Batman: The Animated Series Re-Watch: Episode Fifteen and Sixteen: The Cat and the Claw

Plot: Trying to protect a stretch of wildlife, Catwoman discovers a terrorist cell led by Red Claw, and reluctantly teams up with Batman to stop them.

As a character, Catwoman's as old as the Joker (both dating to Batman #1) and has had as many different interpretations over the years. While she's always a thief, morally she's ranged from purely selfish motives to a more Robin Hood approach to being basically a female Batman. Sometimes she works completely solo, other times she's the head of a gang of crooks. Sometimes she fights Batman in a dress and cape, sometimes in leather bondage gear, sometimes in a catsuit that actually looks reasonable for climbing around the sides of buildings. Sometimes she's perfectly sane, and sometimes she's batshit crazy. Sometimes she's purely adversarial to Batman, sometimes she's his partner, and usually these some romantic tension between them. 

The Animated Series Catwoman basically split the difference on most of these issues. This Catwoman steals from the rich to give to the kitties, placing her on just the wrong side of moral alignment. Selina has a secretary, Maven, who apparently lives with her , as well as a lawyer, but her only accomplice on her crimes is her cat Isis. Catwoman can also, apparently, talk to cats, including a mountain lion . She wears a form fitting bodysuit, but it's not the stitched together leather outfit from Batman Returns, though she has taken Michelle Pfeiffer's blonde hair (in all other versions, Selina Kyle has black hair). And unlike the Joker and the Penguin, this episode is explicitly the first time Batman and Catwoman have met. 

I just wish these episodes were better. The Catwoman parts are great, really. Musically and visually, they recall Hitchcock films (especially the car chase in Part II) with snappy patter masking mounting tension. Batman and Catwoman are immediately flirting, even as they are leaping off rooftops, both shocked and pleased that they can keep up with each other. The first act chase is delightful, and ends with a great moment copped from Batman: Year One, Batman risking his life to save a cat. 

The double duel identies set up a beautifully complicated love... triangle? Quadrangle? Basically, Bruce Wayne is immediately infatuated with Selina Kyle (we even get to see Bruce blush), but Catwoman only has time for Batman, and neither side knows the true identity of the other. You have to let your disbelief suspend a bit for the usual secret identity questions (don't they recognize each other's voice? or chin?) but it's a fun dynamic, especially since we never see Bruce have to pursue anyone else in the series. 

And when Batman rejects Catwoman explaining that "the thing between us" is "the law" (a line so painful even Catwoman winces), we get a nice reminder that she is a bad guy because she throws him off a building even though he JUST SAVED HER LIFE.

The problem with the episodes is entirely in the "claw" part of The Cat and the Claw. Another Batman: the Animated Series original (though she bares a passing resemblance to the villain Chesire), Red Claw just isn't that interesting. She's called a "terrorist," (and kudos to the show for using that term in a cartoon), but we don't know her cause at all. Her only demands are money. She's very taken with herself being a terrorist who is also a woman (which Batman dismisses with the line "I'm an equal opportunity crimefighter"), but aside from being a woman, there's nothing else to her character. At all. Just Cobra Commander with an exposed shoulder.

She's there to contrast with Catwoman (Batman's match who is a woman), but she's such a strawman that nothing is really said. Maybe they should have used the female villain they've already established, Poison Ivy. Like Ivy, Catwoman is motivated by environmental concerns. Like Harvey Dent, Bruce Wayne throws himself into his relationship with Selina without much thought. However, Catwoman is entirely sincere in her beliefs, while Ivy destroys the plants she's trying to save to kill Batman. And Selina is mostly sane. When a company tries to buy the land she's trying to protect, Selina threatens to sue, to bring down every environmental group on them, and finds evidence that they're lying to the public. Poison Ivy, on the other hand, waits five years and then poisons the man who had the idea for the building, over a rosebush she's already saved. Catwoman would have been much better defined with a stronger character for contrast.

Also, this story didn't need to be two episodes long. More happens in 20 minutes of Heart of Ice than happens in 40 minutes here. (Unfair comparison? More happens in The Underdwellers than happens here). Really, I wish the first Catwoman episode was entirely about Batman and Catwoman. Surely that story could have been written.

Psycho-Changer, Qu'est Que C'est

One of the greatest advantages of long form, episodic storytelling is that characters develop over time as a natural reaction to their experiences. Rather than the sudden epiphany required in a two hour movie, a comic book character can, issue by issue, over years, progress through stages of growth.

