Not a Twinkie

Man of Steel screenwriter Davis S. Goyer took advantage of the lull before a new Bat-trilogy Blu-ray (new packaging or something) to remind us all that Superman kills now.   The notion that he wouldn’t is "a rule that exists outside of the narrative."

Let’s cross the street where they’re not quite so confused, shall we?  A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me this great trailer for Lego Marvel Superheroes.  I’m not a Marvel, I’ve never particularly clicked with their characters, but watching this just makes me feel good:

 

I think it’s the same reason I enjoy the Marvel movies.  It’s so unabashedly enthusiastic about being a superhero vehicle. 

DR. DOOM:
Dr. Doom’s Doom-Ray of Doom

ORCHESTRAL HORNS:
BWOMG-BWOMM-BWOMMM

This clip is fearless about standing center stage and bellowing out what it is.  Superheroes in Legos, the bad guys versus the good guys.  Nobody here is running away from it.  Nobody is ashamed of it or afraid of being silly.  Nobody is pretending this is serious fucking business.

Isn’t that refreshing?  I don’t think anything with Batman that I’ve seen in a decade has made me feel as good as this 2:05 of characters I don’t give a crap about.

As I was sitting there, fingers poised over my keyboard trying to find a way to express that succinctly in order to share the video on Facebook, I found myself looking at a Twinkie.

Facebook being Facebook, I found myself looking at a Twinkie

Maybe it was the history of those old time Hostess ads in comic books, when the heroes distracted the villains with delicious cakes and fruit pies.  Maybe it’s the fact that Twinkies were out of production for a while there and their return was announced right after Man of Steel, prompting more than a few comments that if they’d only come back sooner, Zod could have been handled the old-fashioned way and all that destruction porn could have been avoided.

Whatever the chain of associations, it led to an analogy that can explain the divide in superhero comics and movies.  I find food analogies cut through so much faux intellectual B.S.  You can convince otherwise intelligent people of a lot of absolute nonsense using phrases like "a rule that exists outside of the narrative," until you apply the principles to something they understand on such a basic level as food.  Maybe you don’t know why the Miller apologist is wrong, maybe you don’t know how to construct the counterargument, but once you get that applying those principles amounts to serving bleu cheese and chopped liver on a Triscuit for Christmas dinner, you do know that is a really bad idea.  Whether you can articulate the reason or not, you’re gagging.  You know there has to be something very, very wrong in any chain of the logic that ends in this being a tolerable plan.  You know you’re not going to serve it to your kids, no matter what argument it makes or how big its advertising budget.  It’s a part of our make-up they haven’t broken: if it makes you wretch, don’t eat it.

So, back to the Twinkie.  Is there anybody reading this who doesn’t know what they are?  Sweet yellow cake with a white, sweet cream filling that may or may not be vanilla-ish flavored.  It’s a kid’s food, most of us ate them and remember them fondly.  There were knock-offs and generics.  There are also some very prestigious restaurants that have made a gourmet version.  (Think champagne cake with a filling of blancmange infused with vanilla and cognac) and less prestigious ones serving up the traditional twink deep-fried, a substance so orgasmically sweet and rich it became an analogy for… well never mind. They’re good.

Now here’s the thing, if none of that sounds good to you, then you don’t like Twinkies.  It’s okay, none of us are judging you.  For most humans, sweet is the first set of taste buds to develop.  We go for it and it’s nature’s way of telling us: eat the berry not the bark.  But if for whatever reason you don’t like sweets, then you don’t like Twinkies.

Superheroes, like Twinkies, are certain things.  They’re fun.  There is humor and color and life in their stories.  Even when there’s angst and horror, it gets broken up with a little f-ing fun.  Burton knew it.  Schumacher absolutely knew it.  He made the worst goddamn Twinkie any of us have ever seen, but it WAS a Twinkie.

Print comics have succeeded in convincing what politicians call “the base” that Twinkies don’t have to be sweet, they don’t have to be made of cake or have cream filling, and it is just so silly and childish and stunted to imagine they do.   And, as in politics, ideas that go beyond 'completely wrong' into the land of 2+2 = cream cheese nonsensical can be accepted inside these little bubbles of true believers, but they run into trouble when they come out here into the real world where reality is in play.   That’s why they have those names.

Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?

The DC movies have been serving up pickled coffee beans and calling them Twinkies.  They’re not, and those of you who cannot let an un-Nolan thought (or an un-Miller thought or an un-gogglewhore thought) pass without comment are not going to argue it into being one.  You like the pickled coffee beans, we get that.  Some of us do too on occasion.   I like bitter and I like sour from time to time.  But not in a Twinkie.  Those things are not Twinkies, no matter what it says on the box or how big a name the director is, how big the advertising budget is, or how you choose to belittle those who refuse to validate your delusion.

See, and I think the important thing is actually not to BE panicking.

Something quite interesting happened Friday night.  It’s a story of hope, involving DC Comics.  That’s worth returning to a topic I thought I was long finished with.  It starts with a website the mere existence of which means the core dysfunction that drove me off years ago has only gotten worse.  It’s called hasdcdonesomethingstupidtoday.com.  Seriously, I thought it was a joke too, but try the link, it’s real.

This website has a counter indicating, as the name suggests, how many days it’s been since the last act of stupidity as covered by an underlying website called The Outhouser.  DC has had a bad couple of weeks leading to multiple resets in a single day.  (And no, this has nothing to do with Ben Affleck.  Let the man be.)   This incident is only tangentially related to the dramas that caused the multiple resets; you can read about those here if you care.  It has to do with the underlying problem and, more importantly, its solution. 

There's a reason Gail Simone gets the
benefit of the doubt when others
at DC Comics do not 

For me, it began with a Saturday morning email that big dramas were about to erupt.  It seems there was an article on the mother site where Gail Simone “fan favorite writer and vigilante crimefighter addresses the DC marriage controversy.”  It took a blog she wrote and then commented/extrapolated in such a way that is common on the site, but in this case it was murky where Gail’s remarks left off and the commentary began.  Clearly nothing malicious, but it seemed to Gail that a journalist ‘just made stuff up’ that she never said.  After tweeting this, she publicly asked the article’s author to message her.  His editor saw that request first and responded.  The article was taken down until it could be edited.  (That’s not a euphemism, it’s back up.)  With apologies on one side and gracious understanding on the other, the whole thing was over in about 20 minutes, drama free.

Quite honestly, without DC Comics being involved, I’d still applaud.  Check it out: two rational adults setting something civilly and amicably on the Internet.  It’s better than YouTube kittens.

So, what about that email?  That was sent to me in the period between Gail’s request for a DM from the author and the editor’s response.  It said basically “Look for a counter reset in 3… 2… 1…”
My reaction, without knowing any of these particulars, was PFFT.  I told my buddy that, while I don’t know Gail personally, I’d seen her on Twitter for over a year and a lovelier woman you simply won’t find.  She has a sense of humor and a rational perspective, and I’ve seen her laugh off plenty of trolls, bigots and creeps who simply weren’t worth engaging.  I knew she wasn’t about to turn into Linda Blair and start spewing pea soup and obscenities over a simple misconstruction.

Now, what’s important here isn’t the lack of another negative PR episode involving someone at DC Comics.  It’s that I knew there wasn’t going to be one before I clicked a link.  I knew because the way this woman conducts herself in public, as well as the material she writes, tells me that she’s not that kind of person.

Back to DC proper.  Several people have tried to position themselves as the voice of reason over the past few weeks (or maybe they’re just fence sitting) saying that DC has a PR problem, an image problem, a perception problem, etc.   The implication is that it’s not the men at the top, the decisions they make, ideas and attitudes that prompt them or the way they choose to express those ideas that’s bringing the tempest upon them; it’s the failure of the marketing and publicity departments who don’t have their backs.  It’s their job to foresee these issues before they occur and be there to give the right spin.

Technically, I suppose it’s true:  In the same way I instantly gave Gail the benefit of the doubt because she comes off like a good person, we all assume the absolute worst whenever someone from DC editorial or management speaks because we think they’re assholes.  Those last 5 words can be described as ‘an image problem.’ But to say that image problem is the problem is, well it's rather like this:

Maybe the impression so many of us have that this company is nothing but the corporate embodiment of a petty, insecure man-child lashing out maliciously but impotently at all that confuses and frightens him isn’t quite as important as the reason we have that impression.

