Black cat got your tongue?: Catwoman, blackness, and the alchemy of postracialism

Abstract

This article explores the character Catwoman in the comic book Batman, the graphic novel Catwoman, and in her many media re-incarnations on television and in popular films. I examine the racialization, de-racialization, and sexual representation of the character Catwoman, while casting attention to how race – specifically Blackness – as well as sexuality and gender shapes production, perception, and interest among a wide variety of fans. In her television and feature film premier from the mid-twentieth century to the twenty-first century, I argue that Catwoman became a dubious mixture of 1960s civil rights protest, racial inclusion, and post-racial cultural politics. My analysis of Catwoman thereby provides an understanding of the impact gender, race, and sexuality has on production and consumption, and I aim to intervene in studies on comic book and graphic novel fandom where a female character's racial fluidity has yet to enter the scholarly discourse on comic books.

Keywords:

• women
• Catwoman
• race
• sexuality
• fandom
• African Americans

Introduction

[The former] Catwoman was kind of disgusting the way she was always portrayed as this real sort of fawning, ‘Oh, I have to make out ...’ She couldn't have a guest appearance in any comic without kissing the main character in a really grotesque way. She could be really tough and smart and everything, and then she would do this fake shaking-her-tail kind of shit. I've never known a woman like that ...I like my version of her … [I wanted to do something] a lot different than what was going on in mainstream comics at the time, character-driven explorations, as opposed to straight plot-driven action. I remember I was talking to Judd Winick at a comic-book convention, the first time I met him. He said, ‘You know what I really like about Catwoman? It's the closest thing to an alternative comic that gets published by DC.’ (Ed Brubaker, former writer of Catwoman, The Comics Journal, #263, 2004).

When I first saw Eartha [as Catwoman], I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it was important and that I connected to it and felt good about myself after watching her… . I'm reviving something she originated (Halle Berry, quoted in Collier 2004).

In 1934, cartoonist Milton Caniff introduced one the most popular female characters of the twentieth century: The Cat (Caniff 1975). Caniff, the creator of the infamous and Orientalist inscribed Dragon Lady caricature in the comic title Terry and the Pirates, fashioned The Cat as a parallel personality to that of the Dragon Lady – a European version of the Chinese, sexually volatile, and mistrustful femme fatale that used her sexuality to manipulate and entrap American heroes (See Said 1978, Shah 1999, Harvey and Caniff 2002, Harvey 2004). ¹ Comparable to the stereotypical Dragon Lady, The Cat exhibited the cunning, conniving, and potent gesticulations of a slithering, man-eating animal. The similarity in appearance between the two characters is striking as well, as The Dragon Lady and The Cat both have fair skin, almond shape eyes, jet-black hair, high cheekbones, and a pout mouth. Modified by DC Comics' Batman series in 1940 as a recurring feature character, DC writers Bob Kane and Bill Finger renamed the character Catwoman. Unlike her other female contemporaries in comic books, most notably Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle, and Black Canary, Catwoman's commitment toward social justice, American exceptionalism, and wartime patriotism were ambiguous at best, and her sexuality – often used to manipulate, confuse, and shock – embodied the fear and fascination with outwardly aggressive female sexuality (Robbins 1999, Robinson 2004, Inness 2004). ² According to Batman writers, the introduction of Catwoman, who worked as a working class hairdresser turned socialite and jewel thief, meant to attract more female readers to the series and provide male readers with sexual gratification. In the minds of DC Comic moguls, women readers would admire the development of the character's beauty, strength, vulnerability, and intelligence (Uslan 2004). Comparatively, DC believed male readers would respond to Catwoman's exaggerated physio-anatomy, as well as her less than subtle sexual innuendos. For example, in her first appearance in 1940's Batman, the caped crusader remarks to Catwoman, ‘Quiet or Papa will spank!’ to which Catwoman responds: ‘I know when I'm licked!’ (Finger 1940).

An analysis of Catwoman offers fruitful ground to interrogate the cultural politics of race, given the racialization, de-racialization, and sexual representation of the character in comic books, graphic novels, television, and film over the past several decades. Across these various popular mediums, the character Catwoman created and reconstituted narrative spaces for readers along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality. In Batman, the character Catwoman created a narrative space of hetero-normativity, which strategically undercut the perceived homoeroticism between the characters Batman and Robin in the comic book and 1960s television series (Medhurst 1991, Johnson 1995, York 2000, Morris 2003). In contrast, the graphic novel Catwoman written by Mindy Newell, and the later series written by Ed Brubaker, formed a gender and racial space to negotiate the two poles of transgressive and objectified sexuality, a feminist sensibility, and an autonomous sexuality. In her television and feature film premier from the mid-twentieth century to the twenty-first century, Catwoman became a dubious mixture of 1960s civil rights protest, racial inclusion, and post-racial cultural politics. The alchemy, or fabrication of postracialism that creators of the character place her to embody, rubs up against the realities of how race – specifically Blackness – shapes production, perception, and interest among a wide variety of fans, and the cultural and political implications of this process (Stomberg 2003; see also Singer 2002). ³ To explore these conclusions and the narrative use of Catwoman vis-à-vis the cultural politics of race, I begin with a history of the character to situate her in space and time, and proceed to interpret the various meanings of Catwoman's characterology alongside several interlocking forms of difference. I argue that her variant possibilities for understanding the impact gender, race, and sexuality has on production and consumption intervenes in studies on comic book and graphic novel fandom where female characters' racial fluidity has yet to enter the scholarly discourse about comic books. In so doing, I establish that Catwoman's various meanings for engaging with aspects of difference constitute more than the sum of her nine comic book lives.