Catwoman, for example, moved from thief with little conscience to someone who robs only from the rich to Robin Hood in black leather to out-and-out vigilante superhero—not over the course of one story but over two series running over 15 years! Such a well mapped progression gives a sense of character growth earned, an arc rewarded and a hero in the place she ought to be!

Which is why I really hate "psycho-changers," those plot devices that explain personality change as the sudden result of some external influence. Instead of personality changing as a natural reaction to personal experience, characters are bonked on the head with a coconut or exposed to "evil radiation" and suddenly they're jerks, murderous and wearing stupid emo haircuts. (Why yes, I did see Spider-Man 3 this weekend. Why do you ask?)

One of the many reasons I stopped watching Smallville was that the only times the characters changed at all was when they were hit with Kryptonite-infused pollen (or Kryptonite-infused bugs, or red Kryptonite, or black Kryptonite, or...) and suddenly they were adrenaline-seeking bad girls who dressed skankily or wanted to kill Clark. Why should the writers take the time to come up with a good, compelling reason teenagers would want to have sex or Lex Luthor would want to be evil, when there's Plotdevise-inite just lying around everywhere?

I mean, "psycho-changers" are okay for one-shot stories where they set-up otherwise impossible situations ("Oh no, Superman thinks he's Darkseid's son!") or are used as metaphors for internal struggles (one of fantasy's great strengths is that internal demons become external, where they are easier to punch in the nose). But when they are over-used or are used in place of real development, where the metaphor is dropped entirely, they become a major problem.

Particularly when the "psycho-changer" actually REPLACES real development (that some other writer took the time to create) with arbitrary excuses for new behavior. God forbid the loss of his entire city and almost everyone he knows drove Hal Jordan to try change history, no matter what the cost. That would, you know, make sense. Nope, he had to be infected with an alien parasite no one knew about before. (Also, all the people he killed are not actually dead.)

Or Cassandra Cain. Daughter of assassins. Trained from birth to be an assassin. Used by Batman more as a weapon than as a person. Never discovered her human side, no matter how hard she tried. Forced to fight her mother, over and over again, until she finally kills her. Disappears for a year. But what explains her trying to kill Robin?


Evil Serum!

But more annoying to me than the "psycho-changers" explaining why good characters went bad are the "psycho-changers" that explain why villains reformed. I watched Catwoman grow a conscience over a very long period of time. To say that her growth was not her own, but imposed on her by a meddling Zatanna, is to say that Catwoman couldn't have changed on her own.

The problem is that "psycho-changers" define personality as something constant and inert unless arbitrarily acted upon by fantastic forces. That rehabilitation is just as impossible as falls from grace. That some people are just born evil, and some are born good, and nothing short of alien intervention can change that.

In fact, personality is something that's constantly in flux. Are you the same person you were five years ago? Have you grown in anyway? Are you better? Are you worse? And is any of this change a result of brainwashing?

Rehabilitation

What is the true mark of success for a crime fighter? Is it solving crimes, or is it preventing crime from happening in the first place? Or is it something more?

For some years now, at least since The Dark Knight Returns if not earlier, a persistent fan criticism of Batman is that he just catches criminals, criminals that, thanks to the serial nature of comic books, will merely escape and commit more crimes. This critique seems even stronger as the Joker moved from being a colorfully clad bank robber back to his original conception of serial murderer. In light of those circumstances, says the criticism, Batman should just pull a Punisher and shoot the bastards in the head. It would save lives and a whole lot of time.

But what that criticism misses is that the criminals Batman hunts are, to him, human beings. Human beings with complex inner lives, capable of learning the error of their ways, capable of change and actually improving society. We, the readers, know that they are characters, villains who will play the villain roles forever, but Batman has hope.

And sometimes that hope is even rewarded. Catwoman. The Penguin. The Riddler. Three of Batman's most iconic foes have all, over the past fifteen years, basically abandoned a life of crime. Now, only Catwoman has taken a truly altruistic calling of protecting the East End of Gotham, but nightclub owner and private detective are not bad ways to make a living.

Think about the crimes Edward Nigma himself has solved. Think about the men and women employed, legally, at the Iceberg Lounge. Think about the lives Selina Kyle has saved in her role as midnight vigilante. (or for that matter, the life she gave birth to).

None of that would have been possible if Batman had just offed them the first chance he got.