 

Cat-Tales Audio Books - A Girl's Gotta Protect Her Reputation and Fun & Games

Cat-Tales is pleased to announce the first selection of short stories to be released as audio books.

From the earliest tales, the Book One collection...

CT #1: A Girl's Gotta Protect Her Reputation - Let’s say nearly everything you’ve ever read in a comic book is wrong...  This is where it began.  The Gotham Post had been getting it wrong about Catwoman for years.  Until the day they said she was small time, arrested by ordinary cops, arrested... Selina Kyle had enough, punched back - and Gotham was never the same.

CT #7: Fun & Games - We all knew, those two would play some interesting games if they ever got together after all those years of "whatever it was" between Batman & Catwoman.  We weren't wrong.

Read by Caroline Sharp, a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, studied with the renowned Atlantic Theater Company in both New York and Los Angeles and at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin. NY, LA, and international theatre and film credits include Group: A Musical, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Country Wife, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Teachers, Chicxulub, Top Girls, Dolly West’s Kitchen, The Sound of Music, Scrooge, Grand Hotel, and the comedy webseries The Majestic Theatre Co.

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

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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

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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

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Article first published as Practical Cats on Blogcritics.

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

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Wearing a Duck

Remember that great scene in My Favorite Year: Benny Stone, freshman writer on King Kaiser’s Comedy Cavalcade finally has a date with the girl of his dreams. She regrets that she is the one person working at the show who isn’t funny. He says anybody can be funny. He’ll teach her a joke. “A guy walks into a psychiatrist's office with a duck on his head. The psychiatrist says, ‘Can I help you?’ And the duck says, ‘Yeah, can you get this guy off my ass.’” She laughs, he prompts her to tell it back to him. She straightens her dress a little in an endearing ‘here we go’ maneuver and begins: “A man walks into a doctor’s office wearing a duck.”

Homaged here in Studio 60, Sorkin goes on to explain the phenomenon:
You can’t tell a joke. Like a young child, you hear it, get it, and then can’t reconstruct the moving parts.

This is what we're facing in mainstream comics. A real writer comes along, say Jeph Loeb. He crafts a cunning mystery, putting the long-neglected theme rogues front and center, and weaves in a heartbreaking tragedy of Bruce's inability to trust following the structure best suited to the purpose: Aristotelian tragedy. Since a good mystery requires a good red herring, he constructs one tailor-made to grab the fanboy's attention and keep it rived on the ball in my RIGHT hand. He teased the one thing that all sane comic readers knew would never happen, he teased breaking one of the 3 commandments, he teased Jason Todd was still alive. He then revealed the image they were all waiting for - if Jason were alive today, what would he look like - in a full page at the very end of the issue, giving them a full month to fizz and and enjoy themselves. Then he went on with his story... that's what storytellers do.

Here's what comics writers do: not understanding how any of the moving parts worked, they latched onto things at random: it was the character of Hush himself, not the mystery that made it such a success. And the return of Jason Todd! Like Pacific Islanders lining an improvised runway with torches and sitting a guy on the end with coconuts strapped to his head like headphones, thinking it will make planes land filled with supplies - you know, the way it did during the war. It looks just like it used to, why don't the planes come?

Last week's blog, I quoted the late John Barry bemoaning modern composers who are "just playing with notes." Yesterday I posted a quote of Aaron Sorkin about those demonizing education and intellect. We have a PROBLEM here: people allowed to write, edit and manage major comic titles who have not learned the basics of their own craft - and who scoff at the idea it is necessary. Not only have they been allowed to ruin something that was once a pleasure for thousands of ex-readers, they have taken up a slot that could have been filled by competent and talented writers who would appreciate it.

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

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Why Do We Fall?

Remember this moment? Remember this question? "Why
do we fall, Bruce?"

So we can lie on the floor stubbornly insisting we haven't?

So we can sit with our aching ass on the cold terrazzo insisting that gravity is a myth?

How about repeating like a politico's talking points that it's not the floor at all and we are, in actuality, on Dancing With the Stars foxtrotting with Jennifer Gray?