Am I to be the bride or the burglar? A brief history of Catwoman as a sexual device in the golden age

While many popular viewing audiences know the character Catwoman from the 1960s television series Batman, the character has been a part of the franchise since the comic book title's early inception in the pre-World War II years, a time that is nostalgically termed the golden age of comics by fans and scholars alike. However, Catwoman's comic book run in Batman came to a halt not long after her introduction in 1940. After World War II, DC Comics made the decision to retire the sexually overt character for a few years, a decision that predated the implementation of The Comic Book Code (Nyberg 1998). ⁴ Catwoman re-emerged in the early 1950s as a slightly less kinky, but still hypersexual, personality obsessed with Batman and matrimony, thus showing the power of the code to shape mainstream narratives. The timing of her re-introduction and character shift was a strategic manoeuver on the part of DC and writer Bob Kane to appeal to a growing female readership (Biagi and Kern-Foxworth 1997) ⁵ and to deflect criticism of latent homo-erotic content from critics such as Fredric Wertham, who argued that it was unsuitable reading for children (Wertham 1954). It should then come as no surprise that by the late 1950s, Catwoman's normative sexuality became compulsory, and seldom did she appear without relentless dialogue about domesticating Batman. In a 1967 panel of the Batman series, Catwoman leers over Batman and his superhero comrades, including the newly introduced female love interest, Batgirl, with the hopes of threatening Batman into matrimonial submission. As his comrades look on in fear, she seductively and assertively states to Batman, ‘My fate is in your hands, Batman! Am I to be the bride, or burglar? Before you answer, I must warn you that if you refuse my proposal of marriage – you doom not only yourself, but Robin and Batgirl as well!’ (Fox 1967).

Catwoman's obsession with marriage and securing Batman as her mate (Figure 1) had as much to do with the character's written desires, as it had to do with how writers used her as tool to mediate Batman's relationship with other male and female characters in the series. From the beginning of the Batman series well until the early 1950s, Catwoman became a constant wedge and point of contention between Batman and Robin, who were the title's lead characters (see Hamilton et al. 1954). In the 1940s Batman comics, a socialite named Julie Madison was the girlfriend of Bruce Wayne. Yet, since she was the love interest of Bruce Wayne and not his alter ego Batman, her character in the series was limited to the briefer segments of Wayne's life. Given that three quarters of the series dealt with the crime-fighting adventures of Batman and his boy wonder Robin, the addition of Catwoman and later Batgirl into their secret lives as crime fighters or offenders offered a triangular narrative of sexual tension. For example, in an early Batman installment, Batman allows Catwoman (then known as The Cat) to escape justice, thus perturbing the boy wonder:

Figure 1. Catwoman tries to threaten Batman into matrimony. Source: Gardner Fox (w), Bob Kane (p), Chic Stone, and Sid Greene (i), Batman #197. Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

Robin:	=	Watch Her! She's jumped overboard!
Batman:	=	Fancy that. (Robin makes ready to jump after The Cat, and then Batman clumsily bumps into him.)
Robin:	=	Hey!
Batman:	=	Oops. Sorry, Robin.
Robin:	=	Too late, she's gone. Say, I'll bet you bumped into me on purpose … so she might try a break?
Batman:	=	Why Robin, my boy, whatever gave you such an idea? (Finger 1940). (Figure 2)

Figure 2. Catwoman's first appearance in Batman comics. Source: Bob Finger (w), Bob Kane (p), and Jerry Robinson (i), Batman #1. Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

Since the premise of the Batman/Catwoman narrative was to sustain sexual tension between the two and keep readers coming back through suspension concerning the consummation of their relationship, DC writers could not risk the formation of an actual relationship between Catwoman and Batman, or between Batman and any other woman. 1980s DC writer Frank Miller agrees by stating, ‘[Batman's] sexual urges are so drastically sublimated into crime-fighting that there's no room for any other emotional [or sexual] activity’ (cited in Bongco 2000).

As the late fifties grew near, Catwoman again disappeared from Batman's comic book world, and did not re-emerge until 1964. To sustain readership and appease the dual interests of male and female readers, DC writer Bob Kane developed a compromise to create a gender expansion marketing strategy. While in Gotham City, Batman and Catwoman met occasionally and remained friendly adversaries, but in a parallel universe to Gotham City titled Earth Two, their alter egos Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle married and had a social justice crusader daughter, the Huntress. Kane's storyline approach allowed for a bi-lateral reading experience where single-hood and marriage could co-exist within a meta-narrative, thereby resulting in a ‘win-win’ plot structure for male and female readers. This approach also provided simultaneous contestation and conformity to gender and sexual codes, as both characters were sexually autonomous in one universe (Gotham City), and objects of domestication in another universe (Earth Two).

