Selina Kyle

35 years ago - Selina Kyle is born in Gotham City’s East End, the daughter of dock worker Brian Kyle & Marie Kyle, a waitress and girlfriend of Carmine Falcone.

31 years ago - 4-year-old Selina's mother Marie Kyle is abandoned by Carmine Falcone, and soon commits suicide. Her father’s alcoholism worsens. She retreats into dance and gymnastics.

28 years ago - 7-year-old Selina's father succumbs to alcoholism. She leaves home before any authorities can find her, releasing all of her mother's cats. She is caught a few weeks later stealing from a street vendor, arrested, and sent to the Seagate Reform School for Girls. The director singles her out for punishment, but she continually finds ways to escape and explore the rooftops.

26 years ago - 9-year-old Selina catches the director of Seagate embezzling city funds. She’s tied and thrown into the ocean to drown, but manages to escape and steal evidence of the crime, blackmailing the director into wiping her identity from Gotham records. She returns to the city, surviving as a thief in the East End.

22 years ago - 13-year-old Selina is allowed to train in Henry Grant’s boxing gym.

20 years ago - 15-year-old Selina Kyle first becomes a cat burglar.

18 years ago - 17-year-old Selina saves her neighbor's daughter, Holly Robinson, from a corrupt cop. She meets former boxing champ Ted Grant, who starts to train her.

16 years ago - 19-year-old Selina pulls her most daring heist yet, making several million once the money is cleaned. She buys her building,
letting Holly Robinson and her mother stay there for free. She moves to a luxury penthouse, posing as a mysterious new socialite and animal rights activist, becoming one of Gotham's wealthy elite, while continuing to secretly rob them.

14 years ago - 21-year-old Selina is introduced to Bruce Wayne, and later watches Batman stop a group of hijackers. Inspired, she creates her first Catwoman costume, bating him with elaborate heists, beginning their pattern of antagonistic flirtation.

12 years ago - 22-year-old Selina steals evidence of mayor Rupert Thorne's corruption to use as leverage against him when he threatens her. Thorne hires Private Investigator Slam Bradley to find her but when she reveals why Thorne is after her he walks away from the case. Selina learns that Holly Robinson has run away from her mother, and threatens her to clean up so Holly can find a safe home.

9 years ago - 26-year-old Selina rejects Roman Sionis's offer to work for him. A mysterious photo leak exposes her past, and she loses her position in Gotham society. Returning to the East End, Slam Bradley convinces her that she could make a difference for the people here.

8 years ago - 27-year-old Selina's building is broken into by Holly Robinson. She becomes Selina’s roommate & confidant, regularly training with her & Ted Grant.

7 years ago - 28-year-old Selina and Slam Bradley become closer when he takes apart the street gang trying to recruit Holly Robinson.

5 years ago - 30-year-old Selina discovers that it was Roman Sionis that leaked her photos. He has Slam Bradley & Holly Robinson kidnapped, nearly killing Bradley before Holly escapes and saves them, all trying to break Selina. She confronts Sionis and, in a moment of desperation, shoots and kills him, ready for his men to kill her in retaliation. Batman saves her, and finally condones her work in the East End. She meets Tim Drake, giving him some insight into Batman.

4 years ago - 31-year-old Selina knows immediately that Jean Paul Valley isn't Batman, collecting information about him with the help of Slam Bradley. Bruce Wayne reveals his identity to her, and she helps him recover his suit and reclaim his mantle. Their relationship moves forward.

3 years ago - 32-year-old Selina sneaks through a teleporter to save the Watchtower from Curt Calhoun. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she retires as Catwoman, handing over the mantle to Holly Robinson. She moves, with her daughter Helena Kyle, to the Université Notre Dame Des Ombres. Bruce Wayne pays for Helena's full tuition.

Comics are, if nothing else, a study of archetypes. Catwoman is a textbook femme fatale, but what that looks like and what it means to a story has evolved over time, to say nothing of the role of women in general. We can watch as she is either a criminal who is fully an antagonist to Batman, or else she is romantically obsessed with him and only engages in crime to get his attention, and all the permutations in between. In recent decades we've seen her develop a really fantastic central narrative of her own, to the point where she might actually be one of the most developed comic book supporting cast members there's ever been. Her romance with Bruce has been given more and more focus, and while we do think that's extremely relevant, We'd also argue that Selina has a pretty great story to tell all on her own.

