The Naked Catwoman Panels That Ended Up On DC's Cutting Room Floor

[tmande2nd]

"Hey here is a strong and cool woman!...Who gets naked on a video camera to get a guys attention...yeah"

At least they cut it but REALLY? That is just in bad taste

 

[Sylocat]

While it is a bit porntastic, the pages were apparently intended to advance Catwoman's character development. As March puts it, "The action in this scene was a depiction of who Selina was: a woman taking advantage of her sexuality to get something from a man.

What a bold, innovative creative choice for a comic book superheroine. Such artistic integrity.

 

[TravelerSF]

Another remark that came to my mind about this: IF Selina is now supposed to be a woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon, this is probably the clumsiest way to do it. It lacks elegance and is like trying to duel with a fricking CLUB; clumsy, amateurish and unnecessary primal. This is a teenager's idea of seduction. If you want to demonstrate Selina's skills as a seductress, show her melting Bats with a mere whisper, a look or a passing touch against his skin.

 

[RossaLincoln]

While it is a bit porntastic, the pages were apparently intended to advance Catwoman's character development. As March puts it, "The action in this scene was a depiction of who Selina was: a woman taking advantage of her sexuality to get something from a man.

What a bold, innovative creative choice for a comic book superheroine. Such artistic integrity.

Yeah, like I said earlier, my sarcasm here might have been a little too dry. It's ridiculous. The only reason at all I'm slightly willing to give this justification the benefit of the doubt is that Judd Winnick was the writer. But with the New 52 being so uniformly horrible, I just... blegh.

But for the record, the word "apparently" in that sentence should be read with the same tone you'd normally say "with all due respect". Because seriously.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

I'm still amazed at how... backwards?... the New 52 was in regards to most of their women. First issue of Catwoman spent THREE WHOLE PAGES showing her getting dressed in provocative poses before we even see her FACE and the issue ends with her boning Batman on a rooftop. Barbara Gordon went from a leader and hero that refused to let her paralysis keep her from becoming comic's first "online age" heroine and mentor... and regressed her to her "ideal" Batgirl persona (at the expense of TWO other heroines). Wonder Woman was rebooted as Superman's girlfriend... They decided Amanda "The Wall" Waller was too big and fat (that was the POINT) and gave her a generic super-slim/busty body. They turned Harley Quinn from adorable jester girl into a flesh-baring stripper. And the lobotomy they gave Starfire, turning her from sweet and sensitive into emotionless, cold, sex-starved idiot, is already legendary.

I just... ugh. They DO know there are women readers out there, right? Ones that would prefer having better female heroines out there representing them? I get that it's still painfully male driven, and it's not like the 90's did us proud either (those poor spines...), but DC had a lot of GOOD things going for them in regards to their women and just... dropped the ball on pretty much ALL of them.

I honestly can't think of a single female heroine at DC that I don't think is less interesting than they were prior to the New 52. Not a single solitary one. Not Mera, not Wonder Woman, not Power Girl, not Batgirl, not Starfire, not Black Canary, not Catwoman... nobody.

This X1000. However, you forgot a fundamental difference between the old Amanda Waller and the new Amanda Waller.

The old Amanda Waller was a woman who could intimidate Batman into backing down just through sheer force of character. (Yes, they changed that some for Justice League Unlimited.) yet still retain enough empathy for the troops under her command to openly berate Sgt. Steel for attempting to blow up Kobra's station with the Suicide Squad still inside.

The new Amanda Waller is a sadist and a bully who cares nothing for her troops whether it is torturing the squad just to see if they'll break or just randomly throwing their lives away on missions.

Then again, the old Amanda Waller was created by John Ostrander who is one of the best comic writers in the business. John Ostrander who, along with Kim Yale, also decided that casting Barbara Gordon aside after Killing Joke was distasteful and brought her back as Oracle. Perhaps part of the problem with DC is not just editorial but also not having enough writers who are interested in creating strong characters who happen to be female as opposed to one-note female strippers.

 

[Symbio Joe]

To the fap cave! Oh, already there.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

Even though i haven't read it and have no plans to, i'm glad they changed it. they've turned enough of the once proud DC heroins and female villains into slutty pale imitations of they're former pre-new 52 selves.. no need to turn Catwomen into a stripper now when they already messed her up when she premiered in the DC new 52 universe

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

I never really understood the whole "Everything but" mentality when it comes to comic book nudity. In these books, I've seen women in every possible contortion to show off both their ass and their breasts, all while wearing outfits both bizarre and pretty ineffective at performing the duties of clothes. At this point, why not just go the distance? It's certainly not about being tasteful, and if our nation's youth haven't already been warped by stories like House of M or Ultimatum, then I think they'll be okay if the story calls for them seeing a nipple or even -gasp!- a penis!