Catwoman's television appearance came about in the 1966 television series Batman, starring Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Robin, and Julie Newmar as Catwoman. The framing of Catwoman's character on the television show Batman made significant references to feminist movements that reflected and distorted the changes of the times. Catwoman controlled an autonomous criminal empire and sometimes fought on the right side of the law, or with Batman, but, like the early comic book series, the television show relied on the sexual attraction between the two as a core narrative device. Conveniently, the un-reliability of Catwoman's character and propensity toward crime was the ongoing threat that would disallow the consummation of their relationship. Robin remained jealous of the tenuous relationship in the series, and writers seemed genuinely unsure as to where Robin fit as Batman and Catwoman would ponder their hypothetical romantic future in the climax of nearly half of the first year's episodes. In a 1966 episode, dialogue between Catwoman and Batman acknowledges Robin's unstable and ambiguous status in Batman's life, not to mention his centrality to Batman's – and Bruce Wayne's – phantasmagoric world:

Catwoman:	=	I can give you more happiness than … than any one ... It can be you and me against the world.
Batman:	=	What about Robin?
Catwoman:	=	Well, I'd have him killed of course – painlessly. (Batman appears shocked.) Well, he is a bit of a bore with his ‘holy this’ and ‘holy that … ’
Batman:	=	(Indignant) Oh! That does it Catwoman! I thought you had a modicum of decency, but I see now that I erred in my judgment (Batman, 1967, Episode 75).

The sexual development of the Catwoman character was a refraction of the lifting of sanctions imposed by the 1950s Comic Book Codes and a reflection of the gaining momentum of twentieth-century feminist movements. Catwoman on the Batman television sitcom considered Batman a sexual toy, but also an equal in the public sphere. In comparison, in a 1969 Batman comic panel, writers integrated the changing trajectory of gender relations by representing Catwoman as an ideologue who led a brainwashed, cloned mass of women freedom fighters in the name of the battle of the sexes (Robbins 1969) (Figure 3). Catwoman expressed jealousy in the comic book and television show toward Batman's and Robin's collaborator Batgirl, which was irrational and antithetical to mature feminist sensibilities. However, her consistent critique of Batgirl was also telling in the larger context of gender relations. Batgirl, in Catwoman's eyes, was a sidekick reliant upon Batman and Robin for her identity and actions. Catwoman, on the other hand, was a salacious, stealthy, and quick moving feline that acted not on the prescriptions of others, but rather, as she pleased to act. On the small screen in the urban landscape of Gotham City where they resided, more often than not, men were utterly incompetent when they came up against Catwoman, especially when faced with the newly introduced ‘Black’ Catwoman played by actor Eartha Kitt.

Figure 3. Catwoman and her female freedom fighters engaged in the battle of the sexes. Source: Frank Robbins (w), Irv Novick (a), and Joe Giella (i), Batman #210. Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

This night's work will catapult me into the headlines! The ‘problem’ of race and Catwoman in the silver age

The mid-to-late 1960s, referred to as the silver age of comics, became notable for its modern break with the confines of the Comic Book Codes, its expansion into television and animation, and for its widening of the superhero genre. In order to heighten the visibility of the superhero, there would have to be a heightening of the ‘superfoe’. In 1967, Catwoman's persona – and Batman's television world – would change once again, as the Black actor Eartha Kitt replaced Julie Newmar in the role of Catwoman on the television series, thereby lending the character to gather deeper meanings and expanded interpretations of race, gender, and sexuality. ⁶ Kitt's adaptation of the character was different from that of Newmar, and so was the relationship between herself and Batman. Kitt's voice inflection and enunciation of Catwoman's infamous cat phrases was impeccable, and the underlying sexual connotation of the character consistent with earlier versions. However, the sexual inferences that constituted Newmar and West's relationship was curiously absent in the second season and Catwoman's character took a sharp turn from feline fatale to plain fatal. The television show stood out for its mostly un-stereotypical and unique portrayal of a lead Black female character. Notably, Kitt's performance stood in contest to the roles available to Black women on television, insofar as she did not fit the proverbial mammy, Jezebel, tragic mulatta, and sapphire stereotypes that were abundant on television and in the cinema at this time. Still, her transformation to a power hungry criminal, albeit an intelligent one, suggested that although open to a Black Catwoman, when it came to the sexual implications of the new Catwoman and existing (read white) Batman, writers replaced Catwoman's sexual innuendos with cunning and mischievous pursuits to avoid representing a holy Bat-abomination, i.e., an interracial romance.

Kitt's colleagues embraced her inclusion in the television series with conflicting, colourblind rhetoric that acknowledged and denied Kitt's Blackness at the same time. In the documentary The Many Faces of Catwoman, Adam West claims the following in reference to race and the casting of Kitt as Catwoman, ‘Oh, and then we got a Black Catwoman! But, her race did not matter. We did not think a thing about it. ...When I first met her, I thought, here is this Black woman, and she's beautiful, too’ (The Many Faces of Catwoman, 2005). West's comment exemplifies that while one may purport not to see race (‘We did not think a thing about it’), subconscious feelings about race are present (‘When I first met her, I thought, here is this Black woman, and she's beautiful, too’). West's postracial rhetoric gives primacy to aesthetics over talent, and infers that Blackness is generally antithetical to the illusory and nebulous marker of the dominant culture's conceptualization of beauty. These extratextual, ideological contradictions notwithstanding, Kitt's reinterpretation of Catwoman did challenge notions of space and Blackness in the popular imagination and the confines of the previous lived social relations of racial apartheid and segregation in the US.

