Romance history in the comics ? WonderBat vs BatCat ?
Not so long ago, a BatCat fan cross tagged one of her post about Rebirth Batman #40, surely as a result of the WonderBat development in both Issues #39 and #40 …
I made a comment about BatCat being from an historical stand point more like a “War/Sex/Hate” kind of relationship rather than a real “Love Story” and of course it unleashed “War/Hate” …
Over the time I’ve read numerous comments about how much BatCat “love” you can find in the history of Batman and Catwoman , how old their “Love story” is, and thus I was kind of confused with what I could remember from my own youth or recent history … but I had really a hard time to see any signs of such an old and strong love story.
So I decided to check the comics for real legit history, rather than just reading another post from other people, who read themselves from other posts, that resume other posts, written out of informations from other posts …
But DC Comics has a wast History … and I don’t really have access to all the comics ever published … so what do you do ? and where do you start ?
I couldn’t and I didn’t go extensively into oldtimers as far as the 40′s, the 50′s, the 60′s or the 70′s … but usually people agree that prior to the 80′s Catwoman was just one of many villains and any romance was impossible because of that.
In an Issue from April 1968 of “the Brave and the Bold”, Wonder Woman falls in love for real with Batman after faking it first. A year later Steve Trevor Dies in her arms in a WW Issue of 1969. Later in another Brave and the Bold Issue 1978 Batman puts himself on purpose in danger of death to push Wonder Woman to surpass herself and break the chains that kept her prisoner earlier… it seems she cared enough… Meanwhile Catwoman, no matter the outfit, just wanted to get him into a coffin…
Still I was wrong and there is no point in denying that there are stories were he had a “love story” with Selina Kyle like the one below in the Batman (1940) Serie, but she was always a repentant criminal :
(Bruce and Selina - #308, #317, # 326 from 1981 to 1982)
Unlike the Catwoman in “Rebirth Batman”, the Selina in the Bronze era decided to turn her back on her criminal activities in #308 and that enabled the starting of a relationship with Bruce Wayne in # 317. Bruce knew about her Catwoman identity but he didn’t tell her that he was Batman. Even though she sincerely stopped her criminal activities, he didn’t trust his Girlfriend and she broke up the relationship because of that in #326. After that she had to put again the Catwoman mask and learned later that he was the Batman, she even became his “sidekick” in #392 a few Issues before the end of Bronze Age Batman.
Warning : If You “keep reading”, note that I cover mainly the Modern Age of DC Comics (around 1987 until now). I try to focus on the Batman and Catwoman relationship but parallel it with some important WonderBat moments to get a better overview. This may end up “pro-WonderBat” but it is not “anti-Catwoman”. And you should not judge Selina too quickly or too hard, even if she looks quite messed up. She did go through quite a bad twisted history as well as Bruce, but she didn’t have a caring butler, she wasn’t bathed in limitless wealth, securely sheltered in a great mansion, and for a girl/woman, the corrupted and evil streets of Gotham are a lot worse than for a boy/man …
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