Just read hentai the stories can be just as bad and you get tits and dicks

 

[Deshin]

Nice article and all but...

Wayne Manner

This grates me something fierce.

As for the whole thing, I get that they changed it to avoid an impending shitstorm. I don't get the problem, it was an idea, someone inked it, idea got rejected and they went with something else. It would have been more trouble than it's worth to have taken that to print.

 

[RossaLincoln]

Nice article and all but...

Wayne Manner

This grates me something fierce.

As for the whole thing, I get that they changed it to avoid an impending shitstorm. I don't get the problem, it was an idea, someone inked it, idea got rejected and they went with something else. It would have been more trouble than it's worth to have taken that to print.

Oh my lord, please note I just slapped myself about 50 times. And then fixed it. But why did you miss the chance to say that it "greats" you?

 

[PirateRose]

I keep seeing people attempting to say these panels are some how feminist and she's owning her sexuality. Not just in this forum but other sites.

Selina Kyle is owning her sexual freedom in this like how Mass Effect series keeps saying the Asari are sexual free. They have no problem pole dancing mostly naked for everyone else, but are never seen sitting back to watch anyone from the other species pole dance mostly naked.

In other words, there is no real sexual freedom being expressed here. Saying there is, is just a lame attempt to hide that this scene is here for straight, immature men to ogle.

Now if that first page had her thinking about more than just kissing him, like his plump butt or his rock hard abs or his crotch in those super tight pants, something that would really indicate a straight woman wants to really bang a dude, then I'd think this wasn't just here for immature straight men to ogle. It's for the immature straight women and gay men to ogle too.

Does this series have that kind of sexuality applied to Catwoman at all? Does she ever try to cop a feel of Batman's ass while checking out his package?

 

[RA92]

While it is a bit porntastic, the pages were apparently intended to advance Catwoman's character development. As March puts it, "The action in this scene was a depiction of who Selina was: a woman taking advantage of her sexuality to get something from a man. That made sense according on how the character had been approached in the earlier New52."

That's status quo, not development.

Apologies, my sarcasm was a bit dry there. You are of course right but since I'd already made a Florida joke I decided to just be droll here. And to fail at being clear about it.

Ah, no, my bad. I thought you were quoting them, not taking a dig.

I smiled at the Florida bit.

 

[deadish]

Catwomen stripping naked? Doesn't bug me really. Fanservice is fanservice. Personally I wish writers will make up their mind as to which demographic they are targetting. Naked women are great if you are targeting only the 18-35 male crowd. But if you are going for both genders, well, you got to "water it down" to avoid "offending" - basically the larger your target demographic the more restrictions you will have; the worst case can be seen in "watered down" Hollywood movies.

I'm not exactly sure what's being suggested here, should more video games and comic books make an effort to push away their female demographics so they can have all of the nudity and titilation they desire to fill them with?

I have no problem with nudity. I have no problem with excessive titilation, WHEN it's in something only intended for the sake of titilation. If you're proposing to have an interesting story, interesting characters, fun gameplay or various other attributes that everyone can enjoy then maybe you should be trying to get your work to appeal to everyone, regardless of who they want to bone. Nudity and sex are absolutely fine, but you can easily tell when either is being used for cheap titilation. Which is pretty much what these cut panels seem to be, despite the attempted rationalization.

You know what would be just great? Compress all this titilation into spin off porn so the guys who want it can get their fill of T&A, and the actual story and character elements can be in the main books without all of the ridiculous pandering. You could do this with video-games too, sell all of the pandering in some cheap DLC. Also that way you can go as much all out with it as you desire, so you don't need to "water it down" to avoid "offending", you can just make it full out porn and stop beating around the bush.

Just saying it's OK to make stuff that doesn't appeal to everyone and their grandma. That often when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up with a "white washed" product that doesn't really please anyone.