Kitt's first appearance in the 1967 Batman episode, ‘Catwoman Dressed to Kill’, did more than tout the presence of Blackness, as the character would signify on Black attainment of space and the dominant culture's conceptualization of beauty, femininity, sexuality, and power, especially as it relates to Blackness vis-à-vis whiteness. In this groundbreaking episode, Catwoman interrupts a fashion awards ceremony for white socialites at the very moment Batgirl is being named as a recipient of the ‘Batty Award’ for the best-dressed crime fightress in Gotham City:

Commissioner Gordon:	=	(Proudly) This award goes to prove that there is room for style, even in crime fighting.
Catwoman:	=	(Catwoman enters the room with white male sidekicks Manks and Angora) Ridiculous! I said ridiculous – foolish prattle. How can Batgirl be the best anything when Catwoman is around? (Catwoman chuckles in a muted purr). No best-dressed list is complete without the addition of the queen of criminals, the princess of plunder – yours untruly. Right, Manks and Angora?
Manks and Angora:	=	(Together) Right!
Catwoman:	=	In any comparison between Batgirl and myself, she runs a poor third.
Commissioner Gordon:	=	Just a minute Catwoman, You cannot come in here and disturb a luncheon like this!
Catwoman:	=	Ah, but I can gentlemen. And I have. (Catwoman gestures to a table of white female socialites.) You ladies, with your fancy hairdos, what do you know about beauty? After you suffer the effects of my hair bomb, you will never be able to raise your heads in public again! Then we will see who is the fairest of them all. Hssss! (Catwoman throws a sequined dust at the socialites, which explodes in their faces and turns their hairdos into finger-caught-in-the-light-socket-looking afros.)
Socialites	=	(All): Oh, no! (Batman, 1967).

There are several layers of meaning to cull from this scene in relationship to gender, race, and sexualities. Catwoman's insistence that she can enter into an all white space and has, asserts her right to belong and seize recognition. In view of West's earlier commentary about Kitt in the Catwoman documentary, her scorn for the white socialites and vying for being seen as the ‘fairest of them all’ in this 1967 episode is an ironic, signifying statement on whiteness, Blackness, and beauty aesthetics at time when the slogan ‘Black is beautiful’ was infused with political meaning. Hair is a significant sign of race, and her transformation of the white socialites' hair to afros (which serves as contrast to Kitt's long and pin curled locks) via a ‘hair bomb’, blurs and overturns hierarchies of beauty, hair, and their dependent relationship to race. Catwoman's commentary before the hair bomb explosion also invokes a direct confrontation with what cultural and feminist bell hooks has coined the white-supremacist-capitalist patriarchy that is responsible for the white socialites' elevated racial, class, and gender status (hooks 1996). Further, while the 1940s Batman comic book used signs of hetero-normativity to reify a heterosexual narrative structure with the inclusion of Catwoman, the visual animation of Catwoman as played by Kitt made way for additional sexual frameworks and sexual object relations.

A critical mass of viewers could and did view the roles of Catwoman's lackeys, Manks and Angora, as well as her comrades the Joker, Riddler, and Penguin, as powerful symbols of alternative masculinity that did not rely upon hyper-masculinity, heterosexuality, and brute and brawn to define their manhood (Medhurst 1991, Johnson 1995, York 2000, Morris 2003). In this way, Kitt's appearance and allied relationship with unconventional masculinities made her more socially significant in regards to the politics of race, gender, and sexualities. Her extradition from being the love interest of Batman was an unfortunate throw back to antebellum fears of miscegenation. Yet, Kitt's role paradoxically opened the door for an equal footing in comparison to Newmar's and later actor Lee Meriwether's interpretation of the character, both of whom relied upon their wit, but mostly upon their sexuality to define the role.

It is more than ironic that an episode about a luncheon i.e., ‘Catwoman Dressed to Kill’, which helped to usher in Kitt's career as a trailblazer in television, would symbolically foreshadow a White House luncheon Kitt attended in 1968 for US President Lyndon Johnson. When asked about the Vietnam War by first lady Johnson Kitt expressed her ambivalence by stating, ‘You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and [smoke] pot’ (Nichols 2008). The first lady took offense to the comments, and the news press spread the word of Kitt's forthright and anti-war commentary. The reaction to her comments included an aggressive movement to blacklist Kitt in the US, yet this blacklisting opened the door to more opportunities for her to continue to perform nightclub acts in Europe and in Asia. Further, her queer allied camp in Batman led to an increase and celebration of the actor, singer, and performer in nightclubs throughout Europe and in New York City (Brown 2008). If ‘Catwoman Dressed to Kill’ became a foreshadow to Kitt's real life state rebellion, then Kitt's Catwoman character became a popular culture iconic force months before the Stonewall Riots, and continued decades after Stonewall's intervention into the ideological state apparatuses retro-processing of hetero-normativity in the public sphere. ⁷

