Maxwell Yezpitelok
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In a devastating blow to all the fans who believe Batman works better when there's no evidence that he has a dick, DC Comics has officially announced that he got Catwoman pregnant. Congrats! But, shockingly, the relationship between these two leather fetishists on opposite sides of the law hasn't always been the healthiest. Here are the dumbest moments from Batman and Catwoman's 80 year will they/won't they fling:
Batman's devotion to fighting crime is complete and unwavering ... unless the criminal involved happens to have a nice butt. Then he doesn't give a shit. Hell, he'll even help you escape if you're hot enough. Catwoman's very first appearance ends when Batman intentionally bumps into Robin as he's about to catch her, then muses about "bumping into her again sometime." With other body parts this time, presumably.
DC Comics
DC ComicsThis also explains a lot about the Joker's continued survival.
Sure, she's only a jewel thief in that issue, but even when she becomes a full-fledged criminal mastermind with a gang and all, Batman still lets her go because she kissed him and he momentarily forgot how to use his arms.
DC Comics"Please ignore my boner. It's there for completely unrelated reasons."
The kissing thing happened more than once. Catwoman figured out pretty fast that Batman is so starved for human affection that his body completely shuts down if she gives him a little sugar. One kiss and this master ninja with years of intense training can be pushed as easily as a frail old grandma. (Don't ask why we know so much about pushing grandmas.)
DC ComicsWhen your date suddenly remembers about social distancing.
These early comics made no effort to disguise the fact that Batman was letting her go because he had the hots for her. This culminated in the issue when, as soon as Catwoman claims she's in love with billionaire socialite Bruce Wayne, Batman lets her escape just so they can start dating. Robin is, understandably, not pleased with this turn of events.
DC Comics
DC Comics"By the way, she has like 27 cats, so you're going back to the orphanage."
Unfortunately, Bruce's engagement with Catwoman falls apart due to the small fact that he was also dating some other lady at the same time. It's only then, once he's certain that he can't get his dick wet, that Batman finally does his job and sends Catwoman to jail for the first time. But that was only the start of this sordid relationship ...
In the early '80s, Catwoman left her villainous ways behind and started dating Batman, proving that his meat batarang is a more effective rehabilitation tool than Arkham Asylum. They eventually parted ways, but she continued being a hero ... until she found out Bruce Wayne was dating someone else and started phoning that poor woman with anonymous death threats (what crazy people had to resort to before Twitter).
DC ComicsVery heroic, Superman does this all the time.
The supposedly "reformed" Catwoman literally dreams about stalking and killing Wayne's new girlfriend, reporter Vicki Vale (you can only get hired as a female reporter in the DC universe if you have an alliterative name). But, come on, we've all been there. You find out your ex has a new significant other and, next thing you know, you're standing in her room in the middle of the night, smacking her with a whip. Also, you brought a panther with you.
DC ComicsFor emotional support.
When this solid argument fails to convince Vicki to break up with Bruce, Catwoman decides to move on ... into her ridiculous panther-themed car, which she uses to drive Vicki and Bruce off a goddamn cliff. To be fair, she didn't know Bruce was in there too.
DC Comics
DC ComicsThis is why Batman drives a tank now.
Naturally, Bruce is rather cross with her after that little stunt. This leads to a brutal fight in which she almost kills him before stopping herself at the last moment, and Batman's response is basically "ah, good, you got that out of your system." Then they hug it out, as heroes often do after one of them tries to murder the other's girlfriend.
DC Comics
DC Comics"I mean ... Bruce? Where? It's just me, Batman."
And with that, she's suddenly back to being a totally mentally stable crimefighter (within a couple of issues, they're teaming up against the Joker again). But we have to say that her little fit of jealousy is kind of hypocritical, considering that ...
Being a grumpy motherfucker, Batman is a man of few friends, but the ones he does have are fiercely loyal to him. Also, they've all made out with his girlfriend. Superman? Yep, and more than once. The first was in the '60s, while Catwoman was pretending to be Lois Lane dressed as Catwoman. Either Superman is way dumber than we thought, or he never passes the opportunity to smooch with a lady in bondage gear.
DC ComicsThere's something in Metropolis' water supply that causes face blindness.
More recently, in a storyline set after she'd started her sexual relationship with Batman, Catwoman took advantage of an amnesiac Superman and turned her into her boy toy. The same story also features amnesiac Batman just happening to hook up with Lois Lane, so their double dates must be pretty awkward today (unless they're all super-swingers now).
What about Nightwing, the grown-up Robin? Catwoman got a piece of that action too, even though she's known him since he was running around in pixie boots. She comes on heavily to him during a team up, they kiss, and then she punches him when he correctly points out she's only trying to make Batman jealous.
DC Comics
DC ComicsNot sure if that "Hunh!" means he's in pain or if he enjoyed that punch a little too much.
She even seduced Alfred, in an early adventure in which he starts dating a maid who turns out to be Catwoman in disguise. As with many May-December romances, this inevitably leads to a scene in which Alfred spanks Catwoman while she's wearing a realistic cat head and he's dressed as Batman.
