Selina and the Falcone family - Spoilers for Long Halloween, When in Rome, etc

[witchboy]

So I just finished re-reading the Loeb/Sale Batman "trilogy" Long Halloween, Dark Victory and Catwoman: When in Rome
Great story, just gorgeous and gripping all the way through.
Does the Selina/Falcone family connection get explored anywhere else? There were definitely unanswered questions and loose ends left that I'd love to see explored.
The DC Wiki says this is the New Earth continuity, which does leave me a little puzzled at how it fits in with other stories, such as Selina having a strong resemblance to Louisa while she'd previously been said in Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper to have a strong resemblance to her sister Maggie. It seems both those things shouldn't be true. These kind of continuity issues don't spoil my enjoyment but it does leave me curious to try to fit it all together. The easy answer is that they conflict because of Crisis hiccups, Superboy Prime reality punching or whatever. That's not really a satisfying solution but if that's all I get I can live with it.
And there's no information on how Selina learned of the Falcone connection.
We see so little of Louisa and what we do see is shocking and hard to understand, that she deceived her powerful husband to save the infant Selina but then tried to have her killed so capriciously and for motives I didn't quite understand as an adult.

[godisawesome]

Count me as one of the people who thinks it really could be exploited to major success with the right vision and awareness, especially with regards to Louisa Falcone, who feels like she could be a complex and dangerous matriarch to oppose and confuse Selina.


By and large, the whol idea was mostly just Loeb’s little hobby; almost no one else made any effort to reference it or acknowledge it, while Maggie showed up and her origin story acknowledged clearly.

Here’s what I think has happened outside of Loeb’s own work:

- Tony Daniels brought back Mario Falcone in his Detective Comics run, alongside his niece Kitrina. The story was rather sloppy given Daniels’s inexperience, as I don’t think it was ever all that clear who Kitrina’s father or mother was supposed to be, but the story did have Selina end up recruiting Kitirina to be “Catgirl”, with the clear implication being because Selina was her aunt. It got dropped with the New 52.

- Batman Eternal seems to be heading that way, especially once the audience knew that QueenPin Selina was coming and that Carmine Falcone was back… but the story ultimately introduced an entirely different crime family, the Calabrese family, as Selina’s estranged family.

Personally… I’d try and combine her origins a bit; have Selina and Maggie be either half-sisters or adopted sisters, and have Selina become aware she could be Falcone’s daughter (though perhaps she could be Louisa’s instead of Carmine’s), and combine an envy of a life she was denied with a love for the sister she had.

[MajorHoy]

Count me as one of the people who thinks it really could be exploited to major success with the right vision and awareness, especially with regards to Louisa Falcone, who feels like she could be a complex and dangerous matriarch to oppose and confuse Selina.


By and large, the whol idea was mostly just Loeb’s little hobby; almost no one else made any effort to reference it or acknowledge it, while Maggie showed up and her origin story acknowledged clearly.

Here’s what I think has happened outside of Loeb’s own work:

- Tony Daniels brought back Mario Falcone in his Detective Comics run, alongside his niece Kitrina. The story was rather sloppy given Daniels’s inexperience, as I don’t think it was ever all that clear who Kitrina’s father or mother was supposed to be, but the story did have Selina end up recruiting Kitirina to be “Catgirl”, with the clear implication being because Selina was her aunt. It got dropped with the New 52.

- Batman Eternal seems to be heading that way, especially once the audience knew that QueenPin Selina was coming and that Carmine Falcone was back… but the story ultimately introduced an entirely different crime family, the Calabrese family, as Selina’s estranged family.

Personally… I’d try and combine her origins a bit; have Selina and Maggie be either half-sisters or adopted sisters, and have Selina become aware she could be Falcone’s daughter (though perhaps she could be Louisa’s instead of Carmine’s), and combine an envy of a life she was denied with a love for the sister she had.

Hey, if you're going that route, how about making a connection between the Falcones and the Bertinellis?

(Catwoman and Huntress as cousins or something?)

[Aahz]

Honestly I simply think that the claim that the Loeb/Sale Batman "trilogy" is canon is false.

When it comes to how the Bertinellis are connected with the other Mafia-Families in Gotham that another can of Worms, since Huntress and her Family were originally from New York and not from Gotham, that was later ret conned, but sofar no writer has made any effort to connected them the families from Year one and the Loeb books.

They also never really brothered to explain how Rex Calabrese, Lew Moxton and Santo Cassamento fit in.

[godisawesome]

Hey, if you're going that route, how about making a connection between the Falcones and the Bertinellis?

(Catwoman and Huntress as cousins or something?)

The possible contrast between Selina being a neglected, forgotten and deprived “fallen princess” turned to super-criminal thievery, and Helena being a loved, maybe a bit spoiled, and well known mafia Princess turned to superhero in vengeance?

That could be fascinating.

[Restingvoice]

What about the Cuban mom in the 90s series? Was that before or after they made the Falcone connection to Selina?

