You’re an interesting creature,” he said at last. “For one of those who wears—well, why be circumspect—who wears a mask and the costume of a professional wrestler, one hears that you are remarkably sane.”
Catwoman’s lips curled slightly. Not a threatening smile, but hardly a warm one.
“And for one who wears a tie and the costume of an undertaker, one hears you’re remarkably rude, Lex.”
“Touché. My point was merely that I believe one can make a deal with you, Catwoman, and expect you to hold up your end. Not decide at the critical hour to go on a murderous rampage in a jam factory instead.”
“Not unless the jam starts it,” she said brightly. “Seriously, Lex, may I remind you that we have done business before and I was not the one who failed to hold up my end of the bargain?”
It was Luthor’s turn to smile. He did enjoy when a negotiation went according to plan. Catwoman might wear a preposterous outfit, but her thinking was rational and therefore predictable. If one could overlook the cat ears, it was quite like negotiating any other business deal.
“You refer to my declining to pay you for the Lex-Wing job,” he said magnanimously. “I recall the incident, of course. I also recall that you got paid all the same. You had the resourcefulness to get your money. In my view, that means you are entitled to it.”
“Survival of the fittest.”
“Enrichment of the fittest, Catwoman. Mere survival is for wage slaves and spotted owls.”
Catwoman burst out laughing.
“It must’ve been hell for you being president, Lex. ‘Wage slaves and spotted owls?’ This is what built up all those years having to pretend you care?”
"Flying out of the Oval Office in a space suit that looked like a Tylenol capsule decked out for Mardi Gras, buzzing Dupont Circle hopped up on venom and challenging Batman to a fist fight"Things get a lot more interesting once Superman arrives on the scene, and Lex's plans begin to unfold. Cat-Tales is seldom as action-driven as the comics, but the Batman/Superman adventure at the World Bank would definitely give the panels a run for their money. And the Kitty Ex Machina conclusion might just be my favorite Batman/Catwoman exchange in Book 5...
Batman’s tone and manner changed as he tapped the side of his cowl. “OraCom activate. Private channel metro-one-alpha. Do you read?”But for all that, for ALL THAT, it's not even the main story that is best remembered from War of the Poses. It's a minor subplot, with Batgirl, sweet adorable Cassie, learning some new stealth techniques from Selina and getting just a little carried away trying them out at the museum until, well, I'll let her explain...
“You can’t be serious. It’s like Luthor stacked the entire table of elements over our heads. Even I can’t tell how much steel, lead, and who knows what is up there but—”
“Private channel metro-one-beta. Do you read? That’s why I installed a special signal booster. Private channel metro-two-alpha…”
“You planned on getting stuck down here?” Superman gaped.
“It was always a possibility. Private channel metro-three-alpha…”
“~~~~~andsom~ ~~~avri~~~~itty~~~~~~” sounded in his earpiece.
“There she is,” Batman noted. “Lock in metro-three-alpha, shutdown all nonessential operations, enhance signal, all parameters.”
“B~~m~an~~~~~ad~me~~~st met with Lex and ~~~~m the works, ke~to decrypt~~~~~lans~~~n hog heaven, it was disgus~~~ng~~~~~~sch an obnoxious troll~~~ ~~~ ~~nwa~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~pected you’d be~~~ack b~~ow.”
“We were delayed. We’re trapped in the vault.”
“~~~ault? th~~~~~one under the --~~~~ank? Yo~~~ill there?”
“Yes. We’re going to need you to take out the time locks.”
“Th~~im~~~ocks? In Met~~~~olis? ~~~~~ant me t~~~~~ to Me~~~~li~~~~~~~~~~~~ime locks fo~~”
“Either that, or we’re stuck until the bank opens for business on Monday.”
“Wel~~~ow suppo~~~~~et there?”
“Transport to the Watchtower. J’onn is expecting you. He’ll send you on to the transport station at the Daily Planet.”
“~~~”
“Selina?”
“~~~”
“Selina?”
“~~~~oing~~~~claim villainess privilege and~~~ay no.”
This bad.Isn't she cute? Deadly as all hell, but really cute.