No. Why do we fall? So we learn how to get up.

I recently saw a piece on the 10 biggest WTF moments in comics. Not surprising which company took home the trophy for the big #1.

In 1998, DC made the mother of all WTF decisions when they opted to change the character of Superman. This character that had stood for 60 years, and had just been killed off a few years prior to show his utter importance not only to comics but to the world, was out the door...

A change of costume or marriage status is one thing, but completely altering everything that established the character as an American icon in the first place is something else entirely.

Several readers marked this as the first pock of the disease which has consumed just about all the characters now, the first blatant sign that those entrusted to write these characters have no understanding of what defines them or of their iconic significance in the greater world outside their Thursday To-Do list.

But not me. For once, I'm going to stand between DC and the ones throwing stones, because here's the thing: as soon as they realized the ground had given way under their feet and they were falling into a deep pit with a bunch of angry bats baring their teeth and hissing bat-spittle into their faces, they changed him back. The article itself admits "the explanation to get him back to normal was quite vague, probably a result of the severe backlash of comic book fans and their desire to fix the problem as quickly as possible."

They didn't tap Wizard to call it a giant step forward in comics, they didn't embark on a PR campaign to try and convince the terminally stupid that unsweetened lemon juice tastes just like water, they didn't figure there would be a new crop of gullible half-wits who would be coming along any minute to replace the 80% of their readership heading out the door. They didn't think up even worst things to do to Superman to punish the fans for not accepting the fiasco. They got up. That's why we fall. And if we can't get our asses out of that hole on our own, we scream for help before the rest of the ground gives and we fall farther.

Remember a few weeks ago I said The Reaper is out there, and DC's attitude that it's okay to mess things up further/they'll fix it (or not) next year was horrifically out of touch with the reality that there may not BE a next year? Anyone who thought I was being melodramatic, please turn and wave goodbye to Wizard. It's gone, as of yesterday. All staff let go. If a new online magazine transpires to replace it, the focus is to be on pop culture and the non-comics media where these characters still thrive. Not print comics.

Do I have your attention now, boys?

Fantastic Four is snuffing a major character today. What makes this different from past fan-inflaming stunts is that it's the first under Disney. That means if it doesn't work out (and by "work out" I don't mean by the comics definition 'people hate it' but the definition of everyone else on the planet), then those responsible are going to be introduced to a concept that is new to them but familiar to everyone else who works for a living: consequences. You make a bad decision, you piss off customers, you materially damage a company's assets, there are consequences. I don't think it's a bad thing. It's not going to be a pleasant adjustment. Growing up often isn't. But it's pretty much the only choice the medium has if it wants to survive.

Why do fall? Well, eventually to learn how to get up. For some though, there is an intermediary step: to learn to recognize the hole, and then to accept that the hole is not the place to be.

On a lighter note, it's a big week for Cat-Tales. The Dracula spinoff Capes and Bats releases its penultimate chapter today, and there's a plot twist that absolutely nobody saw coming--but which was right in front of us the entire time. I have to admit, I was floored when I read it. Scared the cat with my gasps of surprise. We're also less than 48 hours from the launch of a new feature to make life easier for our mobile friends. Work is underway on the new chapter of Trophies, while reviews continue to come in on À Bon Chat, Bon Rat.

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

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How to Succeed in Comics Without Really Trying

Had a few comics-related conversations over the holidays, and particularly their similarity to theatre. Comic books, like stage productions, cannot show elaborate cinematic scenes. They suggest, and the audience (or reader) fills in the rest from their imagination. Panel 1: close up on a Bat-glove, fist cocked. Panel 2: DEMON minion lying on the floor. You don't SEE Batman attack (reminder if you haven't seen the Arkham City trailer, you haven't seen CGI Keysi Shakespeare the way it's meant to be played), you create it in your own mind, and that folks, is why fanboys are more INVESTED in these characters and these stories. We are more possessive because they truly are OURS more than something we only see in a movie or on television.

