Catwoman is one of the most iconic characters in Batman’s rogue gallery.
Always straddling the line between villain and anti-hero, Selina Kyle was first introduced
back in 1940 in Batman issue 1 by Bob Kane and Bill Finger.
She has often operated under the concept of doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
She’s an expert thief and strategic mastermind, a skilled gymnast, and has a complex relationship
with Bill finger and Bob Kane’s most prominent creation, the caped crusader himself.
So today, we’re taking a closer look at Selina Kyle with our list of the top 10 catwoman
surprising facts.
10 Her Creation It’s no secret that Bob Kane was a big movie
fan; so much so that often his characters in Batman’s comics would be inspired by
film stars or other iconic individuals who appeared in Classical Hollywood cinema.
Catwoman is no exception; she was inspired by Jean Harlow, who Kane noted that at his
then impressionable age, Harlow, “seemed to personify feminine pulchritude (pul-chrea-tude)
at its most sensuous.”
In addition to that, Selina was also inspired by Bob Kane’s cousin, Ruth Steel.
Catwoman was created as a means of adding sex appeal to the Batman comics, and give
him a romantic interest in what they noted as his “rather sterile life.”
Thus began the never ending mental and emotional chess game between the two, with Batman always
trying to reform her, and her trying to seduce him into joining her as her partner in crime.
Kane saw cats as the antithesis of bats, and gave a pretty chauvinistic reasoning as to
why, justifying that cats are cool and detached, just like women.
9 Her Costume Catwoman has come a long way in terms of her
design since she was first created.
In her initial appearance in Batman issue 1, she went by The Cat, and it featured her
dressed up in disguise as an old woman, later revealed to be a sultry looking woman donning
a sexy green gown.
Then, in Batman issue 3, DC tried out something new by putting her in a mustard outfit with
a cape, and a funny looking cat mask.
Luckily, that evolved in 1947 when she adopted the name Catwoman, and wore a long purple
dress with a cat eared mask, a green cape and tall black boots.
It was an outfit that would later resurface between 1983 and 1986, but in a more revealing
form.
In 1967, when Catwoman returned from a hiatus, in the Batman comics, the caped uniform was
modernized in Batman vol 1 issue 197, where she lost the cape, and opted out for an entirely
green body suit, glasses, small cat ears and a necklace.
It got weirder from there on out.
In 1969, she donned a short bob hair cut, long black clawed gloves, pirate-esque boots,
and blue tights, PLUS A TAIL.
That look was eventually ditched in 1974, and later, in 1986, we were introduced to
a variation of her outfit that has pretty much stuck, minus slight adjustments; a full
body suit, but with a tail and whiskers.
After a brief visitation back to the purple suit, in the 2001, she was given a brand new
full body black leather suit, with the tail now long gone, but the cowl remaining, sans
whiskers.
This suit is the one she’s had ever since, with slight variations, of course.
8 Her Family Catwoman’s family ties have often been disputed.
The pre-new 52 Catwoman’s narratives provided a lot of circumstantial evidence that she
may have been the biological daughter of Carmine and Louisa Falcone of the Falcone crime family,
who was smuggled into the USA from Italy into underground adoption in order to keep her
alive.
It’s never actually been proven, but in Catwoman, when in Rome issue 6, Selina all
but believes that to be true.
In the New 52 Catwoman comics, volume 4, the character’s family is explored yet again,
this time revealing that she had a brother named Aiden who she was separated from, with
the two being sent to different foster homes after their father was imprisoned.
Years later, while working at the Mayor’s Office, she would try to find files pertaining
to Aiden in hopes of finding him, but that didn’t end up being all to fruitful.
7 Flight Attendant Selina has had many an origin story retcon
over the years.
But back in Batman issue 62 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, the character reveals an origin
story in which she stared out as a flight attendant.
During a fight with Batman, Selina is hit on the head and has flashbacks to her previous
life.
Turns out she was a flight attendant, and during one of her shifts, the plane she was
on crashed, knocking her head and making her lose all of her memories.
The head injury also motivated her to become a criminal, and buy a cat suit.
She also explains to Batman that her father used to own a pet store, hence why she has
an obsession with cats, and that it was one of the only things she retained about her
past through her amnesia.
By the end of the story, she retires as Catwoman, but obviously, that didn’t last long.
This origin story would later be retconned, which was then retconned itself, but all of
her origin stories have always managed to have some sort of tie to Bruce Wayne’s Batman.
6 Her Sexuality (a-ko) While Selina’s relationship with Bruce is
the most prominent one the character has had in the comics, the Bat isn’t the only one
the Cat has hooked up with.
And she’s hooked up with people of all kinds, including other women.
She’s bisexual.
For a while, she had a thing with Eiko Hasigawa, the daughter of a crime family who even took
over the Catwoman mantle briefly; something she did without Selina knowing at first.