This bad.
This bad.
Father would give twenty lashes and lock in dark closet for day. Maybe two day.
Was first principle of sustained surveillance: mind clock. Surveillance is dead time. Must mind clock else lose track of time.
Practicing stealth in museum not like sustained surveillance. Not dead time. But still lose track of time.
This bad.
Was exciting. Lose track of time.
Lights come on.
Guard in uniform gone. New guard in blue blazer jacket take place.
New noise.
Shoes that not quiet on stone floor.
People in shoes that no need be quiet.
People that work in museum.
Museum open. Soon be people everywhere. This bad.
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.
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! “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.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?
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.
The result are some lovely canvases that would look right at home on the wall of an art museum, and that's exactly what we've done at The Gotham Museum of Modern Art at The Cat-Tales Visitor Center in Second Life. The Color of Gotham exhibit gives The Color of treatment to many familiar names associated with Batman, as well as items like the Batsignal, Batarangs and the city itself. Those who cannot visit the museum in digitized person can enjoy this slideshow.
While the Color of Gotham exhibit at the MoMA will run through the summer, the Rogues Gallery Masks will be on display at the Visitor Center itself only for the duration of the current Cat-Tale: Comedy of Errors.
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.
When I had the idea to look back at Cat-Tales year by year, there was never
any doubt which tale I would highlight for 2006
Bruce knew Selina resented being summoned to the Batcave “like a spaniel.” And, since the matter wasn’t pressing, he squelched the impulse to use the intercom or send a message through Alfred. He waited until lunchtime and went up to the manor himself. He thought Alfred was just a little too pleased that he had come up for lunch unprodded (a development that Bruce found annoying), but Selina didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about his behavior. She greeted him with the easy smile that was the norm since their talk after the fundraiser, and they chatted only of non-Bat subjects as they ate. Bruce said he was avoiding the Wayne offices. He denied it was because “Lucius had to be punished” for the disastrous Ashton-Larraby fundraiser. On the contrary, Bruce insisted, he had trained enough Robins to know that what Lucius really needed now was a free hand. He didn’t need to feel supervised, second-guessed and micromanaged because he had made a mistake. He needed to pick himself up, dust himself off, and regain his confidence as quickly as possible.
With that noble declaration, Bruce wiped a crumb from the corner of his mouth, tossed his napkin onto the table, and asked Selina to accompany him back to the cave. She agreed, the easy smile morphing into one of feline curiosity. When they reached the Batcave, she curled comfortably into the chair at workstation two, picked two wing-shaped slivers of metal off the desk, and began to play. Bruce suppressed a lip twitch as she turned the pieces this way and that, trying to work out what they were and how they fit together. Then his whole demeanor changed as he underwent what the staunchest heroes in the Justice League have described as “the most frightening transformation in existence.” His jaw clenched, his eyes darkened, his entire body seemed to become denser, and those with sufficient imagination could almost envision the mask appearing over his stern features.
He sat and powered up his screen, while Selina continued to play with the batwings as if nothing at all had occurred—which to her mind, it hadn’t.
“With all the rogues incarcerated at Blackgate or Arkham,” Bruce began in the gruff Bat-gravel, “I have time to look into another type of case. This is really why I began this work. I never intended to—I never envisioned the kind of costumed criminal element that evolved in Gotham.”
“Hey, hey, hey. Watch it, Stud,” Selina chided playfully. “Remember one of them is sitting in striking distance, and I’ve got one of your, eh…” She held up the two wing pieces pinched together between her fingers to resemble a lopsided batarang. “…What is this thing anyway?”
“They’re components for a new palm unit,” he growled. “They don’t fit into each other,”
“Oh.”
She put them down, disappointed, and gave him her full attention.
“So this is what you really wanted to do before the likes of me showed up and spoiled your evenings with lots of purple, banter, and fun?”
He scowled and said nothing, refusing to be baited.
“So what is it?” she asked gamely.
“Diamonds,” he pronounced with a grunt.
“Ooh,” she sat up eagerly. “That doesn’t sound so dreary after all.Tell-tell.”