No reason you can't have a good game with great gameplay and story WITH pointless fanservice. It's their work, if that's the direction they want to go, entertaining only heterosexual men who can appreciate good gameplay and good storyline AS WELL AS naked hot women, then that's their business. You have to right to buy or not buy, that's it.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Just saying it's OK to make stuff that doesn't appeal to everyone and their grandma. That often when you try to appeal to everyone, you end up with a "white washed" product that doesn't really please anyone.

No reason you can't have a good game with great gameplay and story WITH pointless fanservice. It's their work, if that's the direction they want to go, entertaining only heterosexual men who can appreciate good gameplay and good storyline AS WELL AS naked hot women, then that's their business. You have to right to buy or not buy, that's it.

As well as the right to criticize it. I can like aspects of something and consider other qualities juvenile. Of all the things to base a character's appearance or actions on, I don't think trying to turn on your audience is something that should be a primary goal. Nor is defining your audience by which gender they're attracted to

I definitely think that trying to appeal to everyone is a bad idea. But just trying to appeal to the same people over and over again is worse. And I'm pretty sure you can't disagree that the trend of fan service for men is pretty well saturated into both comics and games.

One important thing to keep in mind is that it takes a lot of money to make publish comics or games. There's really not nearly as much freedom as people like to make it out to seem. Comic book art looks like it does because only certain artists are even given a chance, generally artists that draw sexy women and burly men. Even if your talents are chosen to go toward a game or comic you will still have a lot of decisions made for you for the sake of marketing to the biggest audience. Which happens to be the same audience for comics and games. So however important it is that it's "their" work, pretty often "they" and "their work" are chosen just by what has sold their products well in the past. Which happens to be in large part sexualized women

 

[RA92]

No reason you can't have a good game with great gameplay and story WITH pointless fanservice. It's their work, if that's the direction they want to go, entertaining only heterosexual men who can appreciate good gameplay and good storyline AS WELL AS naked hot women, then that's their business. You have to right to buy or not buy, that's it.

At one point when developers made nothing but CoD clones after the success of MW, when the shooter fatigue set in in 2012 E3, would you deflect all those criticisms aimed at those instances with "You have the right to not buy..."?

Plenty of people read comics, and if some content bothers them (be it man or woman) they have a right to criticism too. And the kind of backlash that the Nu52 has been getting is due to a wider trend of their treatment of female superheroes, as another poster laid out quite well...

I'm still amazed at how... backwards?... the New 52 was in regards to most of their women. First issue of Catwoman spent THREE WHOLE PAGES showing her getting dressed in provocative poses before we even see her FACE and the issue ends with her boning Batman on a rooftop. Barbara Gordon went from a leader and hero that refused to let her paralysis keep her from becoming comic's first "online age" heroine and mentor... and regressed her to her "ideal" Batgirl persona (at the expense of TWO other heroines). Wonder Woman was rebooted as Superman's girlfriend... They decided Amanda "The Wall" Waller was too big and fat (that was the POINT) and gave her a generic super-slim/busty body. They turned Harley Quinn from adorable jester girl into a flesh-baring stripper. And the lobotomy they gave Starfire, turning her from sweet and sensitive into emotionless, cold, sex-starved idiot, is already legendary.

I just... ugh. They DO know there are women readers out there, right? Ones that would prefer having better female heroines out there representing them? I get that it's still painfully male driven, and it's not like the 90's did us proud either (those poor spines...), but DC had a lot of GOOD things going for them in regards to their women and just... dropped the ball on pretty much ALL of them.

I honestly can't think of a single female heroine at DC that I don't think is less interesting than they were prior to the New 52. Not a single solitary one. Not Mera, not Wonder Woman, not Power Girl, not Batgirl, not Starfire, not Black Canary, not Catwoman... nobody.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Seems they were right to censor that one since people can't help but loose their minds when anyone gets naked.
I get the idea behind it and have honestly seen stranger things IRL, but when the fan base is so awkward with the subject you just can't go there.

 

[Therumancer]

I never really understood the whole "Everything but" mentality when it comes to comic book nudity. In these books, I've seen women in every possible contortion to show off both their ass and their breasts, all while wearing outfits both bizarre and pretty ineffective at performing the duties of clothes. At this point, why not just go the distance? It's certainly not about being tasteful, and if our nation's youth haven't already been warped by stories like House of M or Ultimatum, then I think they'll be okay if the story calls for them seeing a nipple or even -gasp!- a penis!

