Selina Kyle/Catwoman Appreciation 2024

[Agent Z]

Happy New Year to fans of Selina Kyle.

First appearance: Batman #1 (cover-dated spring 1940; published April 25, 1940)

Created by: Bill Finger and Bob Kane



Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale (2004) Cover

[Frontier]

Happy New Year to the Feline Femme Fatale and her fans !

[Primal Slayer]

[signalman112]

Marshall Rogers sketch.

CatwomanRogers.jpg

[Primal Slayer]

[Frontier]

Hoping to see her upgrade to a full costume and mask in the sequel .

[Primal Slayer]

Hoping to see her upgrade to a full costume and mask in the sequel .

I'm still amazed that Selina Kyle has yet to headline her own show or movie. How is the only Catwoman to go solo is one that wasnt Selina?

[godisawesome]

I'm still amazed that Selina Kyle has yet to headline her own show or movie. How is the only Catwoman to go solo is one that wasnt Selina?

That movie serves as pretty much exhibit A on the “Executives view things as IPs only, and don’t really pay attention to what those IPs are” argument.

I mean, conceptually, “Make a heist movie where the main thief is a beautiful woman in spandex who makes Cat puns named Selina Kyle” seems easy and simple. But what executives were saying ti each other at the time was something like “People loved the name Catwoman! People love Halle Berry! People live Spider-Man! Just combine those three things!”

[Primal Slayer]

That movie serves as pretty much exhibit A on the “Executives view things as IPs only, and don’t really pay attention to what those IPs are” argument.

I mean, conceptually, “Make a heist movie where the main thief is a beautiful woman in spandex who makes Cat puns named Selina Kyle” seems easy and simple. But what executives were saying ti each other at the time was something like “People loved the name Catwoman! People love Halle Berry! People live Spider-Man! Just combine those three things!”

ANd since she is a woman, the villain has to center around beauty standards

[Frontier]

I'm still amazed that Selina Kyle has yet to headline her own show or movie. How is the only Catwoman to go solo is one that wasnt Selina?

She had Catwoman: Hunted.

[Thirteen]

I'm still amazed that Selina Kyle has yet to headline her own show or movie. How is the only Catwoman to go solo is one that wasnt Selina?

YouTuber explains how it all went down that we ended up with Patience Phillips instead of Selina Kyle...and then never went back to Selina as a solo.

[Agent Z]

ANd since she is a woman, the villain has to center around beauty standards

Even that might have worked in a much better movie.

[Agent Z]

Cosplayer SnarkyJay as Catwoman.

[Frontier]

Cosplayer SnarkyJay as Catwoman.

Nice cosplay .

[godisawesome]

Here’s a review of some Catwoman comics I posted on another forum, about the oft-discussed Jim Balent era.

Catwoman (Vol. 1) 19-21

Okay, so yes, this is a Jim Balent-drawn Catwoman story - cheesecake was basically the entire reason why he held down that job for so long, but… this is still fairly early on in that comic and in his cheesecake career, so the art’s a lot more competent than it eventually becomes, especially in regards to facial expressions (which Balent was actually very good at, even though his obsession with curves became his calling card.)

And this is also another Chuck Dixon-penned Bat-book, and low-key?… I think Catwoman might have been the Bat-character he wrote second or third best after Tim Drake and maybe Dick Grayson, which is actually high praise considering how prolifically good he was at writing all of them. Plus, sometimes, he had ideas that had the sheer wackiness of Silver Age comics, but fueled through actually logical and modern storytelling.

…Which so what this is: 90’s era professional thief and even more professional smartass Catwoman is hired to steal a screenplay from a massively successful prima donna director, only to find that not only has he staged his entire production on an obscure, hurricane-wracked ruin of a Caribbean island, but a) there is no script and he’s just improvising the whole movie in a blind panic, but also b) he decided to make it a creature feature… and it was easier to just build a 40 ft tall robotic monster with aggressive artificial intelligence than to do CGI, and c) the director has, of course, gone laughing mad and seeks to kill everyone when things go pear-shaped.

Yeah. It’s that good kind of goofy for modern comics.

There’s a strong satirical wit to the entire script that’s razor sharp and genuinely full of deadpan humor, with a cast of characters who also still feel more real than ridiculous. Probably the funniest development is this:

When she corners the director before his breakdown, Selina manages to force him to write *a* script by casually threatening him with her whip - and then he pulls a gun, starts going crazy and she loses the script… so she locks herself in a room and types one out herself to fulfill her contract, looking as miserable as possible… and then that script she forged, of course becomes a $250 million hit in 90’s money, and she gets none of the proceeds.