Ok, bear with me here. Bat/Cat has been a long time coming, and writer Tom King has had a long time to build us up to this story. In my mind, Batman/Catwoman's twelve issues presumably wraps up King's Batman plan: In Batman's 85 issues, we saw Bruce and Selina come to the conclusion that a wedding wasn't going to make them any more in love, and they don't need any justification to stay together. In Batman Annual #2, we see Bruce and Selina's first and last kisses, villain and vigilante to loving woman on her life partner's deathbed. In Detective Comics #1027, King and Simonson made a story explaining Wayne's succumbing to cancer, thanks to an old encounter with radioactive villain Doctor Phosphorus. And now, in Batman/Catwoman, we'll see Mask of the Phantasm connected to the main DCU comics for the first time, including the Phantasm herself, Andrea Beaumont. We'll also the Bat/Cat love affair across three time periods, but more about that later! Continue Reading to get my breakdown on Batman/Catwoman #1, and the events that got us here! From the very first page, we can clearly understand why artist Clay Mann took such time to create this art for us. The first page is a full spread of Wayne Manor, in all it's Gothic, detailed glory. From here, the bar is set, and Mann strongly keeps up with this self-set standard through the whole comic. If Clay Mann wasn't on your radar as a comic artist, read Batman/Catwoman, and he will be. This is truly one of the most beautiful comics I've ever read.
This issue, and I imagine the entire run of Batman/Catwoman, tells the story of Bruce and Selina's relationship across three separate eras. There is no labeling or explanation when the story jumps from era to era, leaving it to the cleverness of the read to pick up on the changes of faces, costumes, and surroundings to decide which time period we're reading at any given point. While each part of the story is chronologically told intertwined, I'll address each as it's own complete third of the story. The first era in the story is the modern Batman and Catwoman, I suppose as we see them at the end of King's Batman run. Alfred has long since passed, and Andrea Beaumont has come to Gotham in search of her missing son. Andrea, we all know, is Bruce's first love. They met in the animated movie, Mask of the Phantasm, where Andrea turned herself into a masked vigilante out for blood. She had been presumed dead at the end of the movie, in a fire with the Joker. But if the Joker survived, she could have, too. She's been in hiding all these years, only surfacing now for her son. Knowing the truth about Batman, she comes to Bruce for help. Batman later fills in Catwoman on his/their mission, and we see Mann has given Selina a new outfit: similar to her old one, with more facial coverage, and gray added to the color scheme. She looks sleek and modern, and is amazingly calm as she speaks to her lover about his ex-lover's miraculous return. They find the kid's location by fighting Sewer King, an old throwaway character from eons ago. Unfortunately, they arrive too late, and they find the kid's dead body, infected with the Joker virus. Bruce doesn't have good news for the visiting Andrea, who we already know has a tendency to lash out under grief. We only see Andrea sitting alone and blank-faced in her hotel room, alongside a Christmas tree and her old Phantasm costume. The second era from the comics is when their relationship was fresh, not long after we see them in Tom King's Batman Annual (2016) #2 for their first kiss. Here, we see the two of them when they were young, running around rooftops, unable to keep their hands off one another. Words are interrupted with kisses, plans are pushed back as bodies are pressed into walls. And fun fact: any red in the book is actually artist Clay Mann's blood! I jest, but Mann put so much blood, sweat, and tears into this comic, you can actually feel the passion between them. At some point between kisses, Batman gets across that the Joker has recently escaped Arkham, which makes sense, as later on we see Catwoman meeting up with the Clown Prince himself. He's learned of their affair, but the way they talk still isn't tense. The Joker is dressed impeccably, like a classy 1940's mobster. Combined with his comfortable, almost fatherly way of addressing Catwoman, the Joker comes off as a much less off-the-rails psychopath than a lot of versions we've seen previously. With this Joker, one can almost see how an over-eager Harleen Quinzel could fall for his charm. And though Selina meets with her fellow villain, she doesn't give away anything about her new lover. The final era of story we're introduced to is in the future, with an aging, grey-haired Catwoman driving out to visit some old friend, in Florida. He's just an old man, clearly too old to be Dick or Jason, especially not Damion. They greet one another as friends and make pleasantries, listing some names of his children and grandchildren, none of which provide any identifying details for the old man. Selina, however, updates him that her daughter, Helena, is dating a nice doctor woman. Helena, the Batwoman of Gotham, is the daughter of Bruce and Selina, introduced by King in Batman Annual #2. She keeps the mantle of her father and aunt, wearing a red wig like previous Batwomen, and answering to the Bat-Signal. Selina is here to see this old man with news, bad news. Bruce has passed, she announces conversationally, surrounded by family, as we see in that same Batman Annual issue. The mystery man shows real sadness and grief over hearing this news, almost as if he wished he could have been there, too. But then the conversation changes, without the tone budging an inch. Selina tells him that since Bruce is dead, she's come to kill him for what he did to Andrea Beaumont. He almost falls into her arms, his laugh turning into something sinister and familiar. The page turns, and we see the old man is the Joker in disguise, even older and weaker than ever, disappeared off into Flordia to retire in peace. Clearly, the Joker was the reason for the death of Andrea's young son in Gotham, but it sounds like there is much more to the story. No doubt the pieces will reveal themselves as the issues go along, giving Selina a strong enough reason to search out the retired, now-harmless Joker, just to kill him over what he did to Andrea, her life-partner's first love. I'm excited to see how King portrays Catwoman and Andrea's relationship, as Selina isn't known for her jealousy, but isn't known for having a large group of female friends, and Andrea likely doesn't know about Selina, yet, in the part of the story she's appeared. I'm very curious how all these relationships turn out to be what we see in the future era, with the aging hero and villain. Plus, we know we'll be seeing more of Helena Wayne's Batwoman, according to King's interviews, which is another relationship dynamic we get to watch play out. And for anyone sitting around, trying to figure out how the Cat outlives the Bat, turn to Detective Comics #1027. Tom King writes a story Walt Simonson about Batman's encounter with a villain, Doctor Phosphorus. As they battle, we hear the villain's monologue, post-capture, about how he's still beaten Batman. How is this possible? Because he leaked his radiation on him, which will one day turn to cancer and kill him. Sure enough, in Batman Annual #2, when we first see Helena, she's telling her mother that not even Zatanna has a cure for cancer, and her father's death is imminent. This interconnected web of Tom King Batman stories is such a pleasure to continue discovering, and we have eleven more issues of Batman/Catwoman to enjoy it in, alongside Clay Mann's incomparable art.
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