I have so many thoughts on the whole DC comics mess, because I believe it’s been the most awesome conversation of at least the latter half of the month. But I am still a little stuck on Catwoman. Not just on her gravity defying boob or her bizarre choice in undergarments (I mean, seriously, they are smart enough to give her practical shoes but not to give her a sports bra?), but this picture in particular, which is supposed to be her and Batman… you know… doing it.
Now, it’s not just that the longer I stare at this the more I’m convinced that her vagina is even with his taint (and yes, people, I am pondering Batman’s taint. That’s what the world has come to. Ponderations of Batman’s taint. You know whose taint you never think about? The Joker’s. And I for one appreciate that.), it’s that her pants are on. People, look at Batman’s body language (and I’m sorry, please try to stop thinking about his taint). His hands are down by his side. His knees are bent. She is on his lap, touching him, but seated so his boner is between them not actually in contact with her.
This–right here–isn’t sex. She has her pants on. It’s a lap dance.
Now, I know that we adults all the imagine that, after the lap-dance portion of the evening, they actually had sex. Perhaps Batman was even allowed to touch her.
But what the artist is portraying is something that, I think, is supposed to read sexy, but instead reads pretty sad. Everyone is, presumably, riled up but no one is enjoying themselves. It’s so very weirdly chaste. There’s no sex in the Champagne Room and, for as graphic as it seems at first glance, there’s no sex on the rooftop.
Do the people at DC get that this isn’t a “mature” depiction of sex but a really adolescent one? No one takes their pants off. The man doesn’t touch the woman. He doesn’t address her pleasure. He barely addresses his own?
I don’t know. It’s weird. I hope there’s not a lot of young guys out there thinking “Oh, man, I want to be with a woman like Batman was with Cat woman!” when Batman doesn’t touch her and she’s not driven to even move her pants out of the way.
You deserve more, young straight men of America, than a woman who rubs her clothed crotch against you and calls it good.
Young straight women of America, I would tell you that you deserve more than a guy who whips out his hard-on and then puts his hands by his side and fundamentally leaves you alone with his penis, but I think we both know that you didn’t make it that far in this comic book.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I’m baffled as to why so many people are wasting so much energy criticizing DC right now. How utterly pointless. Why bother with an “industry” that so obviously doesn’t care about you? DC/Marvel/etc comics are fundamentally terrible (and getting worse) and they always will be, and they’re fundamentally not for you and they never will be. They’re not for kids, they’re not for women, they’re not for most men. They are made only for a very small, captive audience of middle-aged men on some serious Stockholm syndrome shit. Even the people who like them don’t like them! They keep buying them because they have a problem.
Oh, and please only refer to it as The Bat Taint. It deserves that respect. (John Byrne is already mad at you. Don’t make things worse.)
Between the sex with billionaires who could die at any moment, secret identities, poor life choices, and appearance in periodicals, I’m having trouble telling the difference between Catwoman and Anna Nicole Smith.
I had very, very hard time figuring out what was going on in that picture. With out your description I might never have guessed.
I think that’s the sole of her right foot visible in the lower left side which means she’s also sitting crosslegged. Somehow.
Elias, that seems to leave us in a place, though, where most of us give up on the shared stories of our culture. I mean, for better or worse, these are our myths. To say that they’re not for most of us when we’ve already fallen in love seems unfair. Why sell us on the TV shows and the movies and then say “And now we’re relaunching in a way that will bring in new readers!” and have that failure be considered good enough?
If things ever entered the public domain any more, I’d be less concerned, because eventually people could just take Batman or Superman or Catwoman in the direction that is meaningful for them.
But they don’t, which puts a burden on the rightsholder to fucking get it right.
Rheather, I think it’s clear by now that the artist has never actually looked at human bodies, but only studied how other people have drawn them. I would not be surprised to learn he was a very smart anemone of some sort.
Yes. You fell in love with Starfire or Batman or whomever. Then they messed it up. They broke your heart. When someone breaks your heart, don’t hang around and let them do it again.
No, I feel like it’s more “You moved, so the only way you can see your friends is on Facebook” “Yes, but I need you to take pictures of them that aren’t just them as sex-bots.” “But you can only see your friends through my pictures.” “Yes, could you take some pictures of them I can look at in public without being embarrassed.” “My pictures are the pictures of your friends.”
That’s not my friends breaking my heart. That’s me being frustrated with the people arbitrating how I can see those friends.
My comments concern comic books only, not longjohn heroes in other media. Movies & tee vee shows are produced for general audiences, not just the insular fan community that consumes the comic books. At best, the comics are R&D for those other media.
That little girl who loved Starfire loved her on the Teen Titans cartoon. DC would be smart to put that same version of Starfire into a comc book that little girl would buy and love, but they’re not going to do it because they’re idiots. (In fairness there have been some kid-oriented comic books (Batman Adventures) that were supposedly good.)
It’s a truism that the people who draw DC/Marvel/etc comic books learned to draw exclusively from other comic books…drawn by people who learned from comic books. Thus every generation gets more inbred and farther from reality. Current artists learned to draw from Rob Leifeld who learned to draw from Neal Adams who learned to draw from Jack Kirby who learned to draw from life.
Many artists probably copied porn mags too, which might explain some of the ridiculous poses (but not the downright impossible ones).
Sorry, who is who in your analogy?
I am the moved person. Batman is my friend. DC is the crappy photographer.
The Bat Taint is absent from the analogy, unless it’s Facebook.
I guess I agree with you about all this stuff. I just find it depressing.
Facebook is definitely the Bat Taint. I’m pretty sure that was Zuckerberg’s nickname at Harvard.
Seriously, I feel bad for bloggers who don’t have as awesome a commentariat as I do!
I’m saying: Leave that crappy photographer and don’t look back. He hurt you once; he’ll do it again. Call me if you need a safe place to stay.
I’m beating a dead horse at this point but read Noah Berlatsky’s summation here. He nailed it.
You just think he nailed it because he says what you say. Ha ha ha.
I tease, but this is just convincing me more and more that unending copyright sucks. I mean, complain all you want about unauthorized versions degrading the brand, but how is this not degrading the brand? And by the brand!
He says what I say but he says it better.