Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale

With the Catwoman movie bombing in theatres across the world, it's understandable that DC Comics hasn't been making too much of its ownership of the cat-astrophic (sorry) franchise. In fact, given the general consensus of critical opinion, the comics arm is probably thanking its lucky stars that Warner Brothers decided not to use the Batman super-villain and created a whole new cat-suited Halle Berry vehicle instead.

There has been one nod to the movie though, in the form of Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale. Purists will be pleased to know that it's the original Selina Kyle Catwoman that's examined in this history of the character, which we follow from her first appearance in 1940's Batman #1 through to Ed Brubaker's current version with comics of her own. Just skip over the introduction by the Executive Producer of the movie and you can almost forget that it ever existed. If we didn't keep banging on about it.

Reading stories from the 1940's, 50's, 60's and 80's (Catwoman clearly had no place in the 70's - send suggestions as to why not on a postcard please) is a cringe-worthy experience. Seeing pillar of justice Batman flirting quite so wantonly with the 'Princess of Plunder' feels somehow dirty, and this book is full of it. The dialogue is stilted and campy, and the art is a long way off what we come to expect nowadays. Frankly, it has dated badly.

Current Catwoman fans are clearly better off sticking with their modern versions of the character - with the sole exception of the Gotham Adventures spin-off from the Batman animated series, all the stories from the last century presented here are at best farcical, at worst embarrassing. Maybe the movie wasn't quite so far off the mark after all.

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