Because of that similarity, and because theatre has had to reinvent itself for thousands of years to keep entertaining in a changing world, the modern comics professional can learn a lot from the theatre world. The big one to consider today is literally the difference between a theatre that failed in the last 10 years, and one in the same city that kept its lights on and is still performing shows. The philosophy is simplicity itself:

Look on every single performance of every single show as your one and only chance to win over someone in that audience and make them a lifelong theatre goer. Someone out there has never come to the theatre before, and what they see and hear and experience tonight could be so overwhelmingly magical for them that they are hooked for life.

Look on every single performance of every single show as potentially the last straw for someone who has seen one bad show too many.

Remember The Dark Knight? That movie brought people into comic shops for the first time. They were looking for Batman. If what was in the comics DELIVERED what they wanted, some of them would have come back. (And maybe some comic shops that have closed in the last 2 years would have weathered the storm, but that's a question for another day.)

But it doesn't take a movie. It doesn't even take a cartoon. SOMEONE is be walking into a shop for the first time EVERY DAMN DAY. Every issue of every comic is a chance to win them.

Every issue of every comic is also a chance to LOSE them. There is a misconception out there that because fanboys howl and complain, because they have always howled and complained, that it's fine and even desirable, to anger, disappoint and insult them. And it isn't necessary to master or even understand the basic tenets of storytelling because a bad story will pass the time for the next 6 months as well as, or better than, a good one. There is a reason it is writers with roots in or ties to other media who are having exponentially more success than the hacks: because they understand real readers and audiences. They know that those hundred guys on forums are not representative of anything. The vast majority of readers you never hear from either way. They like it and they buy again, or they hate it and they don't.

Things can be bad enough for long enough that the most vocal and committed fans decide enough is enough. We're seeing that happen in increasing numbers, but those are the extreme cases. Every issue of every comic IS a chance to lose one of those diehards, but it is also infinitely more probable it will lose a hundred casual readers. Particularly when the actual goal is to cause maximum offense. It's not okay to know something is wrong but wait until next year to fix it. Every single issue of every single comic is an opportunity to win or lose. And like life, you simply don't know how many chances you have left. The Reaper is out there, folks, and there are major titles whistling in the graveyard, acting like it doesn't matter, they'll fix it next year. It really doesn't seem to occur to them that there may not be a next year.

It's a new year, and I wanted this entry to be an optimistic one. I want to offer more encouragement to those pros out there who honestly do seem to be trying to fix this. I know things that have been breaking for 20-plus years can't be fixed in a day, but unfortunately, that's what's required here.

There's another theatre principle: the miracle. It's 30 minutes to curtain, the paint is still wet, they're finishing off the second act costumes with a glue gun, the props table fell over, breaking the decanter we need for the first scene, the leads are having a shouting match in their dressing rooms, the fire marshall is seizing all the pyro earmarked for the end of the first act, and the ASM is locked in the costume loft. But the show goes on because even though it is f-ing IMPOSSIBLE to overcome all that in less than half an hour, we dig in and do it, because we gotta. Because we give a damn.

So maybe, just maybe, this can be an optimistic entry after all. All you guys need to do is dig in and give us a miracle. If it sounds like a lot to ask, look at your cousins in theatre who've been doing it for just over 5,000 years.

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

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West Coast Sunrise

Back when Disney bought Marvel, I said “Now we got us a fair fight,” and almost immediately afterwards, I retracted it. Because Disney has always been integrated and focused when it comes to synergy: getting the movies, the toys, the theme parks, the music CDs and the TV shows working together and feeding into each other, which leads to more toys and DVDs and games… Hell, Disney was the first movie studio to embrace television while the others were running scared. Walt used it as an outreach to build interest in his nascent Disneyland project at a time when other studios were still clutching at Cinemascope, Technicolor and 3D to win their losing battle against change.

I said “fair fight” because with the Disney buy, Marvel now had that same corporate synergy muscle as DC did with its parent Time/Warner. I retracted because while Disney has historically known how to use that muscle, TW has not. Well, the Times maybe are a-changing.

There were a couple tantalizing developments in comics news this mont. Arkham City released 2 trailers—that was very smart because, while the game is quite a ways out yet, people are shopping for new computers and game systems now. The timing also perfect in order to remind everyone at this festive time of year when our credit cards are out how much we like Batman. Meow.

