From Today, You Won't Have Lex Luthor to Kick Around Anymore

The new chapter of NMK Inc is finally here.  Part 2: Positive Carry will bring us to the Gotham Stock Exchange, and as readers of Part I know, Lex Luthor is coming to town.

As a quick reference for newcomers, I prepared a History of Lex Luthor in Cat-Tales to bring new readers up to speed and refresh memories elsewhere.

After that, it's on to NMK Inc to find out what the crazy cue ball is up to now.

A Touch of Cat-Tales for your Desktop and Devices

I asked readers what moments from Cat-Tales they'd like to see, and boy, they had a lot of requests.  The latest to be translated into wallpaper is from Not My Kink.  Bruce was injured in the previous tale, and Selina took over his *cough*fighting duties while he recovered.   She made it all the way to Week 6 before Riddler got suspicious, and, well, "Zany hijinx ensued" as they say...

 

Like all the new wallpapers in this series, this image is available in HD, widescreen, and for all screen ratios and devices, including android, iPhone and iPad.

In The Gotham Post, the notorious Mrs. Ashton-Larraby has one of her bright ideas for a society fundraiser.  They'll all dress up as those colorful night people!  Sure, Wayne events have been crime magnets in the past, but now that Selina is Bruce’s hostess, there won’t be any trouble at all!

When the inevitable disaster unfolds, Catwoman, Riddler and a healed Harvey Dent dressed as Nightwing retreat to the hotel roof...

 

And in one of the more breathtaking images of Gotham, the Batman family gather after a long night of crimefighting to watch the sunrise over the cathedral.

All images can be downloaded from the Gallery at catwoman-cattales.com.

A Look Back: Cat-Tales Year 8 - From The Cover of Vogue to The Long Halloween to the Dark Knight Viral... and we haven't even begun

I can't do it.   I cannot choose a single Cat-Tale from 2008 to feature for the look back. 

I Believe in Harvey Dent was not like any other Cat-Tale.  Beginning on February 2nd, in tribute to its titular hero, it was an unprecedented event in Cat-Tales since it was not only to launch our virtual own alternate reality game at Friends of Harvey Dent, it incorporated a few details we knew about The Dark Knight movie (Gotham General Hospital and GCN), elements of the official Dark Knight viral (Gotham Intercontinental Hotel, Boss Maroni's lawyer Joseph Candoloro and John Tortericci, the father mourning his daughter Gina killed in the escalating mob violence) and a great deal of the original story of Harvey's scarring in what is probably the best Batman story on record: The Long Halloween.  The tribute began with line 1:  Bruce's "I believe in Gotham City."
Yet, for all that, I Believe in Harvey Dent is a Cat-Tales story.  It is not set in Christopher Nolan's Gotham City nor in Jeph Loeb's.  When at ancient episode of Catwoman finding the warehouse of mob money is mentioned, it is in the context of her own money-disposal problems at the temporary Iceberg-substitute nightclub Vault:

Since Vault’s opening, everyone had apparently gone on paying the house its cut of whatever they did on the premises. It was news to Selina when she discovered it, but it certainly made sense: Gotham crooks were creatures of habit, and if you were supposed to be paying off somebody, it was better to be safe than very, very—HAHAHAHA! Closed casket due to the death smile—sorry. On the same death-avoidance premise, Sly had apparently been converting all this ill-gotten gain into gems and gold bars, replacing the faux riches of her old Cat-Tales set with the real thing.  It left her with a very tricky problem: what to do with it?

 Her mulling over that problem leads to possibly the most bizarre but quintessentially Selina piece of Bruce/Selina dialogue in the Tales:

“Out of curiosity, would you have an aneurysm if the Foundation got an anonymous donation for, say, $800,000?”

Of her ultimate solution to the dilemma... well, I won't spoil it here, but if you've read the tale, enjoy a trip back to the Epilogue and relive the moment.
And the insertion of pop culture into the storyline has nothing to do with Nolan's Dark Knight, it's viral, or the goings on at the Gotham Post.  It's from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue!  Because in the real world, the Fashion Institute at the Met and the iconic arbiter of all things fashion Vogue had done an exhibit and feature respectively on Superhero Fashions.  Catwoman was featured the as "The Paradoxical Body" at the Met and it was all purple Catwoman: the iconic Jim Balent costume and Catwoman #1 and the classic Bob Kane original skirted costume on their website. 

