second, and then continued their continual movement over the dials and keyboard. Selina spoke again.

“So has there been anything ‘of concern’ to zap?”

“No,” he twitched.

Selina looked at the screen that read

   … … … … …:: feed off FAB! remote crew-1 camera-1 ::… … … … …

The camera shot showed the interior of a van, as five well-groomed men circulated a dossier.

“Okay, our subject this week is Dr. Hugo Strange—Supervillain.”

“Supervillain, well that explains the beard.”

“Right, always remember:  when you go evil, stop shaving.”

Selina blinked at the monitors.

“This isn’t for real.”

“It’s real.”

“Maybe I should start watching more television.”

*** 

Harley stood before the mirror in the Iceberg Women’s Room, fretfully combing her hair.   She had made an error.  She’d greeted Gina, the washroom attendant, by name—forgetting that she was supposed to be a newcomer to the Iceberg who wouldn’t know who Gina was.

Harley bit her lip.

Well, her time here was almost up anyway.  She’d gotten what she needed from Tom Blake.  Now she just needed to pop upstairs to Oswald’s flat above the club, her first foray as a cat-woman cat-burglar, and then she could leave and it wouldn’t matter if Gina let the cat out of the bag about the new cat-groupie.

“Bye-ah Gina, I mean, Meow,” Harley said cheerily.

Out in the dining room, she stopped to say goodnight to Catman:

“It was such a thrill meeting you, Mistah C, I can’t tell you.  Now I gotta give this sidekick idea some thought, ‘cause I don’t know if it’s quite my style.  But if I decide to help you out stealin’ these famous relics from the Catacombs, then I will get in touch.  Where did you say your lair was again?”

Blake regarded the girl as if she wasn’t very bright, and repeated patiently:  “Beneath the Safari Club, hidden entrance in the Tiger’s Paw Room behind the armoire.”

“Thanks Tommy, I mean, Meow.”

*** 

I cocked my head and looked at the video screen.  It was an exterior shot where the van pulled to a stop and the FAB! team ran out and knocked feverishly on a heavy wooden door.  The door swung open, and there was Hugo Strange, standing agape as FAB! swarmed over his apartment like a Ralph Lauren SWAT team.

“Ugh, Hugo, sweetheart. 1967 called, they want their glasses back. Wonderful invention, Dearie, they’re called ‘contacts.’ Say it slowly with me: ‘con-tacts.’”

“This room is just stupid.  Plastic ferns? What’s the idea here: ‘I want to set off my purple leopard print chair with a little touch of green without having a living plant around?’”

I think I blacked out for a second at that.  Purple leopard.  And Hugo.  Just the idea—shudder.

“Don’t look,” Bruce advised, “it could get much worse.”

I remembered that he had been inside Hugo’s place as Batman, although I’d never heard the circumstances or even if this was the same apartment.

“Trust me,” he repeated, “Don’t look.”

“What’s with this floor anyway?  Those tiles are kind of… what would you call that? Off-beige.”

“The throw-pillows look like Doug Henning’s T-shirts…”

“Even shopping malls in the square states don’t use those recessed overhead lights anymore, do they?” 

“Now Hugo, about your personal couture.  First thing we’re going to do is lose this Freud Gone Wrong beard and then we’ll fix up the wardrobe.  So, you’re a criminal mastermind and all that.  Sounds exciting.  To each his own, I always say.  So, how to do you generally dress for that?”

All sound stopped from the video feed and I opened my eyes to see why. Hugo wasn’t saying anything.  I looked at Bruce, who had the same faintly horrified look on his face.

I looked back to the screen and Hugo still hadn’t come up with an answer.  He might be standing there still if one of the others on the Fab! crew hadn’t burst in from a side door.  He slammed it shut behind him and leaned back against it like maybe the Mummy was chasing him.

“Do not go into the bathroom.”

*** 

Greg Brady fitted a 10x loop into his eye and examined the gems laid out on Oswald’s desk.

“Very nice,” he remarked, looking up at Tom Blake.

“They are more than nice,” Blake declared, “They are Cat-worthy.”

“Um, yeah, okay.”  Greg tossed a thick envelope onto the desk.  Blake opened it and began counting a thick wad of bills.

“There’s less catnip here than we agreed.”

“It’s exactly what was agreed on, minus your outstanding bar tab.  I spoke to my partner—”

“SLY!”

“—and he agreed that when a tab gets into four figures we need to draw a line.”

“SLY!” Blake called again, opening the office door and screaming into the bar, “SLY!  Come in here!  My tab cannot possibly be…”  He quieted once Sly entered the room and closed the door behind him. “There is fourteen hundred dollars missing from this envelope!”

“$1468, Mr. Blake,” Sly said evenly.

Blake looked from Sly to Greg and back to Sly.