Selina's Comic History

The first issue of Batman's self titled series from 1940 featured several firsts; Batman's origin, the first appearance of the Joker, and a quaint little closed-room mystery story called 'The Cat' in which Batman and Robin stop a jewelry heist on a yacht, finding letters from the mysterious burglar, the Cat. By the end of the story, Batman deduces that the elderly woman Miss Peggs is actually a beautiful young woman in disguise. We don't get her name, but we do get all the classic beats of the Batman/Catwoman dynamic. After she's caught she seductively attempts to convince him to go away with her, and while he is tempted he rebuffs her, saying they're on opposite sides of the law. Less than a two pages after meeting her, he 'accidentally' allows her to escape, even 'clumsily' bumping into Robin before he can stop her.

This was largely their dynamic for several issues, with Selina focusing on her disguise skills and functioning as a femme fatale potential love interest for Batman who, lest we forget, was still engaged to Julie Madison at the time. eventually she debuted a truly bizarre first draft of her Catwoman costume before landing on the look that would more or less define this whole era of the character. Bruce would regularly find himself in the position of saving her from some threat, and would pretty much always 'accidentally' allow her to escape. This became a problem after the imposition of the Comics Code, which among other things forbid the depiction of criminals getting away with their crime... which meant that for a long while Catwoman was taken out of the rotation of Batman foes.

Catwoman's big revival happened in the next big shake-up of the Batman mythology; the 1966 Adam West live-action TV show. One of the show's most popular recurring villains, Catwoman quickly returned to the comics, the flirtatious antagonism turned down and with Batman actually arresting her after her capers. She would eventually claim to have gone straight, setting her up as a potential love interest for Bruce, although the possibility that she would relapse into crime was always there. (meanwhile, over in Earth 2, the Golden Age Catwoman actually fully rehabilitated, married Bruce, and their daughter Helena became the Huntress.)

Post-Crisis, Batman lore was reset in the Frank Miller story Year One, which included Selina in its worldbuilding. This was followed by a four-issue Mindy Newell miniseries elaborating on her origins, which in turn was followed by her own ongoing series by Jim Balent featuring the now infamous purple costume. This series really built up Selina to be a much more active part of the Batman mythos, participating all of the huge crossovers of the era. It ended in 2001 with Selina presumed dead, but this set up one of the most outstanding character revamps comics have ever seen.

Darwin Cooke delivered Selina's Big Score, a big, brassy, freight train of a heist adventure with Selina right smack in the middle of it. He gave the character a whole new set of storytelling building blocks to play with and followed it by doing the art for Ed Brubakers subsequent ongoing series. They completely doubled down on Selina's new characterization from Big Score, really cementing everything we love about Selina today.

Our Selina Story

Whether it's the original Golden Age Catwoman, the versions of the character based on the TV series, or the post-crisis rooftop prowler, Selina has been pretty thoroughly reimagined several times, and has had a few different origins assigned to her for us to pick through. We found ourselves gravitating toward the one told in the Zero Hour reboot in the #0 issue of the Jim Balent series, where she managed to escape a reform school and have her identity wiped so she can survive on her own on the streets from a very young age, and develop herself into a world class cat-burglar.

It's not exactly an innovation, as there are versions of this idea found scattered through her backstory, but I don't know if I've personally ever seen this literally stated; we imagine that at one point, Selina pulls off one major heist, which makes her enough money to leave behind the street kid who honed her abilities on Gotham's rooftops, and let her reinvent herself as the wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne was introduced to. Later she has that world stripped from her (drawing on some of her conflict with Black Mask from the Brubaker series) forcing her return to the East End... only for her to discover a new purpose for herself, as well as a whole cast of supporting characters of her own.

Selina's Costume

Selina has had so many costumes over her long career, often reflecting both the evolution of her character and a window into the comic industry's relationship with female characters in general. There are tons of fascinating examinations of her evolution all over the internet like this fun one by Jessica Plummer at Bookriot. There's not a lot I can say about all these costumes that hasn't already been said by Jessica or tons of other writers, but there's just so much to explore here I want to do it anyway.