The long and short of it (*rimshot*) is that the American comic book market for "superhero" comics is still pretty much linked to the same standards as broadcast television. Nudity is pretty much limited to properties that were already "mature" to begin with and even then limited to exposed breasts and flaccid penises (or in at least in all the graphic novels I've seen). I think it's largely a business decision, as large bookstore chains don't want the backlash from a parent discovering that "little Jimmy picked up a comic book and it looked like a Playboy on the inside." The artist is dominated by the publisher, the publisher is dominated by the retailer, and the retailer is dominated by it's customers.

Then there's the US's obscenity laws and policies that can make selling those books difficult.

It's still a huge improvement over the infamous Comics Code Authority, but the restrictions are largely because of the perception that comics are for kids, which ignores how undertones of sex and sexuality is almost a constant presence in the Batman comics and as well as others[footnote]Bruce has a son for god's sake! You don't get those by fully clothed hugs no matter how formfitting your supersuit is![/footnote].

But when it comes down to it, it's all about making sure that customers are able to buy the product, and full nudity in a DC or Marvel mainstream property might result in demands by social conservative groups to remove the graphic novel sections all together, which some retailers may cave on. Hell, remember what happened when they revealed one Spider-Man in an alternative universe was black and right wing media freaked the fuck out [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_(Miles_Morales)#Reception]?

But, yeah, it all comes down to business. No amount of artistic integrity is immune to a publisher who thinks it's in their better interest to not publish something.

To be honest I was against the whole "Miles Morales" thing myself, but mostly because I figure once you make a change like that it isn't Spider Man anymore. Spider Man is Peter Parker, Peter Parker is Spider Man. To be honest while I've heard of such things I didn't hear much outrage because of the racial change, though some people try and project that onto cases when they are having an argument with a comics purist of a sort. It's sort of like how I kind of loathe the new Nova (like a lot of people) and hated Kyle Raynor. As far as I'm concerned Richard Ryder is Nova, and Hal Jordan is earth's "main" Green Lantern (in the actual book of that title... going by the space-cop version here also, there was a mystically themed Green Lantern before him which shares almost nothing in common except the name, and had little to do with the title becoming popular to this extent). The thing with Miles was that at the time this happened "Ultimate" had been around long enough where you couldn't quite say it was just a quick "alternate universe" thing at that point.

Typically when comics decide to pass a mantle, the wise thing to do is to hint at it in the comics for a while and see what fan reaction is. See if they had done a better job of introducing Miles, had him floating around as a possible Spidey replacement, had him training with Peter, and things like that, it might have gone over better. Sort of like how they replaced Barry Allen with his sidekick Wally West after "Crisis On Infinite Earths" something where despite testing the ground for it (subtly) they also left the door open to bring Barry back at any time (as the writer pointed out) and put Wally back in his "Kid Flash" pajamas.

As far as Selina goes, to be honest with you I think it's a lack of guts on the part of DC no matter how they dress it up. There have been a lot of worse things out there in comics printed by DC universe, I think the issue was they didn't want to do this in a regularly-rated comic designed to launch their latest reboot. What's more I'll be honest in saying I tend to be a little more picky with Marvel nowadays than I do with DC, while Marvel has done it's share of changes, it seems like DC likes to totally reboot their entire comics continuity periodically, to the point where I can't take anything seriously. With someone like Miles Morales taking over as "Spider Man" in a way that isn't obviously a quick one shot, it gets attention because Marvel tends to try and maintain some consistency. With DC if they decided to reboot Batman and have Bruce Wayne now be a bipedal chicken it wouldn't surprise me, and honestly I wouldn't give much of a crap because no matter how permanent it might seem, in a couple of years they are going to blow up the universe and have another "Crisis" or "52" event.... so really they have to work at it to get my attention. It's sort of like "the original (pre Hal) Green Lantern is now rebooted as gay, in the new continuity he was gay all along!" that's wonderful next time when they reboot him he might be a talking dog. To really get my attention they would have to do something as long lasting as having Hal and Kyle take over for years and years as a permanent replacement defended by management. When DC drops shocker after shocker, it loses it's impact. It's sort of like you know "the new, grittier Superman" that defeats the purpose of Superman, but again it's not like they haven't done that before and then gone back to status quo and gotten him back on track. Heck I still remember in the whole "Death/Rebirth of Superman" storyline they had Superman (the actual one, without powers) running around in a black costume firing machines guns to be "awesome"... look everyone it's "Superman" but now without powers he's kind of like Marvel's Punisher!!!" (sighs).