The interesting thing about the Arkham stuff is the subtextual (and in some cases brazenly textual) thread running through the audience reactions: as long as it’s not from the comic book division, it’s probably good. As long as it’s not comic people behind it. If it’s Nolan or Rocksteady Studios (Arkham Asylum) or the new cartoon The Brave and the Bold or even that live show in the UK, it’s assumed to be fine. It’s assumed to be Batman. If it’s from the comics, the default is that it’s bad. If it’s not, the default is that it’s okay.

Whew.

Okay, moving on to the second development: Conan O’Brien paid a visit to the Warner Bros lot which is only a few steps outside his studio… and is the home to DC Comics.

*Jim Aparo look of astonishment.*

What’s that? It is? The Warner Brothers lot is the home to DC Comics? Heeeey, it is. Because “DC Comics” is now DC Entertainment, and the last few months have seen an overdue flushing of New York positions and reassigning everything except the comics themselves to the West Coast, under the Warner Bros part of the company in practice as well as in name. A part of the company that… how to put this delicately… knows what it’s doing. Didio’s merry band came up with “Superman walks across America in a hoodie” and “Diana gets a new outfit.” They were the last major comic company – scratch that, they were the last comic company – to go digital. Alterna Comics got there first. You could get Jesus Hates Zombies on Android and iTunes while DC was still running plays from that 1972 playbook of theirs.

Team Coco paying a visit to DC Comics home on the Warner Bros lot is huge because, to paraphrase one of those non-subtext critics, the DC whose home is on the West Coast is able to achieve a cross-promo spot on Conan to chat with an animator, drop the names of the Big 3, and plug The Green Lantern. Welcome to the 21^st Century, DC. Most of you are going to like it here.

Now then, Cat-Tales update. Well first, I do apologize to all those who rely on this blog for Gifts to Make Your Catwoman Purr for not finding out about nOir Jewelry's Long Claw ring until a reader informed me. Then again, might be for the best. Now you'll have something to exchange after you return that iPod-Docking Toilet Paper Dispenser.

The holidays are always a slow season for the tales, so I took advantage of the lull to roll out a few updates. Support for Social Networking is much improved. You can now share, tweet, stumble upon, email, and otherwise distribute individual tales, selected spinoffs, as well as the CT Collection as a whole. Selina decided to answer some reader letters in Ask Catwoman, Random Equinox finished his spinoff Don’t Fear the Z, and oh yes, if you missed Christmas in Gotham, the Cat-Tales Visitor Center will be decked out for the holidays until January 5^th.

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.

You're a fine one, Mr. Grinch

I never watched Glee, but I was in the room recently when a friend was watching the latest episode on Hulu. On headphones, I didn’t hear a thing apart from the occasional laugh, muted. Then there was a loud one. I looked up and saw this…

I didn't have to watch the show, I knew EXACTLY what they were doing. That's The Grinch That Stole Christmas, fondly remembered Dr. Seuss Xmas tale from all our childhoods. Later my friend talked about "how well they did it" and how they "did the whole thing" - from a character wearing the reindeer antlers and dog ears pulling the sleigh to plucking the ornaments off the tree.

Friend: And just when you're thinking "There should be a Cindy Lou Whoo"...

I mention this because there is a misconception out there among some big names in comics that people are "bored" with the very elements that MAKE THE STORYVERSE WHAT IT IS. That's why there is a wail of protest every time they announce the next big stunt that will fuck up the comics for another year and postpone the return to what it is SUPPOSED TO BE. Because these core things they are changing are not repetitive and boring, they are ritual and reassuring.

Bruce Wayne is Batman. Joker is his nemesis. Catwoman is his adversary/love interest. Jason Todd is dead.
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Batman.

"Keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it?" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't perform A Christmas
Carol.

"Face it, Tiger... you just hit the jackpot!"

Last year, next year and always.

If you don't want to do that, don't write Spiderman.

"It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope." Nobody is looking for reinvention here. They got it right the first time, and that's why these stories last.

When it's right, don't reinvent, recapitulate:

Here endeth the lesson.

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.