“Fourteen hundred sixty… how on EARTH is that possible.”

“You tore up Miss Ivy’s special wood-free table, Mr. Blake.  That polymer stuff is very expensive to get fixed.”

“She made comparisons between myself as the Lord of All Felines and that flea-bitten hellcat.”

“I don’t care, Mr. Blake.  Miss Selina has claws too, but she doesn’t go scratching up the place.  Your tab with the Iceberg-S was $1468, and so we took it out of your payoff from Iceberg-G.  If that’s all you guys need me for, I’ll be back at the bar.  Stop by for a beer on your way out, Mr. Blake.  On the house.”

***

They argued the whole way down to the cave.

“I am not treading on your sacred right to go all batty on Joker matters—”

“I do wish you would drop that expression. It is not ‘going batty’ to prepare a—”

“Whatever.  Point is, Harley is screwing with ME, and I don’t let that pass, and I don’t let the boyfriend handle it—”

“Selina—”

“—AND I don’t stand quietly in the background while the—AAAIIIIEEEE!”

A scream such as had never been heard in the Batcave before echoed through the caverns, causing the bats to shriek, squawk and shudder several seconds after it ceased.

“WHAT! WHAT IS IT?” Bruce yelled.

Selina just stood, wide-eyed, staring at the Workstation 3 monitors with a look of frozen horror.

After a moment, she raised a finger and half-pointed.  Bruce had already turned in the direction she was staring.  His eyes registered the horror just as Selina found strength to manage a hoarse whisper:

“Purple mannequin.”

On the screen, the FAB! decorator was showing Hugo Strange what they had made of his apartment in his absence.

“…this amazing artwork we found stashed away in the garage. Now this is clearly an important sculpture by one of Gotham’s most challenging artists.  A piece like that, you’ve got to show off.  You don’t want to hide this away, so see how we’ve made it the focal point of the room.”

“Oh god,” Bruce groaned.

There, in the center of Hugo Strange’s exquisitely redecorated living room, sat a contorted mannequin dressed in a Catwoman costume.

A sharp intake of breath and Selina recovered from the initial shock.

“I take it Quinn is out of the basement,” Bruce observed dryly.

Hostile green eyes glared at him.

“Did you know about this?” the tigress snarled.

Harley was indeed out of the basement—and Bruce thought it best to clarify that it was Hugo and not Batman that would be taking her place.

“I’ve seen the mannequin.  She wasn’t dressed that way at the time,” he answered.

Selina stormed off to the costume vault but Bruce lagged behind, pretending to make an adjustment at the workstation.  He too wanted to change into costume, but just this once he would wait and allow her to go first.  Batman’s survival instinct would never permit his telling Selina, but he considered the catsuit an improvement.  When he had seen Hugo’s mannequin in person, she wore a camisole, garter belt, silk stockings—and a Batman cowl.

Read the complete tale now on theCat-Tales website or mobile-friendly Cat-Tales.mobi.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com 
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.

Retro-Active and Reichenbach Falls

So, it’s common knowledge that DC Comics and I parted ways several years ago. It’s also common knowledge that that is not at all uncommon, and we’ll get to that shortly. Point is, while I delight in the produce of DC Entertainment, I've come to view anything from the actual DC Comics division as I would a plate of shrimp that was left in the sun for a day: there’s a high probability that it’s bad and will make me sick if I eat it. You’re free to, of course, but I wonder what the hell is wrong with you (and I'll just leave the number for the poison control center right here on the counter where you can’t miss it).

Still, DC news occasionally does push its way in front of my eyeballs, and I must say the latest bulletin from WonderCon is… suggestive.

Retro-Active is described as “a wave of one-shots that will pay homage to the spirit of the Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and Justice League of America stories of the '70s, '80s and '90s.” These are not simple reprints but a 50/50 mix of new material written into the old continuities presented alongside the reprinted originals.

Now, what immediately pops out at me is the significance of those decades. Bluntly: an era before things were fucked up beyond all repair. There were missteps to be sure, but there was a bottom line respect for the characters, the readership, and the basic tenets of storytelling. What also jumps out is I’m looking at names from those eras – names we haven’t seen in a while. Names that, like the continuities, were not a part of or tainted by the last 10 years of toxicity.

Len Wein, Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, Marv Wolfman… Wow.

I can only come up with three explanations for a move of this kind coming out of… I’m not sure my fingers will even type it… a move like this coming out of the DC Comics of 2011.

