Sep. 23rd, 2011 04:57 am
My thoughts on Catwoman #1
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savvyliterateI'm relatively late to the DC party, but thanks to Mike, I've gotten into Batman and the Batman/Catwoman pairing. I've read through some of the older works, and my favorite Batman stories to date are The Killing Joke and Hush. I was fairly excited about the DC reboot because it was finally a good starting point to get into the series I've always wanted to try, but couldn't make heads nor tails out of some of the interweaving storylines. I've been subscribing to some of them via Comixology, and Mike and I are using my account so we can read them together.
This week's sampling was Batman #1 and Catwoman #1. The Batman standalone was superb and is my favorite of the reboot comics to date with Detective Comics #1 following that. I wasn't sure how I'd do with Catwoman. Some of her standalone stuff is good, but I found Gotham City Sirens to be a bit bland. I do need to seek out the stuff from the 90s that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sensitivinferno recommended, but I digress.
I'm a faster reader than Mike, so I wound up finishing Catwoman before he did. I was a bit bored and wrinkled my nose at all of the gratuitous underwear shots. Seriously, am I reading Catwoman or a Victoria's Secret catalog? And don't get me started with how the poor kitties were treated.
Then, I got to the last few pages. I blinked. Then I read it again, then I waited for Mike's reaction.
At the end of the issue, after a traumatic experience, Catwoman returns to the penthouse she's squatting space from and encounters Batman. She throws herself at him, then pretty much muscles him into having sex. The last page is of them having sex with most of the costumes on and it's pretty porny for something that you find in a regular comic shop.
At first glance, the pages are pretty hot (and Mike's reaction was extremely amusing and I wish I'd had a camera on him), but something about it just bothered me. I wasn't sure how I felt about the issue until I read it again and started seeing other people's reactions. The end result? It's pretty hideous on a number of levels.
The pacing and storyline in this comic is atrocious. There's at least 2-3 issues worth of material crammed into here. Mike and I outlined how each of us would take the same material and write it. There's too much happening at once and there's no emotional connection at all with the titular characters. Three huge events happen here: Selina's apartment is firebombed, Selina is confronted someone from her past that triggers traumatic flashbacks and then she and Batman have an encounter that leads to sex. It feels like the only purpose the first events served was to deliver a huge slice of DC-sanctioned porn without anything such as character development. What do I know about Selina Kyle or Catwoman from this comic other than she wears very lacy bras? She's not a sympathetic character at all because of that lack of said emotional connection. Heck, you see her bras and boobs for pages you even get a glimpse of her face. As I told brendala, this makes Velma from Mystery Incorporated look really damn good.
Speaking of the sex, it's no secret that Batman and Catwoman have yin-yang relationship that Bruce struggles with because of the side of the law Selina is usually on. However, instead of building up proper tension between the two and their conflicting values, the sex scene comes off so badly that several people have pretty much gone, "Holy crap, Catwoman is raping Batman." A Namesake reader I really respect wrote about how what happened is rape and he follows with his own story where this happened Note that the links discuss rape and might be a trigger for some. While I'm pretty sure the Catwoman writer didn't intend for it to come off that way, the storytelling is so bad that it does and that's horrific.
There's nothing wrong with portraying sex in comics. Sex is a natural part of life, and I applaud stories where you see confident, capable women who are comfortable with their sexuality, enjoy sex and pursue their physical desires. Hell, I love sex. It's awesome when part of a healthy relationship. What was shown in Catwoman isn't healthy, and is creepy on the level of Edward Cullen stalking Bella Swan in her sleep creepy. The sex in Catwoman shouldn't be just for visual gratification for guys in the middle of vicious character slaughtering. It should have been the culmination of a series of highly emotional character moments for both people involved. Even more so, it shouldn't be interpreted as rape no matter what because, yes, men can be raped too!
Catwoman is reduced from a powerful woman to a little more than a sex symbol. Remember Catwoman's first appearance in 1940 as The Cat? She was sassy and smart, taking on Batman and Robin and proving she doesn't need any man. Laura Hudson with the Comics Alliance wrote about how the DC reboot turned Starfire into this weird, contorting sex-driven maniac along with the flaws about Catwoman. It dilutes the efforts such as Gail Simone's Batgirl, who while I still miss Barbara Gordon as Oracle, was shown to be strong, self-sufficent, intelligent and all-around kickass in Batgirl #1. But, wait, Simone actually engaged in proper storytelling with her title. There's a difference.