You Are What You Eat

Had some interesting responses to the last blog Please Drink Responsibly, so I decided the central idea was worth revisiting from a wider perspective than writers or comic folks.

Briefly: you’re only as good as what you take into your system.  If you do anything creative, then you’re drawing on your imagination in a very special way and it is not a good idea to poison it.  Well duh, it’s never a good idea to chug poison, right?   The disconnect seems to be in recognizing the imagination can be poisoned and that these things are.  Consider an athlete who ate a steady diet of Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day.  Would you be surprised when he failed to win a marathon?  Would you be surprised if he fell down dead at Mile-18?  Of course not, because we all get that an athlete is using his body to do what he does, and we all get that the cigarettes and junk food are not good for the whole air in/air out/blood pump/muscle flex process.  Problem is, few of us see our imaginations that way and far too many of us act like it doesn’t matter what we take into it.

First Principle: anything you do that’s creative comes from your soul – Okay, that’s a big word.  Forget the soul.  But there is a part of you that’s… better.  When you create in any medium, whether it is writing or painting or music, you hook that magical sacred part of you up to the Universe and channel something that is bigger and greater and infinite… Hell, I don’t know what it is, but it’s the reason it’s good to be alive.  Bob Fosse called it Joy.   And when it comes through YOU, you infuse it with your ideas and your emotions and your life experience and everything that makes you who you are.  It makes your story, your song, your sculpture or performance unlike anyone else’s.  And it’s your imagination – the part in all of us that first looked up at the stars instead of down at the dirt – that’s the core where all this happens.  So what you’ve got laying around in there matters.  If it’s Michaelangelo and Mozart and Dickens, great.  You’ve got more options than someone who only has Daniele Steele and Nickleback, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have a database of classics to draw on.  What is the end of the world is if you’ve got steaming piles of dog shit in there.

Now, for any newcomers to this blog, I write a metafiction series about Batman, and yet, I haven’t looked at a current comic in at least 4 years.  The reason is that the current output at DC is toxic and I won’t pollute my imagination with it.  This is more than not wanting to give DC Comics $2.95, what economists call “Dollar Votes,” in favor of making more of the same.  It isn’t about money, it’s about poison.

Someone sent me a link a while back to a website that posts scans from the current comics, and I can tell you right now that if I’d followed that link, that would have been my day.  Why?  Because if you step out of your house in the morning into a steaming pile of dog shit, that’s where your focus is going to be for quite some time.  The unpleasantness of the initial experience stays with you—in this case, my anger and disgust at whatever went on in those pages.  That’s going to come out in the writing.  Then there’s the smell that lingers: I would be aware if I used certain characters, alluded to certain ideas or events, everything would have a resonance in relation to their crap.   Now, your story should be your top priority, not an editor’s agenda, the marketing or the merchandising.  The story.  Making anything else a priority is a mistake, making their story the priority?  Hell no!  (We won’t even discuss the practice of, having cleaned off your shoe, going into a forum of people discussing the dog crap as if it’s fine French perfume:  Eau Merde de Fifi.)

Look, there are people out there who thrive on anger and disgust.  I find it doesn’t lead to creative output.  I find it leads to stuff like this:

Those who do create from those negative places, their stuff doesn’t last.  Occasionally, if the timing is just right, it will make a splash for fifteen minutes, but before too long, its popularity wanes and future generations just laugh at the goobers who found it profound or shocking. 

It’s the stuff that comes from the good place that lasts:  from a sense of play, loving what you do, loving the characters, loving the process of creation and being excited to share it all with an audience—it’s that love and joy that is infectious.  Love of the characters, celebrating them, holding up the essence of what they are supposed to be, what we’re all supposed to be...  The stories that last have always been about the same things: heroes, redemption, coming of age, going home, the power of love.  We tell the same stories over and over again because they are true, because they are universal, because they resonate in our core.   And that’s where we connect as human beings.  That connection, that’s everything.  That’s why we do this. 

