Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Catwoman (Vol. 1) Issue #1 – “Metamorphosis”! Ahhh, Catwoman. My earliest memory of Catwoman is Michelle Pfeiffer from Batman Returns. And then, of course, Halle Berry’s infamous portrayal. And then Anne Hathaway for some reason? But now it’s Zoë Kravitz! And she’s hot. That’s the only thing I have to say about the new Cedric Diggory Batman movie.

I don’t know much about Catwoman. I’ve always thought she was a Batman supervillain, but maybe it’s more nuanced than that? I was going to read the New 52 version of Catwoman, but I hear that it’s one of the worst series to ever grace the comic book shelves, so I’ll wait to be REALLY in the mood before I tackle something like that! Sounds incredibly exciting! How bad could it possibly be?? I can’t wait to find out.

So, on my second diversion from the New 52 imprint, I decided it made the most sense to pick up the Catwoman 4-issue limited series from 1989. Its story runs concurrently with the Batman: Year One storyline that I covered a couple months back, which was fun and exciting and contained Selina Kyle as a disgruntled prostitute! So we’ll get to see more of that, I’m sure!

So without further ado: meow.

Catwoman (Vol. 1), Issue #1 [February, 1989]
Written by: Mindy Newell
“Metamorphosis”

“That the saints may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more abundantly, they are permitted to see the punishment of the damned in Hell” – St. Thomas Aquinas

Saints get special treatment! They get to know how much Hell sucks in order to appreciate that they’re not in Hell, I guess? Comic books are going to teach me more about the bible than the Catholic church ever did.

We don’t waste time here. The cover depicts a woman in fishnet stockings passed out among garbage and rainwater, and that’s just what the opening scene shows as well: tattered clothes, a cat chewing on her shirt. She’s in the alley behind a convent and near some lovely Gotham Dept. of Sanitation dumpsters.

A nun comes out to toss some trash and discovers the passed-out woman while she shoos away the cat.

Later, paramedics come whisk her away. “Somebody didn’t like what she was selling.” says one of the cops, while another tells him to zip the lip. “There are nuns present!”

There are nuns present indeed.

“I hate cats! Fuck fuck shit shit!”

The nuns all agree that no one heard any sounds coming from the alley. One of the nuns, young Sister Magdalene, cradles the cat in her arms. The old crone nun, Sister Mary Elizabeth, forbids her from bringing it inside the convent. They have a puzzling exchange:

“You’ve heard nothing?” asks Sister Mary Elizabeth.
“Nothing.” says Sister Magdalene.
“I’m sorry, Sister. But you mustn’t lose faith. Six months is not so long in God’s plan.” says Sister Mary Elizabeth.
“In this city, it’s a lifetime.” laments Sister Magdalene.

The no-longer-passed-out prostitute is in a hospital bed at Gotham City General Hospital, a place that looks like rats have been gnawing on the walls for at least seven decades. She’s got a black eye, but that’s it. A fucking vice cop pops into the room and asks her if she’s Selina Kyle, and if she’s up for having a conversation with him. This fucking vice cop is named Flannery. He looks like he fucking sucks.

Flannery tells her that the cops found $5,000 next to her in the alley. “The money’s mine.” she says immediately, and Flannery doesn’t disagree. He wants to know who kicked her ass. “I tripped.” she says flatly.

That Jesus guy can put up with anything. Once you get nailed to a cross, you kind of start letting the little shit go.

Flannery tells her that she could charge the guy with rape, since she’s underage and all. At this point a fucking priest walks in the room asking Selina if she’d “like to take communion”. He also looks like he fucking sucks. She yells at the priest with a very hostile “NO!”. She looks like she’s hissing! Like a cat!

“You change your mind about pressing charges, call me. Even whores got rights.” Flannery tells Selina, leaving a phone number with her. She says “fuck tha police”, but he tells her it’s not his number. It’s not a social worker either. It’s just “a guy who can teach her how to take care of herself”. Pah! Men! Selina Kyle ain’t letting no MAN teach her how to take care of herself!

Before he leaves, she asks him why he even cares. He doesn’t answer.

BACK AT THE DANG NUNNERY, Sister Magdalene is praying in some pew like a dumbass when Sister M. E. frownily approaches. Even Sister M.E. says this kid prays too much. It’s like, goddamn, save some prayin’ for the rest of the nuns.

Some more light is shed on their earlier conversation. Magdalene has a sister who’s disappeared or kidnapped or prostituting or something. Mary Elizabeth tells her that all this praying is fine, maybe, I guess, but her sister has been gone for a while and this convent has some REAL girls who are REALLY ACTUALLY there right now who need help. To this, Magdalene tells M. E. that she’s a cold and cruel woman, but M. E. defends herself as merely a realist.

I’M GUESSING THAT MAGDALENE’S SISTER IS PROSTITUTING. WAIT FOR THE BIG REVEAL, FOLKS.

Selina Kyle, a prostitute (WHAT A COINCIDENCE!), heads back to the street looking for a guy named Stan. She approaches Holly, who we remember from Batman: Year One as the 13-year-old whore who tried to bone Bruce Wayne. She’s Selina’s buddy. She has the same whiny speech she had in the Batman storyline. Selina asks her where Stan is, and Holly protests that he’ll beat her up again if he finds her around here. She ignores that and heads into a hotel. “SELINA! ANSWER ME! SELINA-A-A!” yells Holly.

