Yet Another Female Fan Weighs in on Catwoman #1
One of my favorite announcements out of the DC Comics New 52 launch was news that Catwoman would be getting her own series again. As a kid, the Jim Balent-drawn Catwoman series was what really made me a comic book reader. I’d picked up a few issues of The Batman Adventures (the Batman: The Animated Series tie-in comic), but Catwoman was the first book I actively hunted down in the bookstore spinner month after month.
I wasn’t particularly a fan of the recent Gotham City Sirens, even though it did have some good moments. While I do like all three of the leads, the “wacky roommates” thing always read more like a gimmick than solid storytelling. A new series for Catwoman seemed like just the thing for a character who had become bogged down in an often-bland ensemble book.
And then #1 actually came out and everyone everywhere exploded into a big frothy mass of rage.
The thing is, there’s actually a lot of good stuff in Catwoman #1. We have the first new supporting character for Selina in years, a retired showgirl-turned-fence named Lola (and you have to love Selina’s delight in a showgirl actually named Lola). The coloring is gorgeous. So is some of the art; I’m not a fan of Guillem March’s bodies when they go wonky, but I really dig the character he puts into his faces. There are plenty of seeds planted for both backstory and future plot threads.
And then we have Selina herself, who in most of her recent incarnations has had a childhood crappy enough to make Bruce Wayne’s early years look like Leave It To Beaver. That looks to be the case in the latest book too, judging by the brief flashback we see. And it’s pretty clear that the end result is a very damaged individual. Selina clams to have “people” in her life, but all we see is her deflecting when it comes to making a genuine emotional connection. Her friend (her word choice) Lola asks how she’s doing? She brushes it off and focuses on business. Batman shows up to check on her? She wants to keep their interactions strictly on the physical level. Paired with the image of child Selina crying in the corner as someone she cares about is gunned down, you have some really meaty, heartbreaking characterization.
So why didn’t issue #1 focus on that?
The problem isn’t that Catwoman wears lacy bras and has anonymous masked sex. The problem is that the breasts and the sex splash are emphasized at the expense of the actual story. The first issues of Batwoman and Wonder Woman both showed far more skin than Catwoman, but people aren’t up in arms about those books because of the way it’s presented. It’s there, yes, but it’s not the focus. It doesn’t feel artificial or gratuitous. And it’s not being sold as sexysexydirtysexy.
For me at least, there was a disconnect between what was happening in Selina’s life and the way it was packaged for the audience. A person who has a violent breakdown in public, squats in a stranger’s apartment because they have no real home to go back to, and can’t even have a real conversation with someone they’re having an ongoing (if casual) relationship with is tragic, not sexy. And there’s nothing wrong with tragic! Characters who are obviously broken in some way are often the ones who have the most interesting journeys.
Look at Batman and Wolverine, who are both pretty screwed up by the trauma in their past. They’re compelling characters who don’t need sex to sell their story to readers, even when sex plays an important role in said story. Why can’t Catwoman be granted the same courtesy, especially when DC Comics themselves refer to her as part of their “pantheon of remarkable, iconic women characters”?
If you’re relying on shock value and titillation to sell your story, you’re doing a disservice to your story and your audience. It’s certainly not only women who are alienated by bad portrayals of female characters. It’s insulting to imply that male readers will only read books about women who are “sexy enough”, regardless of the quality of the writing. I have plenty of straight male geek friends and they care just as much about good storytelling as I do. This is an era where guys across the Internet proudly admit to watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, after all.
There has been plenty of fantastic commentary about some of the more troubling portrayals of women in the DC Comics reboot. But I tend to approach comics (and pretty much everything else) as a writer/fan of good writing first and foremost. The frustrating thing for me was how damn close Catwoman #1 was to being a solid launch. Ironically, it was all of the “adult” packaging made it feel much more juvenile than it should have.
There’s the potential for some really intriguing stories in this series. Just tell them instead of hiding the plot behind lingerie and awkward-looking sex scenes. And everyone already knows that Catwoman is supposed to be sexy. Show us something new. Isn’t that what a reboot is all about?