[John Venus]

I remember the retelling of her origin during NML in her own ongoing which showed Selina as a runaway, her mother died young and her father was a drunk alcoholic who died in his sleep leaving young Selina to become a runaway.

Loeb is in his own little world and I don't mind versions that explore the idea of Selina being the daughter of someone significant be it the Falcone's or anyone else. The animated movie made the connection more explicit. I suspect the upcoming Matt Reeves movie might be going the same route. That said, my preferred take would be Selina being a 'nobody' who rose up to become somebody. I think it contrasts her better with Bruce who was the son of a famous and wealthy couple.

One of my friends put together a master list of Catwoman's post crisis origin story, piecing together the various bits of canon to form a coherent whole. But it was on LJ and the images are broken. I've been egging them to fix it since it's really the most comprehensive take on her backstory.

[John Venus]

What about the Cuban mom in the 90s series? Was that before or after they made the Falcone connection to Selina?

I think you're referring to her backstory being retold in NML. So that would have been after TLH.

[K. Jones]

This is the sort of thing that would usually be irresistible candy to me - I'm a guy that has a Joker origin story written that I think works - and so I'm startled and kind of delighted that I've never really noticed or thought about a definitive origin for Selina Kyle. The Long Halloween is actually probably one of the key books that got me diving in the Batman deep-end and I always liked the, oh, Noir Trope of Catwoman maybe being a Falcone, put together with that Sale iconography of her being the one who leaves the cat-scratch scars on The Roman's face.

I like the Maggie relationship plenty. I liked the Rex Calabrese stuff enough in Eternal that I'm sure I wrote a few paragraphs about it when that run was happening. I like the sort of potentiality of a Fish Mooney "apprentice program" for lost types like Selina that we got in Gotham (admittedly I only ever saw the first ten or so episodes). I like KARL KYLE the KING of CATS, man. You'd think I'd be chomping at the bit to try to reconcile all that weirdness.

But something about Catwoman strikes me as so independent, and probably having grown up so on her own ... that frankly none of the "possibilities" of parentage or origin actually matter all that much to her. And as a woman who is basically the same age as Batman, her experience shows. But as somebody who grew up picking pockets, thiefing, boosting, stealing, heisting, evolving into the World's Greatest Burglar ... it stands that she could've been "welcomed" into any of those families, Falcones using her for her skills, Calabreses maybe using her for her skills but being less cruel and a bit kinder and more loyal, the Kyles for foster care, so on and so forth. Her primary connections all seem Catholic, though not necessarily all Italian Mafia - though there is a lot of that. Which is actually why I felt like Father Valley wasn't the worst villain we've ever seen come up against Catwoman thematically.

But yeah, ultimately she just strikes me as a character strong enough in her own right that her parentage isn't required. Her being a nobody does contrast well with Bruce Wayne being a big old somebody, and does sort of pair well with Joker being a nobody.

I just imagine whoever she is, or whoever she comes from, was probably somehow involved with some of the mafiolios, somehow, and there's a connection from the life of crime at an early age. I can reconcile that in my head without even doing any math on my fingers or canon gymnastics. It's way easier to rationalize than "that time when she was living in the Red Light District and was a Dom or a hooker or presumably some kind of sex worker." Frank Miller with the grim 'n' gritty. I mean like, no shame and kind of lovely nowadays to have the world's greatest Batman lover and one of the A-List of villainy (and antiheroism) be a sex worker, and the leather and whips obviously have a logic to them. I just think that's quite a life ... when in being a sex worker do you become the ultimate cat burglar? A thief? Perhaps. Get guys naked, steal their stuff. But then you're not really a sex worker, are you? You're a thief that's willing to do some fairly risky stuff including sex with your mark, the femme fatale honeypot in motion. It's very Noir. Then again, like Batman, in his younger days as Batman, was rougher around the edges and made more "rookie mistakes", maybe Selina as a young thief and grifter was a bit more reckless, too.

[Frontier]

I remember the retelling of her origin during NML in her own ongoing which showed Selina as a runaway, her mother died young and her father was a drunk alcoholic who died in his sleep leaving young Selina to become a runaway.

Loeb is in his own little world and I don't mind versions that explore the idea of Selina being the daughter of someone significant be it the Falcone's or anyone else. The animated movie made the connection more explicit. I suspect the upcoming Matt Reeves movie might be going the same route. That said, my preferred take would be Selina being a 'nobody' who rose up to become somebody. I think it contrasts her better with Bruce who was the son of a famous and wealthy couple.

One of my friends put together a master list of Catwoman's post crisis origin story, piecing together the various bits of canon to form a coherent whole. But it was on LJ and the images are broken. I've been egging them to fix it since it's really the most comprehensive take on her backstory.

I'm of a similar mindset.

[Restingvoice]

I think you're referring to her backstory being retold in NML. So that would have been after TLH.

So the drunk guy is supposed to be her dad.