DC ComicsChris Nolan cruelly deprived us of a scene in which Michael Caine does this to Anne Hathaway.
And that's all of Batman's friends. Yes, he only has three. OK, fine, there's also Commissioner Gordon. Our research suggests that this avenue has so far only been explored in fan fiction stories, but they're all based on the TV show where she's a teenager and he's like 40, so we're not clicking on that.
It's not a Frank Miller comic without prostitutes. Instead of signing autographs, he just draws a little hooker on a piece of paper for you. So when he had the chance to update Batman's origin in the classic Batman: Year One, Miller made sure to include Catwoman as a dominatrix that Bruce Wayne runs into the first time he decides to go out and beat up poor people. Miller also gave her a disturbingly young sidekick/colleague named Holly, who stabs Batman in the leg when he tries to protect her from her pimp.
DC Comics
The child prostitute stabbing incident is actually what leads Wayne to realize that criminals aren't very intimidated by him, and therefore the next logical step is dressing up as a bat. This, in turn, gives Catwoman the idea to start wearing a ridiculous animal costume of her own, though it was later revealed that she wore it for the first time at her abusive pimp's behest, to please a client.
DC ComicsHopefully she washed and disinfected it before repurposing it as a supervillain suit.
Later, Stan the Pimp (his official name according to the DC Comics Wiki) dies by tripping on his shoelaces and falling off a catwalk. Keeping on with the forced cat theme, it's also established that Catwoman was trained by 1940s superhero Wildcat, who apparently charges Gotham City prostitutes $100 an hour to teach them self-defense. This classic hero from the Golden Age of comics takes her under his wing and mentors her, by which we mean "calls her a whore" and "physically forces her to keep training when she wants to stop." It's also been hinted that they had a fling, which is creepy considering he's old enough to have punched Hitler.
Later writers claimed she was never a prostitute -- she only pretended to be one to get criminals horned up and steal from them, you see! We guess Stan the Pimp was some actor she paid as part of the elaborate ruse, which does explain a lot about that character.
DC Comics"Hey, what happened to Stan?" "He, uh, fell off a ... catwalk. Yeah."
When DC rebooted their entire line of comics in 2011, they tried to come up with new twists to hook readers on every character. In Catwoman's case, that twist was "she's fucking Batman now." The first issue of her new series ended with her coming to her penthouse and finding Batman there, and just when you think they're gonna fight, she pins him down and they do the sideways Batusi.
DC ComicsAgain, this is an official DC comic, not fan art commissioned by a 14-year-old.
We find out that they've been doing this often, and Batman isn't particularly proud of it. Oh, and it seems that if it isn't in an elevated place, Batman can't get "elevated" either. They have sex on a rooftop again during a storyline in which Catwoman is accused of murdering 237 people. Before turning over this supposed mass murderer to the authorities, Batman lets her spend the night beating up Z-list villains with him. Predictably, this turns out to be foreplay for when they get naked and do it on top of some diamonds she'd stolen.
DC ComicsWhich hurts like hell, trust us.
In a later issue he proposes marriage to her on a rooftop, possibly the very same one. Additionally, the artist for that tender public nudity scene has implied on Twitter that this was the moment when the upcoming Bat/Cat baby was conceived, making it one of the most historically significant rooftop fucks ever. Top five, easily.
DC ComicsAt least now we know they didn't leave any used condoms laying around up there.
Point is, there's clearly some sort of rooftop fetish going on here. Kinda puts all other instances of Batman punching criminals atop buildings under a new light.
Like any comic book character who's been around for longer than a week, Catwoman has had like ten different and contradictory origins. Still, they all involve some sort of physical trauma before she becomes a delinquent furry. In her first origin, she was a stewardess who hit her head and lost her memory, then decided to be a cat-themed villain because the only thing she remembered from her old life was the concept of cats.
She later claimed that story was made up, but that's just the brain damage talking. Her '80s prostitute origin starts when Stan the Pimp beats her half to death and dumps her in an alley full of cats, while her '90s origin reveals that the director of her orphanage put her in a bag and threw her into a river, like a bunch of ugly kittens. Her 2011 origin is just a rehash of the one from Batman Returns, in which a rich douche pushes her off a tall building and some stray cats somehow lick her back into health.
DC ComicsInstead of giving her fifteen different infections.
And then there was the revelation in the 2000s that she only reformed because the Justice League magically brainwashed her. When the Justice League's resident magician, Zatanna, admits to tampering with her brain to make her less villanous, Catwoman proves how well she's taking the news by gagging Zatanna and pushing her out of a window.
DC ComicsZatanna then emerges transformed into "Catanna."
Across all realities, the one thing all versions of Catwoman have in common is that her brain probably looks like chewed gum. In short, Batman has been sleeping with a mentally ill woman who only acts the way she does due to extreme physical and psychological trauma -- sure, he has some issues too, but he can't blame them on pimp-induced comas and such. Not cool, man. Stick to sticking it to alliteratively named reporters.
Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com.
Top Image: DC Comics