Queer spectators and fans did tap into and rally the transgressive performance of masculinities in Batman in the late 1960s and in subsequent decades as the show appeared in syndication, but the characterization of sexuality in the television show was still problematic. As Marti Jo Morris (2003) writes of the television and film series, while the expansion of masculinities and by association, perceived sexualities of these characters may ‘produce a variety of readings both subversive and conforming, the subversive messages are more likely to solidify extreme opinion than to persuade people, gain power, and disrupt dominant ideologies’. I argue similarly that while the widely colourful costumes and eccentric stylization of Manks, Angora, The Joker, Riddler, and Penguin may have widened the prospects of subjectivity for queer-identified audiences, these same male roles would likely perform the role of the queer minstrel, or evil, asexual villain for the majority of spectators. Kitt's Catwoman and her villainous colleagues represent the possibilities and contradictions that led to a diversification of the comic book and television viewing market, thereby expanding the fan base beyond any one particular race, gender, and mono-sexual distinction. At the same time, such camp performances, as Morris suggests, present little guarantee for subversion on a broad scale. Perhaps the most significant mediator of the unreliability to representation is representative action in the public sphere: the same role that made Eartha Kitt a camp icon, also helped to influence her participation in activism on behalf of lesbian and gay rights from the late 1960s to present times. Eartha Kitt as Catwoman writ large was larger than a television character and as an icon of sexuality and sexual freedom, the way she made use of the reaction to her Catwoman camp interpenetrated and interlinked the textuality of the visual with the political possibilities of the contextual real.

Dawn of a new age: the bronzing of Catwoman in comic books and graphic novels

Television's Catwoman laid significant groundwork for the racial and sexual transgressions of the character in the modern comic book era, but these changes could exist as retrograde or progressive depending upon the title of the character's appearance. During the 1980s, Batman writer Frank Miller changed Catwoman's comic book history from a working class hairdresser, turned socialite and jewel thief, as she had been in the 1940s, 1950s, and television series, to a former prostitute who specialized in S&M. This depiction brought the character back to her original premise of exaggerated physio-anatomy, apparently for the gratification of young male readers. In a 1986 issue of Batman, her strong sexual innuendos were reminiscent of before the Comic Book Codes era, as Catwoman seductively queries to Batman in a 1986 issue, ‘Do I have to purr in your ear?’ Batman responds to her with equal repartee by offering, ‘No, but maybe later you could scratch my back.’ Catwoman turns the conversation back to sexual banter by replying, ‘What's the matter? No itches in the front?’ (Monich 1986, p. 61).

Miller's sexualized Catwoman was congruent with a growing trend in 1980s comics to present latex and leather clad angry women ass-kickers, such as Barb Wire, Lady Rawhide, Witch Blade, Fatale, Black Widow, and She-Hulk. Cultural critic Jeffrey Brown (2004) writes that, ‘to attract the attention of the predominantly male adolescent comics consumer, publishers flooded store shelves with new books [in the 1980s] featuring extremely leggy and buxom superheroines costumed in highly revealing, skintight outfits’. Catwoman's change was also parallel to the turn in the Batman comic book and later, the animated series, to a graphic novel format where Batman became more serious, mature, and disenchanted with the world – one who left the Boy Wonder behind to contemplate the complexity of life and his disillusion with justice (Bongco 2000). In Miller's version, Catwoman took vengeance on her pimp, and was an advocate for women, especially sex workers. When Batman ran into Catwoman on the streets of Gotham City, it was generally to save her from committing a crime, or to save her from herself, so to speak. This depiction departed from the former character's duality and cross-gender appeal as an autonomous agent; Catwoman in the past occupied the space of subject of desire, and she was in control of her own will and destiny; she never waited for Batman to save her from demise.

Not until writer Mindy Newell and later writer Ed Brubaker took the project of making Catwoman a feature graphic novel did Catwoman have a genealogy and serious feminist sensibility absent of the exaggerated battle-of-the-sexes polemics of her 1960s comic book character. Mindy Newell, a former psychiatric nurse turned writer, added a complexity to Catwoman in 1991 that transcended the eye-candy cat suit in her graphic novel ‘Her Sister's Keeper’ (Newell 1991) (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Cover art for Mindy Newell's edition of Catwoman. Source: Mindy Newell (w), J.J. Birch (a), and Michael Blair (i), Catwoman (May). National Comics Publications (DC Comics). Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

Catwoman became more than an avenger in this series; she became a vigilante of her own choice – one that championed the rights of the working classes of the east end of Gotham City. While she did remain an anti-hero, she was no longer a villainess – perhaps a temptress, but always her own woman. Newell's and Brubaker's Catwoman had a circle of friends and relatives that had less to do with the world of Batman and Bruce Wayne. The new Catwoman had a Spanish-speaking Latino mother who committed suicide, a white alcoholic father, a sister, who had a mental breakdown, and a best friend, Holly, who is in a same sex relationship, is a former child prostitute, runaway, and recovering drug abuser. Hence, Newell and Brubaker made Wertham's worst nightmare a reality. With the exception of ethnicity and the extended family and friend base, Newell's emotionally complex Selina Kyle/Catwoman became a loose model for Catwoman's appearance in the second installment of Tim Burton's successful Batman film enterprise, Batman Returns (1992). Unfortunately, an expansion of race, gender, and sexuality did not transfer to the representation and reception of the character in Batman Returns nor in the film feature Catwoman (2004). In both versions, Blackness became the context and subtext that creators of the character appeared unable to reconcile in the market.

