“The suit, and the Catwoman identity, became an object of lingering and complex feelings, like a friend who’s left town without any assurance they’ll be back,” Valentine continued. “It’s in a safe with her very personal treasures; her journey in coming back to it as a way to handle everything she’s been through always felt like a very natural one, and readers have been amazing in taking the journey with us.”
“Selina’s a complex character with a long history, and her relationship to the Cat-suit has always been unique,” Valentine continued. “It’s a trademark of her impressive heists, and just as equally it’s a marker of her identity as occasional crimefighter. Her conflict isn’t so much between who she is inside the suit versus outside it, but rather her purpose at the moment she puts it on. Even out of the suit, readers know she’ll be pulling from the same bag of tricks that made her both a master thief and a reluctant hero.”
As for Catwoman’s more businesslike mafia look — and whether he preferred to draw Selina that way as opposed to outfits that were a little sexed-up — Brown said that he was glad not to be drawing the “overly sexual version of Catwoman.”
“This arc, it was more about Selina than Catwoman, trying to perhaps distance herself from that,” Brown said.