In DC we've gone so far as to have Bruce share his secret identity with Selina and had them as an official couple for a while. It's already a reboot that they apparently aren't together again in the "New 52" and it's a big deal that she knows Batman is Bruce Wayne in this universe, so really Catwoman getting naked can't be considered a problem because she's been rebooted so many times with various levels of insanity and sexuality. For all we knew the new version of Catwoman could have this fitting with her personality perfectly as little sense as it would have made for other versions. I haven't followed her, so for all I know she's again an actual clinical klepto again, and given her general attitudes might very well be re-defined as an actual raging nympho, and nuttier than Harley Quinn on a sugar rush to boot.

 

[Tono Makt]

I'm still amazed at how... backwards?... the New 52 was in regards to most of their women. First issue of Catwoman spent THREE WHOLE PAGES showing her getting dressed in provocative poses before we even see her FACE and the issue ends with her boning Batman on a rooftop. Barbara Gordon went from a leader and hero that refused to let her paralysis keep her from becoming comic's first "online age" heroine and mentor... and regressed her to her "ideal" Batgirl persona (at the expense of TWO other heroines). Wonder Woman was rebooted as Superman's girlfriend... They decided Amanda "The Wall" Waller was too big and fat (that was the POINT) and gave her a generic super-slim/busty body. They turned Harley Quinn from adorable jester girl into a flesh-baring stripper. And the lobotomy they gave Starfire, turning her from sweet and sensitive into emotionless, cold, sex-starved idiot, is already legendary.

I just... ugh. They DO know there are women readers out there, right? Ones that would prefer having better female heroines out there representing them? I get that it's still painfully male driven, and it's not like the 90's did us proud either (those poor spines...), but DC had a lot of GOOD things going for them in regards to their women and just... dropped the ball on pretty much ALL of them.

I honestly can't think of a single female heroine at DC that I don't think is less interesting than they were prior to the New 52. Not a single solitary one. Not Mera, not Wonder Woman, not Power Girl, not Batgirl, not Starfire, not Black Canary, not Catwoman... nobody.

Speaking as someone who was actually going to get into the New 52 when they launched... then suddenly found himself with a child on the way so decided that Trade Paperbacks in the future was a more mature and responsible way to do it, and then lost his job so no longer has the sort of income that makes even TPB's manageable (for the near future, anyway)... is the New 52 really that bad?

I haven't had a chance to actually read any of it. One thing or another comes up and I don't manage to get to the Comicon or Fan Expo or other show, or I don't get a chance to stop by the local comic shop to just browse through the books or whatever. I've only really had the time to follow some of the controversies, like the Catwoman 0 mentioned here and the Starfire problem that I actually paid more attention to than I thought I would (I really love the Teen Titans cartoons, so I like Starfire). But beyond those two, I've not paid much more attention to anything in DC at all.

It sounds a bit like DC has become more like Image of the 90's... which may or may not be a good thing. I've recently started to go back through my Image comics from the 90's and realized just how meh many of them actually were. (Titles like Backlash, WildCATS, Gen13, Wetworks, etc. were my mainstays. I hated Ankle Rob and was a comic hipster by hating on Spawn because it was popular, so the Jim Lee section was where I spent my money.) So if DC has become more like Image, I'm probably going to wait until the New New 52, where they reboot it all again.

 

[Trishbot]

Speaking as someone who was actually going to get into the New 52 when they launched... then suddenly found himself with a child on the way so decided that Trade Paperbacks in the future was a more mature and responsible way to do it, and then lost his job so no longer has the sort of income that makes even TPB's manageable (for the near future, anyway)... is the New 52 really that bad?

My personal opinion is that, overall, it's a massive step backwards for 90% of the titles. The best New 52 comics were the ones that seemingly IGNORED the reboot almost entirely (Batman comics and Green Lantern were barely affected, apart from Batgirl). Everything else was pretty bad.

The sole, single, solitary exception, I felt, was... Aquaman. No joke, the Aquaman comic was the best the character has been in years. Maybe it's because they dialed back all the other books, but Aquaman's comic was exciting, fresh, and utterly destroyed the old Superfriends stigma that he just "talks to fish". Geoff Johns run on the book was well worth reading... but I can't readily recommend too much else apart from the aforementioned Batman and Green Lantern books that weren't much changed.