The people I talked to after Please Drink Responsibly are not in comics.  They are in another industry that is broken in ways nobody fully understands, but where everyone recognizes that something is profoundly wrong.  Look, I don’t know if any one artist can hope to fix a broken system, but we are all in the business of “making a hat where there never was a hat.”   Who’s to say we can’t?  It starts with making that connection.  And to make it, we’ve got to detox, folks.  We’ve got to stop taking in poisons and polluting our imaginations with the artistic “product” of people writing comics or making music the way Pumpkin the Pekingese takes a dump.  If you’re one of those saying they read/saw/listened to such-and-such “and of course it sucked LOL,” stop laughing.   “Of course it sucked” means you knew better before you took that thing into your head.  You went right past the surgeon general’s warning and you took that poison into your system anyway.  You are what you eat. 

All that said, Cat-Tales had a fabulous week.  Electron 29 posted its final chapter, which means it is now available in one complete download as ebook or print-quality pdf.  As if that's not enough, Book 5 is ready!  That's the compilation of Cat-Tales #51-59 including fan favorites Riddle Me-Tropolis, Vault, War of the Poses, Armchair Detective, Not My Kink, Do No Harm AND alternate-reality game fodder I Believe in Harvey Dent - all that in one compact ebook download - or, naturally, print-quality pdf.   Just in time for Christmas.  Meow.

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.

Please Drink Responsibly

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There is something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like Dickens, but even they allow that A Tale of Two Cities has one of the greatest openings in the English language. The Great Gatsby opens well too, and is also one of the rarest of rarities: a spot on perfect movie. AMC has a collection of films called “Essentials,” films from Casablanca to Close Encounters of the Third Kind that everyone should know. They are part of the collective vocabulary. They are required for cultural literacy. In literature there’s the Five Foot Shelf. In music, it’s Synchronicity and The White Album, South Pacific and Into the Woods. If you seek out what’s good in many fields, you feed your imagination and will be a better artist for it.

That’s the positive side. The flip side is also true. Imagine a professional athlete that ate nothing but Big Macs and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Would any of us be surprised if this guy failed to win the New York marathon? For that matter, would any of us be surprised if he failed to finish and fell down dead at Mile 18? No, of course not. Because this guy who uses his body to do what he does has been pouring poison into it.

If you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, a composer, a creative in any field, then your imagination is the bread and butter machine. Since you’re also a human being, it is the most magical and sacred part of you. That alone is a good enough reason not to flood it with poisons, but I’m talking about something beyond just being human. I am talking about being a creative. The imagination is what stretches beyond the literal and mundane and the goings on in your digestive tract. It is what connects with something higher and better, and channels a little piece of the infinite when you make something that wasn’t there before. If you pollute it with garbage, the result will be the artistic version of that wheezing pathetic “athlete” gasping his way through the race.

No, I do not read comics anymore. It’s more than not giving DC even $2.95 worth of encouragement for something that is truly bad, it is declining to live on a toxic waste dump. It is refusing to take poison into my imagination. Not only is it bad for me, it’s going to be bad for anything I write.

You are what you eat. And drink. We’ve all seen the creative output of the drunk drivers out there, professional and amateur. It’s time for those of us who are not three sheets to the wind to start staging some interventions.

But let’s return to the Best of Times, because there is a new artist to welcome to the Fan Art Gallery, and she’s certainly kept her imagination fueled with the best of raw materials. Check out the beautiful work of Anya Uribe, an absolute master of feminine curves, color and form.

The Virtual Visitor Center is decked out for the holidays. In Second Life, as in Cattitude, as in Real Life, Cartier wraps itself up in a bow for Christmas. More information on the Cat-Tales website, or residents may teleport directly to the Visitor Center.

Random Equinox even has an update for his spinoff fic: Don't Fear the Z.  And as if that wasn't enough, we had two lovely developments over the Thanksgiving break: The Macy's parade was good enough to open with Aviator Snoopy, providing yet another opportunity for the slow-witted to realize that the inspiration for the Catwoman abomination--the virtual SIGNATURE of the new direction that failed to grasp anything that defined Catwoman and got absolutely everything wrong--was, in fact, based on a cartoon dog. How symbolic do you want it? They didn't understand anything at all about Selina, right down to the CAT in Catwoman. A symmetry such as makes the angels weep, if it wasn't so effing sad. And, finally, the forum's running gag of Batman's Black Friday Protocol finally has some artwork:

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.