Catwoman

Catwoman is a DC Comics character, associated with the Batman franchise and created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane. more...

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The original and most widely known Catwoman, Selina Kyle, first appeared in Batman #1 (Spring 1940), where she was initially known as The Cat. She was an adversary of Batman, a whip-carrying burglar with a taste for high stake thefts. Modern writers have attributed her activities and costumed identity as a response to a history of abuse.

Since the 1990s, Catwoman has been featured in an eponymous series that cast her as an anti-hero rather than a villain. The character has also been written as one of Batman's possible love-interests, even helping him on occasion.

Recently, Selina Kyle has stepped out of the role of Catwoman, and her confidante, aide and protégé Holly Robinson has taken up the mantle. How long before Selina resumes the role, if ever, remains to be seen.

One of the most popular Batman characters, Catwoman has been featured in most other media adaptations of the character. Actresses Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt introduced her to a large audience on the 1960s Batman television series. Michelle Pfeiffer's rage and sexuality-driven portrayal of the character in 1992's Batman Returns was both popular and controversial .

In 2004, Halle Berry starred in a critically panned and financially disastrous Catwoman film, featuring a character resembling her comic book counterpart in no more than name.

Selina Kyle

Her name "Selina" derives from the ancient lunar deity Selene.

There have been many versions of Catwoman's origins and backstory seen in the comic books over the decades.

Golden and Silver Age versions

In Batman #62, it is revealed that Catwoman (after a blow to the head jogged her memory) is an amnesiac flight attendant who had turned to crime after suffering a prior blow to the head during a plane crash she survived (although in the final issue of The Brave and the Bold, she admits that she made up the amnesia story because she wanted a way out of the past life of crime). She winds up reforming and stays on the straight and narrow for several years, helping out Batman in Batman #65 and #69, until Selina decides to return to a life of crime in Detective Comics #203. Selina appears again as a criminal in Batman #84 and Detective Comics #211, her final appearance for many years (until 1966).

In the 1970s comics, a series of stories taking place on Earth-Two (the parallel Earth that was retroactively declared as the home of DC's Golden Age characters) reveal that on that world, Selina reformed in the 1950s (after the events of Batman #69) and had married Bruce Wayne; soon afterwards, the couple gave birth to their only child, Helena Wayne (the Huntress). In Brave and the Bold #197, the Golden Age origin of Catwoman given in Batman #62 is elaborated on, after Selina revealed that she never actually had amnesia. It was revealed that Selina Kyle had been the wife of an abusive man, and eventually decided to leave her husband. However, her husband had kept her jewelry in his private vault, and she had to break into it to retrieve the jewelry. Selina enjoyed this experience so much she decided to become a professional costumed cat burglar, and thus began a career that would repeatedly lead to her encountering the Batman.

Read more at Wikipedia.org