Catman
44 years ago - Thomas Blake is born.
29 years ago - 15-year-old Thomas is acknowledged as one of the best hunters in the world.
25 years ago - 19-year-old Thomas moves to Africa where he begins hunting & trading in endangered species.
17 years ago - 27-year-old Thomas retires to Gotham, wealthy from years as a poacher & smuggler.
12 years ago - 32-year-old Thomas, bored, decides to join the ranks of Gotham's costumed criminals, competing for Carmine Falcone's 50 million dollar bounty on Batman.
11 years ago - 33-year-old Thomas is shot & beaten by The Joker. He retreats to his lodge in Africa.
5 years ago - 39-year-old Thomas, after living for years among a pride of lions, one of them is killed by a poacher. He tracks him & kills him, but is caught & extradited on old warrants, recruited to the Suicide Squad by Amanda Waller. He and Floyd Lawton try to kill each other, but soon build a begrudging respect.
3 years ago - 41-year-old Thomas is released from the Suicide Squad having completed his term with the team. He returns to Africa.
1 year ago - 43-year-old Thomas returns to America to help Floyd Lawton track and kill the agents of Kobra responsible for threatening his daughter Zoe Torres, who is the first to recognize their clear chemistry.
Catman was a pretty run-of-the-mill Silver Age C-list villain for decades. He was a known quantity, but as Kevin Smith pointed out in his Green Arrow run, the whole idea of him driving a catmobile and using a catarang was just too silly for him to ever be taken seriously.
Which is why his redesign in 2005 stands out so much; he's an example of exactly what can happen when you find a role for a character that previously didn't have one. This is something we are often trying to do with characters in our own timeline, so it's really cool to see what it looks like when it's done by one of the best writers in comics.
Which is why his redesign in 2005 stands out so much; he's an example of exactly what can happen when you find a role for a character that previously didn't have one. This is something we are often trying to do with characters in our own timeline, so it's really cool to see what it looks like when it's done by one of the best writers in comics.
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Catman's Comic HistoryCatman's first appearance was in Detective Comics #311 in 1963. Thomas Blake was another wealthy bachelor in Gotham, an expert in capturing, training, and selling big cats, who decided to fight his boredom by using his expertise with big cats to take over the role of cat-themed criminal from the at-that-point reformed Catwoman.
He was a classic, prototypical Batman baddie from that era, climbing giant improbable props and unleashing outlandish weapons like a giant metal cat he could ride. He even hit on Batwoman and invited her to partner with him as a way to give notes of the relationship between Bruce & Selena, although without the undercurrent of attraction. Catman continued to make periodic appearances for several decades, always made a decent enough showing for himself, but never really elevated himself beyond C-tier villain status. His whole schtick was always just a little too derivative to ever make him stand out. |
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There actually was an earlier take on Catman that tried (and technically succeeded) to innovate on his concept. During Brad Meltzer's run on the 2001 Green Arrow series, which brought back Oliver Queen after his death in Green Arrow vol 2 #101 in 1995, we discover that Thomas Blake is now a former villain that has gained some weight and was still wearing his costume while he watches TV. It worked as part of that series, which was written as a very competent tour of DC's history, but it also represented a pretty rough interpretation of Blake himself.
He saw a massive redemption a few years later in the pages of Gail Simone's Villains United, and it's follow-up series Secret Six. We find Blake having lived for years in the African Savana among a lion pride, a pretty crazy premise but one that instantly upgraded Blake into a brawler of the highest order, suddenly totally believable as a match for practically anyone in the entire DC catalog. It was also really obvious that Gail Simone loved writing this character, making him quest for redemption but forever unable to see just how at odds his desire to be a better person was with the twisted actions he took to get there. He was a brutal killer who WANTED to have a heart of gold. Simone returned to a short lived Secret Six series after the New 52 and wrote Catman one more time, but once she moved on, that was essentially the last we saw of this character. |
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Catman's CostumeThere are pretty distinct eras in Catman's history, and because of this there are a few different angles you can take on what his costume should look like. Obviously, that original costume is an artifact of the Silver Age, and in the years when he continued to operate as a recurring villain multiple attempts were made to modernize it. None of them are particularly BAD, but you do find yourself questioning why he's wearing a cape in the first place unless he's deliberately trying to mimic Batman.
When he started to show up in the Secret Six, that costume suddenly started to look really cool, with the addition of the shoulder straps and the new logo, but it does all still seem a little out of place. The new 52 Secret Six series was notably not fantastic, but it did introduce a completely original costume for Blake which was designed very deliberately to show him off, and I think an an argument could possibly be made to make this his new primary look. |
Our Catman StoryBecause we have the benefit of making our timeline from scratch, we can re-work Catman's initial run as a Batman rogue so that he has more of a purpose. There's a distinct shift that happened in the world of Gotham villains when they transitioned from gangsters and career thieves to freaks and lunatics, and we can very easily use Catman as a tent pole to illustrate that shift. Making him a young gentleman hunter that chooses to try his hand as a costumed villain gives him a Silver Age flair, but still fits into the early days of Gotham. Now, when he experiences his fall from grace in the form of a brutal beating and humiliation at the hands of the Joker, it does more than just take him out of the story for a time, it serves to illustrate the change Gotham is undergoing.
Blake's return in the pages of Secret Six is a huge part of who this character is and the main reason to include him, but of course we're not using that team at all. Instead, since perhaps the most important part of his role in that series was his relationship with Deadshot, who is a mainstay with the Suicide Squad, we can reproduce that story as part of that team. He's an ideal match, and we can include him as part of the main team that goes on to actually secure their own freedom. Later, we put together another interaction between these two where we can -showcase perhaps the best part of this series. |
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Catman & DeadshotVillains United and the Secret Six were published in the mid 2000s, as mainstream comics were just starting to get comfortable depicting queer characters. It already included Scandal Savage, so it clearly had no issue with being overt in it's representation, which is why it's so interesting that it was so subtle in the exploration of the relationship between these two men.
While it was very clear that both of these characters at least were attracted to women (Blake even had a child with Cheshire). there was a lingering connection between the two of them that was entirely sub-textual, but also entirely unmistakable. Neither of them seemed like they would ever be capable of acknowledging it, but it was clear they had developed a bond. In the years to follow Blake would regularly be written as bisexual when that sort of thing was more normalized in mainstream comics, but this relationship, I'd argue, is actually a groundbreaking one, where Gail Simone showed these two characters finding something in each other that neither of them was looking for. We want to make sure we include this in our timeline, but chose to keep it unspoken. It's only when they work together to save Deadshot's daughter, and she sees them interact with each other, that she points out their obvious connection. |
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