He paused, needing a moment to process her enthusiasm. She was excited, which is, of course, what he wanted. But in all the years of study, in all the years of crimefighting, in all the briefings and all the interrogations, the phrase “tell-tell” had never been uttered.
“As you know, Gotham is one of four primary centers of the global diamond market, the others being London—”
“Antwerp, and South Africa,” Selina interrupted with a naughty grin. “Yeah, Bruce, I have a nodding acquaintance with the international gem market.”
He nodded, curtly.
“More diamonds are bought and sold in that one block of 47th Street than anywhere else in the world. Ninety percent of the diamonds imported into the U.S. go through there; a single day’s trade averages $400 million. And most of it—in this day and age—is still done on a handshake. If there was nothing else in this city, that’s a fulltime job for a crimefighter, right there.”
“Pfft,” came the unexpected response. “I hate to ruin your plan, Handsome, but I think I see where this is going. And I will tell you gleefully that they don’t need you, and more to the point, they don’t need me. They’ve got a private police force of their own hired by the neighborhood association, something like fifteen individual security firms on top of that, armed guards, x-rays, retinal scans, everything. They’re fine.”
“There are twenty-five diamond exchanges, Selina, how many can you get into?”
“All twenty-five,” she answered instantly. “But I’m me.”
“And within those twenty-five exchanges, there are twenty-six hundred independent businesses. How many of their safes have you opened?”
“I have no idea,” she laughed. “Who counts?”
“More than half?”
“Probably,” she said with a grin. “But again, I’m me. And I have no interest in spending my nights poring over blueprints looking for ways to plug up holes that only I could get through.”
Bruce felt his lip twitch in spite of himself as he recalled his earlier thought:the slightest hint that she might participate in such a loathsome activity as crimefighting was enough to set her off…
“I wasn’t going to suggest anything like that,” he said honestly. “I was just mapping out the landscape, laying out the basic facts of the Gotham City diamond district.”
“Really?” she asked skeptically.
“Really,” he assured her.
“Really???”
“Selina.”
She laughed—a very particular laugh, a rooftop laugh that he hadn’t heard for quite some time—a laugh that nearly always preceded her getting away with something.
“Okay then,” she said at last, “basic facts of the diamond district have been duly laid out in scrupulously correct if slightly anal bat-fashion. What’s next?”
The bat-density seemed to intensify and, when he spoke, his voice dipped again into the deep bat-gravel.
“Talk me through selling a stolen diamond,” he ordered.
“Well,” she smiled, happy (for once) to comply with a bat-order. “As you probably know, every gemstone is unique. Hit it with a laser, it will produce its own, one of a kind sparkle pattern, just like a fingerprint. Any stone important enough for me to take an interest in, that visual signature would have been recorded and logged in an international database.”
“So if you steal my Aunt Elena’s necklace here in Gotham, remove the stones and sell them loose in Hong Kong or reset them into a bracelet to sell in Tokyo, they will still come up as stolen. My goods are returned to me and you go to jail.”
“That’s the theory. So why am I sitting here instead of in jail?”
“Unscrupulous dealers who won’t check the gemprints to verify that any item they sell is legitimate,” he suggested.
Selina made a face.
“Well, I’m sure that goes on, but not on my level. Anything I’d steal is going to be valuable enough that whoever buys it down the line will probably insure it. When they do, that means a new gemprint and oh, look, those stones were taken in Gotham six months ago… Catwoman suspected.”
She grinned, and he considered the problem.
“Recutting into smaller stones would greatly diminish the value,” he noted sourly.
“It would,” Selina agreed. “But that’s not the real problem with it. It all gets more complicated in 1998. There’s fighting in West Africa for control of the diamond mines. Serious atrocities. On his worst day, Joker couldn’t come close to this kind of ugly. Both sides start selling diamonds on the black market to fund their wars, and most civilized countries, wanting nothing to do with these ‘blood diamonds,’ pass laws prohibiting their import or sale. So now all legit diamonds, cut or rough, have to have an ID that certifies they didn’t come out of this process.”
Bruce inhaled slowly, beginning to see the solution. Selina could almost envision Sherlock Holmes savoring a long draw on his pipe.