Superheroes are suppose to be strong, capable characters we want to be like. It's why they are superheroes to begin with. They're something that can be enjoyed by men and women of all ages. But, hell, I don't want my 15-year-old niece looking at this version of Catwoman as a role model. It's on the same level as Bella Swan, it's just that bad. DC is capable of depicting strong women in comics. Look at Barbara Gordon. Like Laura, I don't want to read a story where ability is thrown to the back seat just so you can have gratuitous shots of a female superhero in a bikini. When to me, a female superhero should be confident, intelligent and kick ass in a way that's both true to life, yet reaches beyond. Like when Barbara expresses her fears on her solo outings as Batgirl following her accident. She's going beyond, yet she's so human at the same time. It's why I loved it.
Instead, what we got from Catwoman (and it looks like Red Robin too) that in addition to still employing only a bare handful of female writers, DC Comics also is still portraying plenty of negative female stereotypes and boiling women down to fanservice, but hey, it's apparently OK because one wears a superhero costume. No, it's not.
This week's sampling was Batman #1 and Catwoman #1. The Batman standalone was superb and is my favorite of the reboot comics to date with Detective Comics #1 following that. I wasn't sure how I'd do with Catwoman. Some of her standalone stuff is good, but I found Gotham City Sirens to be a bit bland. I do need to seek out the stuff from the 90s that
sensitivinferno recommended, but I digress.I'm a faster reader than Mike, so I wound up finishing Catwoman before he did. I was a bit bored and wrinkled my nose at all of the gratuitous underwear shots. Seriously, am I reading Catwoman or a Victoria's Secret catalog? And don't get me started with how the poor kitties were treated.
Then, I got to the last few pages. I blinked. Then I read it again, then I waited for Mike's reaction.
At the end of the issue, after a traumatic experience, Catwoman returns to the penthouse she's squatting space from and encounters Batman. She throws herself at him, then pretty much muscles him into having sex. The last page is of them having sex with most of the costumes on and it's pretty porny for something that you find in a regular comic shop.
At first glance, the pages are pretty hot (and Mike's reaction was extremely amusing and I wish I'd had a camera on him), but something about it just bothered me. I wasn't sure how I felt about the issue until I read it again and started seeing other people's reactions. The end result? It's pretty hideous on a number of levels.
brendala, this makes Velma from Mystery Incorporated look really damn good.There's nothing wrong with portraying sex in comics. Sex is a natural part of life, and I applaud stories where you see confident, capable women who are comfortable with their sexuality, enjoy sex and pursue their physical desires. Hell, I love sex. It's awesome when part of a healthy relationship. What was shown in Catwoman isn't healthy, and is creepy on the level of Edward Cullen stalking Bella Swan in her sleep creepy. The sex in Catwoman shouldn't be just for visual gratification for guys in the middle of vicious character slaughtering. It should have been the culmination of a series of highly emotional character moments for both people involved. Even more so, it shouldn't be interpreted as rape no matter what because, yes, men can be raped too!
Superheroes are suppose to be strong, capable characters we want to be like. It's why they are superheroes to begin with. They're something that can be enjoyed by men and women of all ages. But, hell, I don't want my 15-year-old niece looking at this version of Catwoman as a role model. It's on the same level as Bella Swan, it's just that bad. DC is capable of depicting strong women in comics. Look at Barbara Gordon. Like Laura, I don't want to read a story where ability is thrown to the back seat just so you can have gratuitous shots of a female superhero in a bikini. When to me, a female superhero should be confident, intelligent and kick ass in a way that's both true to life, yet reaches beyond. Like when Barbara expresses her fears on her solo outings as Batgirl following her accident. She's going beyond, yet she's so human at the same time. It's why I loved it.
Instead, what we got from Catwoman (and it looks like Red Robin too) that in addition to still employing only a bare handful of female writers, DC Comics also is still portraying plenty of negative female stereotypes and boiling women down to fanservice, but hey, it's apparently OK because one wears a superhero costume. No, it's not.