Those who bother cats can get scratched! The politics of race, production, and consumption in Batman Returns and Catwoman

Casting directors surely faced a dilemma when it came to who would play Catwoman in Batman Returns. Since her origin story provided in ‘Her Sister's Keeper’, Catwoman was presumably a mixture of Latino and white, but the last visual representation of Catwoman on the small screen was Black. Although rumors surfaced that producers were considering the R&B singer Jody Watley and actor/singer Vanessa L. Williams for the role, the film's decision-makers did not select a Black actor, and instead cast white actor Michelle Pfeiffer to play the dual personality of Selina Kyle and Catwoman. Given Kitt's brief, but significant contribution to the Catwoman franchise, it seems the makers of the 1992 film faced the same dilemma of the 1960s television show, that is, the question of viewers' reception to Blackness, sexuality, and cross-racial desire in a romantic context. More than 25 years had passed since the television series first aired and the motion picture industry had produced many on-screen sexual portrayals of interracial liaisons. Still, the makers of Batman Returns sought to fashion the film in accordance with the current Batman graphic novel series, The Dark Knight Returns, and apparently, balked at presenting an interracial love theme (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Covert art for recent Catwoman graphic novel. Source: Ed Brubaker (w), Cameron Steward (a), and Matt Hollingsworth (i), Catwoman Secret Files #12–19. National Comics Publications (DC Comics). Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

Pfeiffer's interpretation of the character was successful on several counts: the acting was sound and she brought a sense of vulnerability to Selina Kyle and unapologetic autonomy to Catwoman. As a reviewer in Rolling Stone wrote about Pfeiffer's portrayal of the character, ‘Catwoman is no bimbo in black leather. Pfeiffer gives this feminist avenger a tough core of intelligence and wit’ (Travers 1992, p. 109). In counter-juxtaposition, feminist critic Priscilla Walton (1998) writes in her analysis of Batman Returns that ‘although Burton's film offers the potential of feminist agency in its depiction of Catwoman's outlaw performance, it also skins this cat by situating her firmly under the eye of male authority’. As discussions began about a Catwoman feature film in the wake of the de-racialization of the character in Burton's Batman Returns, DC/Warner Brothers Pictures made the surprising announcement in 2003 that actor Halle Berry would play the lead in their 2004 feature film Catwoman, directed by European director Pitof. In the 2004 adaptation of Catwoman, Patience Phillips – a young Black artist who works at a cosmetics firm in the company's advertising division – replaces Selina Kyle. An Egyptian cat transforms Phillips into Catwoman, after her own boss kills her for finding out the firm's secret: their best selling face cream creates long-term paralysis and deterioration of the flesh. The film circumvented a Black/white love story, as the love interest for Phillips in Catwoman is not Batman; rather, it is Tom Lone, played by the Latino and American Indian actor Benjamin Bratt.

As the above plot and casting demonstrates, the new Catwoman had no resemblance to the graphic novel character other than the Catwoman namesake. Catwoman's self-assurance, strength, and cunning was completely nonexistent; Patience Phillips was embarrassingly self-effacing before she became Catwoman, and after her transition, was less of a social justice crusader or jewel thief in the Robin Hood tradition as the prior Catwoman had been, and more of a rebel without a cause. When Phillips/Catwoman steals jewelry from a downtown city museum, for example, she does this on a lark, returns it, and leaves a handwritten note that reads, ‘Sorry.’ Even before DC writers infused Selina Kyle's/Catwoman's character with a feminist world-view in the graphic novel, she never apologized for anything, and would certainly never say, ‘I'm sorry’, after a heist. Catwoman the movie departed from the gritty urban realism, psychologically layered, and character-driven writing in the contemporary graphic novel, to a romantic comedy tainted by artificial-looking, computer-generated imagery (commonly referred to as CGI). Yet, Catwoman the movie suffered from more than the clichéd adage that the book is always better than the film.

Reviews of Catwoman were overwhelmingly negative, citing poor acting and poorly executed action scenes as the film's downfall, and fans of Catwoman were disappointed in the casting and narrative. Reviewers minimized the film as nothing more than an opportunity to show off Berry's well-toned physique. ‘Catwoman's ensemble looks like she's been shopping at trick-toria's secret [with her] open-toed shoes, black slash pants and a leather bustier’, said a sarcastic reviewer in the Houston Chronicle (Guy 2004, p. 1). Aesthetically, Catwoman's movements in the film had more resemblance to a modern video game than the martial arts inspired movements of Burton's film and those suggested by graphic novel illustrators. In the graphic novel series, Catwoman was not a superhero with magic or exaggerated powers. Part of her appeal to the everyday reader was that she was an anti-hero whose fighting ability was derivative of martial arts and physical endurance training. Catwoman's ability to complete her missions due to advanced and learned physical agility in the graphic novel made her accessible and more realistic, which led to her long-term respect among readers. Over the years, Catwoman had been a working class hairdresser, a socialite, a former prostitute, a jewel thief, and a US government spy. However, whatever her occupation, she had always been assertive, strong-minded, and most important to modern readers she had always been Selina Kyle. As one fan remarked in a newspaper exposé about readers' dismay concerning the film, 'If you're going to put Halle Berry in a tight costume and give her cat powers, just call her tiger girl or something... . But if you call her Catwoman, give me the Catwoman I know' (Guy 2004, p. 1). While the character's identity had always been in a state of flux and her origin had been reset more than once by Frank Miller, Mindy Newell, and later, Ed Brubaker, Warner Brother's filmic departure troubled the marketplace and Catwoman readers for reasons derivative of a collide between postracialism, liberal politicking, and lack of business know-how.

