InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "will you still love me?"

drsevarius (drsevarius) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-27 09:01:00

Entry tags:

char: batman/bruce wayne, char: catwoman/selina kyle, char: joker, char: robin/catgirl/carrie kelly, creator: frank miller, series: bat/cat, title: the dark knight returns

Bat/Cat: The Dark Knight Returns

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batcookies
2009-04-27 02:59 pm UTC (link)

Turning the most famous woman in comics into a former prostitute that decides to wear a costume after seeing "a real man", and then having her become a prostitute (Madame, whatever) again as she gets older... this still remains the worst thing Miller ever did, and one of the worst moments in comics history.

Which is a pity, because I otherwise love Year One to pieces.

And of course, other people just had to keep trying to top it. Not just a prostitute, but a raped underage one that ended up in the hospital pissing blood! And her first costume was fetish gear one of her "Johns" wanted her to wear! And not only was she underage when she was introduced to prostitution, she was VERY underage, and her bestest friend in the whole wide world ended up going crazy and trying to kill her, years later, because she and Selina were both working the streets and Selina wasn't the one picked by a VERY bad man!

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bluefall
2009-04-27 03:36 pm UTC (link)

I like the Wonder Woman costume here. It's so deliberate. I don't know what precisely is deliberate - does he just want that visual of Batman kissing Wonder Woman? Is he trying to implicate Wonder Woman as a fetish concept? Was he like, "oh, she's bound and she's sort of a female superhero, wink wink"? - but it's definitely something.

To be honest, I don't have that big an issue with Selina's prostitution in Y1 - I don't care for the story either way and from where I'm standing, it's just Miller being Miller, and after a while you sort of start to pity him. It could have been just a blip on the radar, y'know? What fills me with rage is that, post-ZH, we got an utterly gorgeous and totally appropriate retcon to that, a clean, perfect, perfectly Catwoman story that made absolute sense for everything she became and the role she plays in the mythos.

And then everyone after went right back to Miller's drooling idiocy, with that feverish desire to be even more droolingly idiotic. Like... it's not even the gender stuff, because, aggravating as it is, it's also something I expect most comic writers, even the really good ones, to just completely not notice. It's the fact that the ZH reboot is simply a better story, which fits far better with her characterization and behavior. It's hard to believe that anything short of active malice could drive someone to go back to Miller after that, much less try to top it.

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	magus_69 2009-04-27 05:16 pm UTC (link)
	What is the post-ZH origin? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-04-27 05:19 pm UTC (link)
	Precocious corrupt orphanage escapee, essentially. Gimmie a few days, I'll do a post. (Reply to this) (Parent)

batcookies
2009-04-27 07:39 pm UTC (link)

You can find it in Catwoman 0, "Cat Shadows", by Doug Moench.

It's one of the Catwoman stories every Catwoman fan must read.

The other ones being
1. "Only Happy When it Rains," (Catwoman #58-60), by Devin Grayson (great great analysis of what makes her tick)
2. "Larceny Loves Company" (Catwoman 28-30), by Chuck Dixon (Selina doing an "Ocean's Eleven," kinda)
and
3. "Catfile" (Catoman 15-19), by Chuck Dixon (on the one hand it's brain-in-neutral comic junk food. On the other hand, when did that become a bad thing? It's got a Nazi Nursing Home and Catwoman swordfighting while wearing a wedding dress!)

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Just musing

ashtoreth
2009-04-27 09:57 pm UTC (link)

Joker would've put Selina in the Wonder Woman outfit. From his point of view, it would suit her--she is more heroic than villainous. It was probably popular: powerful woman controlling you, powerful woman at your mercy, powerful woman in your cosplay fantasy. Of course, there's all the bondage themes that go with Wonder Woman, including the one where if she's bound by a man, she loses her powers.

Or maybe Joker is a secret Bat/Diana fan. In one stroke, he's set up a Diana as damsel in distress act. It could allude to no-men-allowed virginal and pure Diana, spirit of a purer America. Or Miller knew about Supes/Diana already, and having Bruce rescue Wonder Woman the Whore sets up a triangle/threesome thing.

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xlineartx
2009-04-27 05:49 pm UTC (link)

I kind of assumed she was more of a professional dom, which seems classier, and the whole thing about a real man can be taken as part of her shtick. I figured she put on a costume because she kind of always wanted to and it's not as weird to do so if someone else did it first. That's probably too generous of a reading for Frank Miller, though, what with his weird prostitute fixation.

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