Eiko first appeared in Catwoman vol 4 issue 35 in 2014, and initially worked as a spy
for her father to keep track of Selina when she took over the Calabrese Crime Family after
retiring as Catwoman.
The two eventually develop feelings for each other though.
5 Her Sidekick The New 52 had a whole lot of questionable
content, especially as far as Catwoman’s solo series was concerned.
While the first two issues were pretty decent, minus the very uncomfortable and not entirely
consensual sex scene she had with Batman on a roof top, Selina’s narratives took a serious
nose dive from fairly early on in the series, coming up with really sub par storylines.
One of which includes her getting a sidekick named Kitrina Falcone.
Get it, like a kitty?
Anywho, Kitrina was a member of the Falcone family that Selina saved, and then took under
her wing.
Or paw?
Kitrina was very much a clone of Robin, but luckily, she didn’t stick around long, with
Batman eventually putting us all out of our misery by offering to ship the girl off to
a boarding school.
4 The Rejected Movie I’m sure the majority of you out there would
like to forget that the 2004 Catwoman movie, starring Academy Award winning actress Halle
Berry, never happened.
Turns out there was ANOTHER stand alone Catwoman film that was in the works at one point that
arguably could have been much, much better than that 2004 one.
Screenwriter John August, who wrote Big Fish, had a pitch for a Catwoman movie back in 1998
that was rejected; it would have seen Michelle Pfeiffer reprise her role as Selina from Batman
Returns.
Initially, after Batman Returns, Warner Brothers wanted to produce a Selina Kyle film, but
the movie fell into development hell for years before the Halle Berry one finally reared
its ugly head into theatres.
August had tweeted out about the rejection in contribution to a hashtag that made the
rounds in August of 2018 called Share Your Rejections.
He later elaborated that the movie was set in Gotham City on Halloween, and involved
an explosion that caused Catwoman to forget that she was ever Catwoman.
Oh what could have been.
3 A Puddy Cat Selina has a cross over issue with none other
than Tweety and Sylvester from the Looney tunes.
Yes, I’m serious, and Gail Simone wrote it and its everything you could have wanted
it to be.
Released in August of 2018, Sylvester falls from a portal in the sky, and Catwoman catches
him, all while saying, “in the name of all that’s furry, I thought I saw a…
I did!
I did see a…” you know the famous line, friends.
Naturally, Sylvester is trying to catch Tweety Bird, and Tweety realizes he’s gonna need
some superhero help, too, and recruits Black Canary.
The issue escalates into a full blown war between cats and birds in Gotham, and it’s
great.
There was also a variant cover for the issue that featured the classic Looney Toon animation
style of Sylvester and Tweety, along with Selina drawn up in the same way.
2 Not a Murderer Back in Tom King’s Catwoman run, Selina
took the blame for the 237 people that her protégé Holly Robinson, had killed.
She’s also felt responsible for the death of others, like her friend Lola MacIntire
from the New 52 run.
But Selina herself has never actually killed an innocent person, believe it or not.
It’s one of the reasons why she’s always contested as being a true villain, or simply
just an anti-hero.
Selina was one of the only villains in the Golden Age who wasn’t going around murdering
people at will (for example the Joker had committed homicide in his first appearance,
and even Batman was guilty of ‘accidentally’ killing a criminal, even if it was explicitly
stated.
He kicked some people off buildings, y’all.)
But in Batman issue 35, she gets a little homicidal and traps the dynamic duo in catacombs,
essentially banishing them to die.
After that, she toys with the idea of ‘almost killing’, even shooting at Batman with a
gun once, and leaving her pet jaguar in a car to essentially rip some guy to shreds,
but aside from that, she doesn’t have blood on her hands, or at least the blood of someone
who wasn’t a total criminal.
That being said, Selina did kill Black Mask in 2006 revenge for the villain killing her
brother in law and terrorizing her sister.
1 Comics Code Authority Back in 1954, the Comics Code Authority was
created; it was a censorship outline by the Comics Magazine Association of America that
enforced certain regulations on publishers concerning what kind of content they could
print.
It was primarily spawned by a series of Senate hearings and Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction
of the Innocent, which made a bunch of outlandish claims on how comics were ruining America’s
youth.
Anywho, the Code is responsible for a long hiatus of Catwoman’s.
Between September of 1954 to November of 1966, Selina Kyle completely disappeared from DC’s
titles, since she was in violation of the Code’s restrictions on the portrayal of
female characters.
In addition to that, in many of the stories she appeared in, it seemed as if Batman was
allowing her to escape (which he blatantly does in her very first appearance).
This was in direct contradiction with the Code, with the General Standards Part A of
the code outlining that a criminal should always be punished for their misdeeds, and
that they should never be presented or rendered as glamorous or to occupy a position which
creates the desire for emulation.
Her last issue before the hiatus was Detective Comics issue 211, specifically the story The
Jungle Cat Queen, and she returned not in a Batman title in 1966, but rather, Lois Lane
issue 70.
There we have it friends!
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