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By Tom Mason
The Joker's success opened the floodgates for the creation
of a almost endless Rogue's Gallery of villains to fight Batman. Most of them
eventually were declared criminally insane. This made it easy to store them away
in Gotham's Arkham Asylum, a place where they would never be put to death for
their crimes, and also be able to escape with ease when needed for a new
storyline in the many Batman adventures.
 One of the
most famous of the Batman foes was and is, Catwoman. Batman #1
(Spring 1940) saw the first appearance of a young woman known only as The Cat.
Even though she wore no special costume as yet, Batman was so taken by her that
after her stolen loot was recovered, he let her get away! She started
out as a cat-burglar out for the money and was a departure from Batman's usually
insane foes. She was conceived as a high class cat-burglar. Her real name was
Selena Kyle. Here again we had yet another character inspired by the movies Kane
remembered. Jean Harlow had impressed Kane in his youth. Kane's memory had
retained Harlow's image as the personification of feminine pulchritude and
sensuality. Later, when he was thinking of creating Catwoman, he had
Harlow's image in mind but changed Catwoman to a brunette because e thought that
dark hair would be more slinky and feline than a blonde. Once again, Catwoman
was a collaboration between Finger and Kane. They both felt that Batman needed a
semi-romantic interest in his life, giving the strip some needed sex appeal.
Catwoman emerged as a somewhat friendly foe, a cat-burglar who committed crimes
but also was a romantic interest in Batman's rather sterile life. She was
somewhat similar to Batman but different in the fact that she was a was on the
opposite side of the law compared to Batman. The two of them played a kind of
cat and mouse game between each other. She was never a murderer or an
entirely evil person like the Joker. Batman was eternally trying to reform her
and bring her over to the side of law and order. Kane made her association with
cats a counterpoint to Bruce Wayne's fixation with the symbol of the bat. He
made her a Cat-woman, and her fickleness and capriciousness served to illustrate
Kane's chauvinistic opinion of women which he admitted to. Many years
later, the Batman legend admitted to a sexual relationship between the two that
resulted in the birth of a daughter who would grow up to become the Huntress, a
member of "The Birds of Prey," which would spawn their own comic
magazine as well as a short live-action television series.
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| Julie Newmar as Catwoman
from BATMAN (season one) |
In the sixties camp TV series, Catwoman was personified by
the seductive Julie Newmar in a costume that appeared painted on. She was an
immediate hit in the role. A feature film was made during the hiatus between the
first and second season. Newmar who was unavailable to play the film roll, the
producers then went to Lee Meriwether. She made an attractive Catwoman and
fitted the costume well, but she did not have that sexual tension that Newmar
was able to bring to the character. As the second and third seasons of Batman
plodded along Julie Newmar was again absent, she was ultimately replaced by
Eartha Kitt.
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| Eartha Kitt |
Lee
Meriwether |
 Today
in comics Catwoman alternates between a high class thief, and a dark heroine.
Her costume has changed many times and at one point in her career she seems to
have visited a plastic surgeon (depending on the artist) and had breast
augmentation that left her with new bullet-boobs jutting out of a skintight
costume.
With the success of Tim Burton's 1989 big budget feature film Batman, Burton
introduced Catwoman in the sequel Batman Returns. In it, Michelle Pfeiffer
played Selina Kyle, the film gave her a new origin. Nearly killed by her boss
Max Schrek, she is rescued and revived by alley cats and is out for revenge. She
sews together a skin tight outfit and becomes the Catwoman. Her meetings
with Batman fan the fire between them and they play a bat and cat game between
them.
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| Michelle Pfeiffer from
the film Batman Returns |
At the end of the film, it is thought she is dead, but is
she? It seems that plans for a solo Catwoman film were on course only to
be derailed at the last minute. But with the success of super-heroes in films of
late, there is talk of the film once again being on the front burner with many
names being mentioned for the part. Ashley Judd was just one of them. *The
Catwoman film is currently in production featuring Halle Berry as Patience Prentiss
an all new unrelated to the Batman universe.
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| Two
incarnations of Catwoman from Batman the animated series. |
In the early 90's, Warner Brothers television animated
series Batman The Animated Series, she is much more feline and slender with a
Cheshire cat grin and was originally voiced by actress Adrienne Barbeau. In the
animated series she has become an animal activist of sorts, as well as returning
to her roots as cat burglar. When confronted with fighting the bad guys, she
often chooses to join with Batman to bring them to justice. At one time
Warner
Bros considered an animated series spin-off for Catwoman, but that idea never
got pasted the few preliminary sketches done by series creator Bruce Timm.
Today, Catwoman still is continuing in her own comic series from DC, and often
guest-stars in the many Batman publications, attesting to her perennial
popularity.
By Tom 'The Crimson Collector' Mason
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