Even before she first put on any Catwoman costume, the mysterious Cat did have a signature look once her disguise came off. She would regularly wear some version of the green dress she debuted in. There is, of course, that weird detour into her unnerving full cat-mask costume that she wore when she was first transitioning from a mysterious costumed thief into a more traditional comic book baddie, but once they settled on her classic dress and cape costume it's actually pretty amazing how long it endured. This is very much her default Golden Age and Earth 2 costume, and we're even using it as the new costume for Paula Brooks.

Comics often take their cues from other media, but I would argue that this is even more important for a character like Selina whose look and characterization can change so drastically from one source to another. In this case, while there are
innovative depictions that carve out their own version of the character, depictions that are competent without really saying anything about her, or even depictions we can just safely pull the curtain over, in a conversation about live action depictions that have had a lasting effect on Catwoman there are really only two that matter.

The first, of course, is the 66 TV series which, given that the character hadn't been seen in almost a decade essentially had to recreate the character from scratch. They did so pretty much entirely for the single express purpose of putting Julie Newmar in a slinky catsuit, which essentially became Catwoman's main defining costume element from that point forward. When Selina appeared again in the comics, her new costume would also be a catsuit for the first time.

The second major live-action depiction is in Batman Returns. Michelle Pfeiffer's full-body latex costume with its visible corseting, is most notable here for essentially saying the quiet part out loud, acknowledging the fetish gear elements that had subtly been part of the character forever. Subsequent costumes would, for better or for worse, feel comfortable dabbling in that space. Also, while Catwoman had previously carried a cat o nine tails, after Pfeiffer she would consistently ALWAYS be using an Indiana Jones bullwhip.

Of course, when Batman Returns was depicting Selina in fetishwear, it wasn't a completely original idea. Selina's story swerved into some pretty unsavory directions in Frank Miller's Year One, elements Mindy Newell picked up and extrapolated on in her miniseries. The costume they used, however, didn't include those elements; it was a simplification of the catsuit that actually included a full cowl, whiskers and a tail. This is now generally what is depicted in-world as Selina's first costume.

The mid-90s purple costume really does require context. This is right in the midst of the infamous 'bad girl' comic era, when comics featuring scantily clad, anatomically improbable female characters were all the rage, so much so that Selina's look here can actually be considered tame for the time. For better or worse this look did drive Catwoman to become even more popular. I honestly don't think its even considered all that canon anymore at this point, like everyone wants to just skip from the Frank Miller costume to what comes next.

In the same way Darwin Cooke revitalized Selina's story, he also put together hands down her absolute best costume. This might actually be one of the best mainstream comic character makeovers... ever? The goggles, the use of the belt, and cowl, and boots... every version of Selina from here forward draws entirely from this look. There have been changes since then, but I just don't think this is something you CAN improve. It's perfect.

Selina's Future

Part of what we really love to do with our timeline project is to take advantage of the fact that not every status quo of every character needs to be happening NOW. Beloved versions of classic characters can absolutely have existed earlier in the timeline. Sometimes we find elements of a character's story that we can use to start to evolve them past what they once were, moving the narrative into a new chapter. Arguably, Selina might be the absolute best-case example.

After the One Year Later time jump crossover in 2006, Selina was shown having stepped away from being Catwoman, with Holly stepping into the role, because Selina had become a mother. It's possibly the ONLY One Year Later storyline with some real potential. It was fascinating to watch Selina taking on this new role, but of course this was an ongoing comic and eventually it needed to reset itself back to its status quo.

Well we don't have to do that. We can actually have Selina make this new role her own. Knowing she needs to find a way to protect her daughter from the dangers of her life, she actually moves away from Gotham, staying as a pseudo guest of the Université Notre Dame Des Ombres, Sandra Knight's finishing school & training operation. She wouldn't be employed there, per se, but you can just imagine her being a disruptive element in their school while also being literally the best person anyone there could learn from. With Holly stepping up to become the new Catwoman, this just feels like such a fascinating evolution of one of DC's oldest & most beloved characters.

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