A great story which hits this idea two ways sideways is the latest issue of Detective Comics. Not only does the main plot feature a Harley Quinn who sincerely wants to reform (or at least seems to), a key flashback is about how, while capable of killing, Batman's rogues are also capable of kindness, fear, sadness, and longing. And occasionally, acts of bravery.

Just as Batman himself has a lot of darkness in him, despite remaining a good guy, his enemies have some light hidden inside them. And given the choice between snuffing out that light in order eradicate the darkness, and letting that light remain in the hopes that it will someday shine through, Batman always chooses the later. Always.

Because Batman can solve crimes, or he can prevent crimes, OR, as a true mark of success as a crime fighter, he can help even his enemies become better people and actually improve the state of the world.

No point in throwing out the Harvey with the Two-Face.

Plutocrat

In my People's Superman post, I mentioned that Superman being an anti-aristocratic hero is an exception to the rule, that most superheroes are aristocratic in both background and behavior, and the best example of that is...

Batman.

Yes, Batman.

Batman isn't just "the man," Bruce Wayne is also The Man. He's a rich, white, handsome man who comes from an old money family and is the main employer in Gotham. He owns half the property in the city. In a very real sense, Gotham belongs to him, and he inherited all of it.

Accordingly, Batman has an enormous sense of entitlement. Batman just assumes he's right in every situation. It's his city. If he doesn't like you, he'll tell you to leave. If Batman thinks you're guilty of a crime, he'll put on his pointed white hood black mask and beat the crap out of you. Laws? Civil rights? Due process? Those are for other people. Yes, the people may have elected a mayor, pay taxes to employ the police. Batman could work with them, but they're all corrupt, weak, not as good as him. (Except Gordon. Batman has generously determined that Gordon is worthy to contacted, though he always disappears before Gordon's done talking, just to remind Gordon who's the bitch in this relationship.)

And look at who he fights! Superman fights intergalactic dictators, evil monopolists, generals, and dark gods. Batman fights psychotics, anarchists, mob bosses, the mentally frail, and environmentalists. Superman fights those who would impose their version of order on the world. Batman fights those who would unbalance the order he imposes on Gotham.

Consider the Penguin. He's a criminal, a thug. But what really distinguishes him is his pretensions to being upper class. The tux, the monocle. The fine wine and fine women. Running for mayor. He tries to insinuate himself with actual socialites, some of whom are attracted to his air of danger, but most of whom are repulsed by his "classless" manners. And when his envy and resentment of his "betters" turns to violence, Bruce steps in to teach him his place.

And it's not just Mr. Cobblepot. Hugo Strange, Black Mask, Facade, Catwoman, all villains from lower class backgrounds who want to be upper class, who want to hobnob with the rich and famous at one of Bruce's fabulous fetes, but just can't pull it off (well, Catwoman can, but Selina's in a class all by herself). Even Harvey Dent, before he became Two-Face, envied and resented his friend Bruce Wayne, because Wayne had money and Harvey had to work for everything he got. And then there's the villains who have a vendetta against C.E.O.'s of powerful corporations, either for revenge (Mr. Freeze, Clayface) or out of principle (Ra's al Ghul, Poison Ivy). There's a class war going on in Gotham, and Batman has taken the side of the rich.

Like Superman, there's an Arthurian "king-in-hiding" element to Batman's origin. "Banished" from Gotham by the death of his parents, Bruce Wayne returns to redeem his land and reclaim his throne. But instead of reclaiming it from usurping uncle or foreign invader, Batman must take Gotham back from a rising underclass.

And Batman doesn't even like the upper class he belongs to, either! Shallow, petty, boring, vain. They know nothing of the pain and suffering he sees every night when he hunts killers through the slums of Gotham, every day when he closes his eyes. He mockingly refers to himself as a "plutocrat" in last week's JLA: Classified, dismissing both value of plutocrats and the intelligence of a dictator who courts them. But does he dislike his wealthy peers because they don't appreciate how wealthy they are? Or is it because they aren't wealthy enough to appreciate how much responsibility he has?

And even if he thinks they're upper class twits, he really doesn't do anything about it. He leaves them in place, protects them from harm, flirts with and beds them. They're not the bad guys, after all. It's all those poor evil people. The one's who keep crashing the gate, who happened to be accidentally hurt in the hunt for profit. No reason Batman should try to protect them, keep them from getting crushed under the weight of capitalism.



They're just "penny-ante". And Bruce is a plutocrat!