Vogue followed suit, having the greatest talents in fashion create designs based on the movie versions of these figures, and Dolce and Gabbana's take on the Michelle Pfeifer costume from Batman Returns, complete with the iconic and indispensable cat cowl studded in Swarovski crystals—meow! 
It—along with some complimentary things "Domenico and Stefano" had to say about Catwoman and why they chose her of all the heroine and villainess costumes they could have picked—was sure to draw Poison Ivy's ire.  As Bruce put it:

“You’re on the cover. Ivy is on page 26. After all the bimbos, socialites, divorcees and models, you think I don’t know what that means? A Vogue cover, thumbnail on the table of contents, splash page on the article. Bruce Wayne has seen slights like that ignite socialite wars that make Superman and Darkseid look like drinking buddies by comparison.”

Plus, I Believe... has what is, to my mind, the closest thing to an explanation of Catwoman's criminal-versus-hero stature that you are ever going to find:

It was the dawn of the 22nd dynasty.  In the delta region of Lower Egypt, just southwest of Tanis on the River Nile, the capital city of the nome of Am-Khent rose to prominence, becoming the royal residence of Pharaoh Shoshenq I, and by extension, the power center of the ancient world.
This was Bubastis, the center of worship for the cat goddess Bast.  Within the greatest temple dwelt the Mau-im-dwo, what the Greek settlers came to call the Oracle of Bast.  Within the innermost sanctum, the priests of Bast learned a language, the Mau-im-dwo, by which they could speak with divine and mortal cats… assuming, of course, the cats were in the mood. 
Near the end of the 26th dynasty, a cat which called itself Apekteina Pontiki condescended to explain the very complex and very specific feline dogmas of right and wrong.  The priests were utterly mystified.  The nuances that were so obvious to cats seemed, to them, nonsensical contradictions: It was natural and permissible to kill a mouse, a bird, an insect, and any other creature whose size and speed was such that it could be killed.  In some cases, it was permissible—and even laudable—to play with one’s prey, prolonging its demise and torturing it with false hope.  At other times, this was the most grievous of sins.  There was one set of rules for morning, one for night, and none at all for midday, for nothing that hunted under a high sun was fit to call itself a cat.  There was one rule if your belly was empty and another if it was full.  There were rules for the flooding season, for the season of planting and for the harvest.  Yet the priests could never understand which rules took precedence.  If your belly was full, but it was evening and during the drought, but you were outdoors and the moon was waning, didn’t that mean you were both required and forbidden to kill and ignore the mouse in the doorway but not the lizard on the well?
Apekteina Pontiki looked on the befuddled priests of Bast, and she pitied them.  The word spread among the cats of the temple and then to the ones beyond: the two-footed creatures were nice enough, but they could not wrap their simple minds around the complexities of the Feline Way.  That same Feline Way that governed the torment of mice dictated that Man could not be taunted with a wisdom he could never understand.  With heavy hearts, the cats resolved to spare him the frustration.  As one, they stopped acknowledging the language of Mau-im-dwo. 
It took the priests a while to notice, for the cats often pretended not to understand.  You just had to wait for the right day and approach them in just the right way… Then the Persians invaded, and the priests, like the rest of Bubastis, had other things on their mind.
Two thousand years later, very little had changed.  The woman who was born Selina Kyle had so embraced her feline nature that she was, in every way that mattered, a cat-woman.  She too had a very complex and very specific code of right and wrong.  She didn’t care any more than the cats of old that her rules were different from other people’s, nor that they would never be able to grasp it if she tried to explain.  She only knew that her code worked for her: Her right was right, and she would keep it.  Her wrong was wrong, and she wouldn’t do it.  So it was and would ever be, meow and amen.

And that isn't even touching on the main story: Harvey's story.  So with a Tale this rich, how could I possibly NOT look back at I Believe in Harvey Dent as the Look Back for Year 8?  But then again, how can I ignore War of the Poses and Armchair Detective?
To be continued...
Chris Dee
http://catwoman-cattales.com
Oh and P.S. to the new staff writer at The Gotham Post: Meow and godspeed.

The Week in Cat-Tales

What an amazing week it was, on the Cat-Tales stage, backstage, and in that pesky real life far from Gotham.
Chapter 4 of Don’t Fear the Joker got a wonderful reception.  April 1st saw the hacking of our beloved forum (and this very blog) by agents of Ra’s al Ghul.  You can’t imagine the headaches cleaning up something like that. 

And despite the considerable demands related to that book release in a few weeks, I made enormous headway on one of those big TBAs I’ve been referencing on and off for a year.  So much so that I expect to actually make good on the implicit promise of calling them TBAs and announce one by the end of the month for a May opening.  Huzzah!

In other news, Random Equinox slipped in a new fic on us when he thought we weren’t looking.  Sneaky, sneaky, Random, but I found you… One of Those Days at ffnet.  Check it out, everybody.  