Interesting that Holly looks very similar, yet Selina has long hair here while she had short hair in the Batman storyline. CONTINUITY, SON.

Stan’s the pimp. “You lookin’ good baby.” he says. Stan’s a charmer. He kisses her neck and apologizes for smackin’ her around and shit. “Not gonna hold it ‘gainst me?” he asks. He looks like a shitty Dick Tracy. Selina asks him where the cats are at, and gets mad at him when he opens a closet. “Relax, Sugar, they’s fine. Theys get to me, thas all.” Bleh.

Stan the Man tells Selina that he got her something. It’s a cat costume! She doesn’t want it. He tells her to put it the fuck on. She says it’s disgusting. “Disgustin?” he drawls, “Hey baby, you the one loves cats. Now you can be one,” he insists. This new john is willing to pay a lot of money. “No freaks,” she pleads, “You promised me no freaks!”

C’mon, baby, jus’ a little furry action for yeh. Haven’ ye bin on de Innernet?

No amount of begging works. They need the money, so, just this once, gotta fuck that freak! 1989, baby! Furries existed before the internet!

Off-panel, Selina calls the number that Flannery gave her, and it turns out to be some guy who’s going to train her to defend herself. “Flannery was right, you don’t know beans about fighting.” the guy tells her, and she spits in his face.

“First lesson: long hair is too easy to grab — lose it.” he says, and there you have it. Sorry about the continuity nazi thing! This guy is named Ted, and he’s going to pretend suddenly that he doesn’t know any cop named Flannery after Selina asks him how many other girls Flannery has sent his way.

Thanks for coming to his Ted Talk. HAHAHA! Kill me.

Ted’s going rate is $100 per hour for self-defense lessons! Selina doesn’t have that kind of money! “Not many do. Relax, sweetheart, maybe you qualify for a discount. If you’re serious.”

And serious, she is! Her hair is all kinds of chopped off, and we’re in the scene from Batman #404 where Bruce Wayne strolls the shitty streets of the shitty part of town, encounters Holly, and gets rough with Stan. Selina is viewing the scene from a higher floor hotel room, just like she was in Batman #404. She’s with some loser, but not the cat fetishest. Holly stabs Bruce Wayne in the leg. Ha! Good times! It’s nice to revisit these old memories.

This is the part where Selina leaps out of the window to defend Holly. Assuming the position and hissing, she tries to kick Bruce but he blocks her attack and knocks her out with one punch. By now, the cops have arrived, and we all know what happens there with him. Been there, done that. Selina is out cold for the second time this issue! Holly tries to get her up.

Due to the scuffle, Selina shows up late for her next appointment with Ted. “Can you show me how to use this?” she asks, holding up a cat o’ nine tails! Of course, obviously, come on now, Ted thinks it’s a dang whore toy.

I bet you had dreams of becoming the first female astronaut scuba diving Olympic gold medalist. I bet you wanted seventeen children.

I bet Ted feels like a big man getting his jabs in. He asks her who she’s REALLY lashing out against. “It’s not that pimp downtown?” he hypothesizes coyly, as if it were any of his buttfuckin’ business! After proving that he knows how to use the cat o’ many many tails, they get to work.

The next couple of pages, as far as I can tell, are lifted straight from Batman #404. It’s the scene where Selina is sleeping in a bed full of cats, and Holly is at the window announcing the SWAT explosions from Batman’s standoff at the abandoned building.

At the scene, Holly’s standing on a car trying to get a better view of Batman. Selina thinks that there will be nothing to see but a corpse, but that’s when the bats start flying in and her mind is changed. “…I don’t know how…but he’ll escape…using the bats…using the costume.” Selina thinks out loud as Batman hops on the cop bike and motors out of there. Her mind gears are really cookin’ now!

At the next session with Ted, Selina claims that she’s not feeling up for anything more in the middle of their training. After mocking her, he tells her to get up and stop whining. “This is Gotham City…it’s already had a taste of you. How much more do you want to give it?”

There’s more of that where that came from, you piece of fuck.

He grabs her arm and starts hurting her, goading her into fighting back. She warns that she’ll hurt him, but he doesn’t stop. So she hurts him. And he stops. And she said “told ya”. And he says “yeah, duh, that was the point”.

Selina got a new plan with the cat costume, baby!

So out she goes, lookin’ like BDSM Felix, and starts stalking Stan the Pimp. She lures him with a phone call:

“Stan–”
“Was the matter? Where are you?”
“In a phone booth. He was wired, Stan, strung out — pulled a knife — God, I think he’s dead, I know he’s dead. What’ll we do?”
“Anybody see? Cops?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. God, Stan, I’m scared.”
“Okay. Jus stay cool. Thas right, I’m comin’, be at the regular spot. Don’ talk to nobody, don’ do nothin…jus waits til you see me.”

And she sees him, all right. She’s perched on top of a roof, catwhip at the ready!

Final Thoughts

lol