Unlike Burton's Batman Returns, Warner Brothers' artistic direction with Catwoman did not consider the desires of Batman fans. Rather, I argue – albeit speculatively – that the film sought to redress the racially suspect casting of Pfeiffer in Batman Returns and expand the possible viewership in three primary ways. One, producers likely hoped the casting of Berry would remedy director Tim Burton's decision to shun Black actors for the role 10 years prior. Two, makers of the film counted on Berry's recent Oscar for Monster's Ball and acceptance in the films X-Men I & II as the comic book character Storm to help secure the film's success. Three, the filmic team sought to appeal to fans of Berry, who in their and in the actor's mind, might attract not only the general audience, but also, Black and urban audiences. Berry affirmed these hypotheses in interviews about her role in the film. In several periodicals, including the popular Black periodical Jet magazine, she shared hopes that Black moviegoers would support the film because of her presence (Collier 2004). Berry and Bratt appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in May of 2004 to promote the July release of Catwoman, and both made mention that it was the first major action film where a Black woman and a Latino male were the major stars. ‘More films with people of color in leading roles will be made’, said Berry on the Oprah Winfrey Show, ‘if people go out and support this film’. Yet, in Catwoman, Lone and Phillips are racially ambiguous characters that show no ties to their ethnic ancestry; they bear no signs of ethnicity or culture to mark them in terms of race. A twenty-first century Black Catwoman could not break new ground or carve out meaningful gender, racial, and sexual spaces while remaining squarely situated in a 1960s approach of inclusion by way of non-threatening, colorblind representation. In this sense, Berry's racial difference in the film made little difference at all, and was less radical than that of her 1967 predecessor.

Indeed, the problem with Berry's and Bratt's romantic multicultural rhetoric on the Oprah Winfrey Show was that in Patience Phillips' and Tom Lone's world, race does not exist. This postracial fantasy makes it problematic for the actors to assume racial-ethnic audiences would engage with a film divorced from the same modes of difference the actors purport as essential to widening the roles of people of colour in the film industry. ⁸ In response to Warner Brothers’ and Pitof's departure from the Catwoman graphic novel, clusters of fans took the initiative to prove that computer animation and a large budget did not translate into an accurate or satisfactory representation in film, by creating two film shorts, Catwoman: Copy Cat and Catwoman: Nine Lives in 2005. Both of these films were non-profit ventures, perhaps underscoring the significant meaning that Catwoman has to fans, and the need to challenge DC/Warner Brothers to address the needs and perceptions of readers. In the eyes of fans, bringing Catwoman to screen was not a venture in monetary gain. The two fan films were aesthetically simple and had mediocre acting, but their plots interwove typical scenarios from the graphic novel, and unsurprisingly, both films cast white actors to play the role of Selina Kyle/Catwoman.

Black cat got your tongue? Fans address questions of race, gender, and sexuality in Catwoman

In my on-going discussions with avid readers of the contemporary Catwoman series on DC Comics' Catwoman message board, I asked readers if they felt the ethnicity of the character mattered, what actor they felt best portrayed the character, and if men and women read the title for different reasons (see Brubaker et al. 2005; Brubaker and Steward 2005). These questions sought to ascertain how readers were decoding Catwoman's changing narrative in all the forms of media in which she appears, and the significance of race, gender, and sexuality in the title's production. An advantage to using the DC message board was that I could correspond with a larger pool of fans than one-to-one interviews would allow; I could access international readers; and, I could continue our conversations, thereby creating an on-going dialogue. This approach was successful on many other counts. Message board respondents are not casual readers; their participation in this forum speaks to a desire to widen their engagement beyond reading the books, in order to access and connect with a global community of readers.

While not a cyber ethnographer, on the Catwoman message board, I was part of a vernacular community of readers who make meaning in graphic novel consumption through the reading process and participation in the various cultural circuits relevant to the art form (see Hellekson and Busse 2006; Silver et al. 2006). In other words, in the DC message forum, I was what cultural critic George Lipsitz theorizes as a maximally competent cultural reader and consumer, rather than an academic probing for answers that in the interviewee's mind might lead to distortion or exploitation of their voices (2001). Fans' voices thus stand alone and reflect an undying commitment to Catwoman, and while their responses were sometimes contradictory, they were overwhelmingly thoughtful. I include a brief sample of reader responses (all responses are archived and therefore may be read on the DC message board). In so doing, I underscore the legitimacy and intelligence of readers' voices and interpretations, as to avoid the problematic stance of academician as the authority voice at the expense of the art form under examination, and at the expense of consumers, who are co-makers of the art form.