And finally, I caught up on my reading this weekend… well, almost.  There’s still a half-finished library book on the nightstand, but all the rest is done.  And the unfinished one has only itself to blame.  I’m not what I’d call a lazy reader, but a 60-page introduction drains away all the reader’s enthusiasm for the material.  Let’s put it this way: you know the one about the IT guy who goes to a Tech Support center for some extra training?  They’ve got this picture up of a ditzy looking blonde with the caption that her password is MickeyMinnieDonaldDaisyGoofyPlutoSacramento – because it had to be 6 characters and a capital.  Here’s the thing:  if that’s your opinion of your audience, you shouldn’t be writing.  Seriously.  Yes, there is a need for context if you’re serving up period material from the early years of the Cold War, but 60 pages worth?  I’m not sure if the problem is lack of discipline – taking 9 paragraphs to say what can be covered in 2 – or if it’s what I suspect:  simply not trusting the readers.  The thing is, we’re not talking about some random sampling off the street.  We all made a choice to buy the book, or in my case borrow it from the library.  Assume we’re at least, y’know, functionally literate and didn’t buy the book as a doorstop.  Give us a little context, and then pay us the compliment of assuming that if we need more, we can take what you’ve told us and Google for more.  Anyway, point is, apart from this one annoying volume that is probably going to go back to the library unfinished, I’ve swept away the backlog.  Life is good.  Meow.

The week ahead looks to be a busy one.  I doubt I’ll be able to finish up Chapter 5, but as stated previously: book release.  You really have no idea how much graphic art and other paperwork is required.  Oh, which brings me to the neatest piece of trivia from the mailbag… which I realize will be a longer entry.  We’ll save that for Wednesday.  Ciaomeow, everybody.

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.

Resolutions

Not really.  That sounds way too formal, and more than a little binding.  In short, not feline.  But it is a new year, and there is nothing like a round number and days getting longer to give us all a nudge.  Time to turn over a new leaf and start doing all those things we should be doing.

Psychologically, it seems right.  Ironically, it probably isn’t a very good time.  Statistically, January is a month of depression setting in, and there’s a point in about 3 weeks where suicides spike.  I vaguely remember an analysis of it:  holiday bills come in, the high of new year hopes we feel now settles back into routine, tax documents start coming in the mail, and it’s still COLD.  The days are still short, the wind chill is still -3 degrees, and we know that it’s not going to be any better tomorrow.  Add it all together: moods plummet.  No wonder everybody goes off their resolution diet in a sugar-burning frenzy.  January sucks. 

Mr. Joker had some “unrealistic expectations” about Silly Putty.

Maybe the key is not to expect so much.  It’s still winter, those bills are going to come in, and we do all have to pay our taxes.   It’s not a NEW WORLD.  But it is a new year, and maybe we do approach our resolutions with a little more rationality and a little less emotion, we’ll have a better chance of sticking with them after the chain starts to pull. 

So, my Resolutions-aren’t-feline-but-if-there’s-time-I’ll-try for the online world:  this blog.  Writing the actual stories are still the first priority for my CT time, but  will make every effort to sneak in here to crank out one update per week. 

Beginning right now.  The holidays seem to break us down into two groups:  those with all the time in the world to kill after that last final, and those of us who need you to please-pretty-please stir the custard for the trifle, just for two minutes while we run to the ATM for some crisp bills for the doorman’s envelope—and while we’re out get a half dozen of those chocolate macaroon things for last minute thank yous—and oh yeah, find that youtube that showed how to make those curled ribbon decorations—better say five minutes.  Or, eh, ten, because I used up the last of the pickled ginger, too, so since I’m out…

I fall into the latter category, so as you probably guessed, not a lot of writing gets done over the holidays.  (Not a lot of email gets answered, either.  If you’re waiting, don’t worry, I’ll be through the backlog by Valentine’s Day, I’m sure.)

As it happens, I did finish a draft of the final chapter(s) of Do No Harm before the holiday crazy descended, so if my beta-brainstorm buddy comes through, it won’t be too long before we see an update there.  I say an update rather than a conclusion because I haven’t decided for sure if it will be presented as one chapter or two. 

While there is usually all kinds of extra busywork backstage when I’m going into a final chapter, I do have a head start in this case, since I had a title and a cover on deck for the “next” story when I was finishing up Demon’s in the Details, a next story that is not DNH.  The faux-flashback clip show was a last minute decision.  So, unless I change my mind again (always possible, but not likely in this case), the next title/cover is all ready.

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.