1. Reichenbach Falls

DC has been hemorrhaging readers for a long time, but recent years have seen them deliberately slicing themselves open. I don’t know if the intent was suicide or a troubled teen cutting herself for attention and nicking an artery by mistake, but the result is the same: the readers are going, going, gone. Faster than they can be replaced – and what they’ve been replaced with isn’t worth much. DC has consistently cut loyal long-time fans in favor of imagined new ones: new ones with less disposable income, who are less invested in the hobby and won’t necessarily spend as much on it regardless of income. They do make plenty of noise in forums and blogs. That never translates into actual sales because they mostly get the gist from Scans Daily, but hey, at least their excesses further alienate those who have left. You might think that once a reader is lost that’s the end of it. They can’t spend less than $0, right? But the cost of all those lost readers goes far beyond the simple dollars and cents. Consider: I was at a friend’s house a couple weeks ago and they were showing off their gaming system. They had EA Sports, Assassin’s Creed, and then while the rest of us were talking, they took out Assassins Creed and put in Arkham Asylum. As soon as the DC logo went up, the guy I was talking to looked up, rolled his eyes and threw back his head. He thought it was an ad for DC Online, but then the Rocksteady name came up and he said "oh wait, I've heard of this." When he saw the actual game start, he really liked it.

Now, that’s some serious bad voodoo. The DC logo = Bad. The Dark Knight was not only a great movie, it was a fantastically popular one. Smallville has been running longer than M*A*S*H. The Green Lantern trailer OWNED WonderCon this past weekend. And yet, the DC logo got this automatic negative reaction – because of the comics. If you’ve ever heard talking about a great unsolicited review or great word of mouth for their business and say they “can’t put a price on that kind of advertising” – well this is the flip side. You can't put a dollar amount on the cost of YOUR LOGO = BAD. You can't put a dollar amount on the real damage DC Comics has done to the DC brand.

So, possibility #1 is Retro is a concerted effort to lure back those lost readers. If so, it’s a nice start. It really is, don't get me wrong. However, it needs to be said that you’re not going to undo 10+ years of abuse in 2 months.

In 1893 Conan Doyle decided he was tired writing Sherlock Holmes and attempted to kill off his character in a final battle with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. To put it mildly: the reading public was not pleased. They flatly refused to accept the destruction of something that brought them such pleasure. Doyle then tried to appease them by telling new stories from the time before Holmes was killed. The reading public WAS NOT SATISFIED. It was not enough to have new stuff if the trail still led to the unacceptable outcome, and Doyle had no choice but to suck it up and undo the damage, bring his hero back to life.

If DC wants to win back readers it lost by its own bad behavior, this is a start, but make no mistake it is only the first step of a long journey.

2. To learn how to get up

A couple years ago, Dan Didio was interviewed for one of the many specials out just prior to The Dark Knight, and he was going on how “We at DC look on Bruce Wayne is the mask and Batman is the real person.” You could tell he was just so pleased with the line, like they all are, it’s so clever… Then one of the real experts came on and said how that’s doing a real disservice to the character and displays a complete lack of understanding: the story of “Batman” is the story of Bruce Wayne, the man. The long tradition of heroes yadda yadda yadda…

Since that time, that lack of understanding has become more and more apparent. The phrase we hear more and more is that the folks at DC simply do not know: they don’t know who these characters are, they don’t know what they’re supposed to be, they don’t know what is non-negotiable part of the mythos and what’s disposable window dressing. They don’t know a good idea from a bad one (or a really bad one) (or a really, really bad one). They don’t know storytelling. They don’t understand women. They don’t understand heroes. They don’t understand how long a story should run. They don't understand human behavior…

What’s worse, they cut themselves off from the past that did know. They mocked it and belittled it. Now they’re stuck. They know where they are isn’t working. They don’t know how to fix it. Everything they try makes it worse. When they stumble onto something that works, they don’t know understand why it worked and try to recreate it focusing on all the wrong things.

With Retro: going back to the time before things were broken and BRINGING BACK THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING, letting them work in the non-broken continuities, this could be a phenomenally effective way for these guys to LEARN HOW TO DO THIS.

3. Come back here and take what’s coming to ya! I’ll bite your legs off!

Unfortunately, no one who’s seen the storylines of the past few years can overlook the possibility that this series is intended to deliver another attack on old fans by polluting the past continuities. Having done their worst in the present, it’s a way to retro-actively poison the past stories we love and take that last bit of pleasure from us.

Do I believe there is that much malice in the people making decisions at DC Comics? Absolutely. Do I think that’s what Retro is about? Probably not. Because the whispers about Time Warner shutting down print comics have become louder with each new tweak of the corporate structure and each new announcement of another five titles being cancelled. When you’re being wheeled into the emergency room with a collapsed lung, who wastes the energy to give someone the finger?

Anyway, on a lighter note: Trophies is now available in ebook and print-quality pdf. There’s also a new edition of the epub ebooks on the site. Mobile people in particular should find these load much faster. Iphone 4 newer Blackberry folks, hang tight. Your CSS issues are next on the todo list.

Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com

Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.