“How secure is the database?” he asked finally. And Catwoman’s naughty grin widened into the Cheshire variety.
“How secure is anything?” she asked in reply. And he grunted.
“If you have a stone to sell that you’re not supposed to have,” he began, solidifying the thought by speaking it aloud, “you can’t change its gemprint any more than you could a fingerprint, but you can change the information in the database that’s attached to the print. You substitute the visual signature of some lesser diamond, which you can then bury, destroy, or grind to dust for industrial use, for the one on the record of Aunt Elena’s necklace. So the gem tagged on that record as ‘stolen’ will never be found. And you make a new print for your stolen diamond and assign it to a record with an innocuous and legitimate-seeming history.”
“I salute you, World’s Greatest Detective,” Selina purred softly.
“Thank you for your help,” he said, swiveling the chair to face the monitor. He began typing rapidly into a waiting file, and Selina began to think he had forgotten her entirely.
“Done with me, or should I stay?” she asked finally.
“Oh, I’ll have more questions,” he graveled, his fingers never slowing and his eyes never wavering from the screen. “Give me a minute to modify a few queries and data filters.”
She waited. She picked up the batwing whatever-it-was again, buffed its silver surface, and used it as a mirror to primp her hair. Then she looked curiously around the cave.
“Those bats are watching us,” she said at last.
“Oh, those two,” Bruce said lightly. “They perch lower than the others. I think they’re attracted to the hum of the computer.”
She giggled, delighted.
“You have your own Whiskers and Nutmeg.”
“Selina, do not name the bats,” he warned darkly.
“I wasn’t going to name the bats,” she declared with exaggerated dignity.
“Good,” he grunted. He could bring Catwoman into his life, he could accept her friendships with Riddler and Two-Face, he could overlook her favorite bar being the Iceberg Lounge, and he could even, in time, come to terms with a stolen cat figurine among the curios in his bedroom. But he simply could not tolerate her coming into his cave and assigning cutesy names to the native chiroptera.
“The black one is awfully cute,” she noted.
“Selina,” he growled.
“I’m not naming him,” she insisted. “I just said he was cute. Look at those ears and that broad muscular chest—”
“Gemprints,” Bruce cut her off forcefully. “Whenever I’ve purchased diamonds or had them insured, I receive hardcopies of the gemprints, laser inscriptions, serial numbers, everything. Once you or your fence alters the records in the database, I still have proof that the stones you’re selling in Tokyo are mine.”
“Yes, but your hardcopies are sitting in an acidfree envelope in the bottom of a safe in the bedroom. It’s not connected to anything, nothing searchable will ever see it.”
“No,” Bruce admitted reluctantly. “But it’s a start. It’s a link. The key to most detective work is finding some overlooked link between the person and the deed.”
“I always thought Walapang would be a good name for an animal,” she said brightly. “I hate giving them people names, don’t you?”
“You’re not naming the bat ‘Walapang.’”
“Do you even know what it means?”
“Yes, it’s from Lombardic law: ‘to disguise one’s self in order to commit theft.’”
“You are a freak of nature,” she smirked. “A sexy freak, but a freak.”
He sighed and resumed typing.
“It will take me another seven minutes to modify the auto-downloads, search routines, and data spiders in light of what you’ve told me. In that time, you have a workstation of your own, as noted by the purple wallpaper you’ve installed there. Why don’t you amuse yourself on that and leave the bats alone.”
She laughed.
“You cannot in your wildest fantasies think that is going to work.”
“We’re doing stolen art next,” he graveled with the subtlest flicker at the corner of his lip. “Your workstation is logged into the Museum Security Network.”
“Meow,” she said, swinging her chair around.
***
Read the completeCat-Tales #47: Blueprints now on the CT website or mobile-friendlyCat-Tales.mobi.
Chris Dee
www.catwoman-cattales.com
cattales.yuku.com
cattales.wikispaces.com
Thank you for reading. If you are viewing this post anywhere other than The Catitat you are reading a mirror. Please visit the original posting in The Catitat to leave a comment.
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.