In the reader responses, their interpretation of Catwoman's ethnicity shows the extent to which race matters, but not in the ways that one might hastily assume. This is apparent in fans' response to my question concerning how the race of Catwoman may shape the meaning of the graphic novel's narrative, and the reading pleasure of fans. The answers of the fans point to the necessity not to constrain the character to a stagnant identity. ⁹ Yet, for readers, the character's ethnicity, race, and character attributes do require continuity:

Response One:	=	To me I guess Catwoman is a thief and an American – and culturally haughty and catlike – no LA bimbo babe. I don't think Catwoman is defined by race BUT she has beginnings as a European woman. I am not a European nor am I American. And I would hate it if [she became a] supermodel [like] Vixen, 10 or all of a sudden was French European.
Response Two:	=	I don't think it really matters, a long as she is Selina Kyle, former prostitute turned costumed thief, turned vigilante without powers of any sort. There was a Volume I with flashbacks in which her mother seemed to be Latin American and her father more white. Race would be an issue in her portrayal and how she is perceived – due to racial stereotyping. She is supposed to have emerged from the urban underclass in a big, American city, and that is not supposed to be consistent with being a WASP.
Response Three:	=	I understand that Selina's Mom is Cuban, and Kyle is Irish. So, I guess she's half-Irish and half-Cuban. [Maybe] she's half Mexican (I remember reading a thing of her childhood and her mother was speaking Spanish) and half Italian (with Carmine 11 being her father and all).
Response Four:	=	She is Caucasian, and Cuban, but Cuban is ‘American’ and can imply mixed race. There are African blood Cubans, and Caucasian blood Cubans. I don't think that race is an issue with Selina but black hair, light skin and green eyes can mean different things, but I would assume some Irish in there and I believe her father was Irish. Some African Americans in this country I've known have had light skin, black hair and green eyes. I like her the way she is, but also liked the idea of some Egyptian blood – as it could tie back to the people who worshiped the children of bats in some of Ed Brubaker's [writing] last year with the title. That could make for some interesting reading. I would like to see more heroes of color though ...I would love to see a person(s) of color being trained by Selina – A young African American girl would be awesome. After 60 years in comics, I think Catwoman could expand, and comics could certainly do with some more heroes of color. Oh, but I'm just a dorky white guy, so what do I know. 12

For readers, Catwoman either was a mixture of Latino, Irish, and Italian, or possibly had Egyptian (African) ancestry. Several responses reflect a consciousness concerning the need for comic book characters of colour, whether Latino or Black. In a follow up query that I posted to the DC message board concerning fans' preference for actor portrayals of Catwoman, an overwhelming majority of readers disclosed they preferred the portrayals of Catwoman by Newmar, Pfeiffer, and Kitt – in that order. ¹³ One could conclude that their rankings reflect unspoken desires and racial attitudes. Yet, only a few readers, many who identified their own race, interpreted Catwoman as ethnically white/European, and only one indirectly expressed prejudice toward the possibility of a Black Catwoman, by stating emphatically: ‘I think [her race] matters, not just for Selina Kyle, but also for every single character. That's the way we've grown used to them, so just don't change them.’ Of course, there is always the disjuncture between a reader's true feelings and those that they share. This aside, my question concerning Catwoman's ethnicity ignited a critical discussion among readers about the boundaries and meanings of race in ways that represent Catwoman as a state of becoming, rather than stagnate racialized criterion readers depended upon for identification and reading pleasure.

Insofar as the impact gender has on reader's comprehension of Catwoman, forum participants revealed that men and women often read the title for different reasons, but the reader's gender did not make those reasons gender-bound conclusive. The extant literature on comic books and their fans' focus on comics directed at one gender, and follow to provide an interpretation of readers that belong to one gender group (Brown 2001). Although this approach allows for a close reading of the correlation between a gender-exclusive product and a gender-exclusive consumer, it may miss an opportunity to draw comparisons between men and women readers of the same cultural text targeted toward a mixed audience. While many studies conclude that women read to engage in a social experience and men read on an individualistic basis, readers of Catwoman muddle such distinctions. For Catwoman readers, the reading process and the meanings deduced from the process are shared and individualistic, without either being derivative of the gender of the particular reader. Beauty of the character for men and strength of the character for women were factors in their choice to read Catwoman, but these variables were not determinants in isolation:

Response One:	=	As a female I think Selina/Catwoman is a great role model, and she's very realistically written with real human flaws (as with everyone else in it) so it's easy to relate to her and care about her. Along with all the personal character stuff it is also a really cool book with some of the best villains, situations and fights I've ever read in my limited comic book experience – it's like a great ongoing movie to me. It is smart, and I like that Selina is treated like a REAL woman and not a one-dimensional Playboy model-on-triple-silicone ‘fanboy’ fantasy.
Response Two:	=	If I may be so bold: From what I have seen from hanging out on this MB 14 for the last four or so years, I really think we all read Catwoman for the same reason. Male and female – gay and straight. We like her because she is sexy, fearless, smart, tough, and does her own thing. Personally, I like Selina because she is unconventional, thumbs her nose at society and does not take herself too seriously, which is a refreshing change from all the duty-bound characters out there. Selina will fall on her derriere, get up, and start all over again. I really think that it is a misnomer to think that (straight) men only want to read about hot women with no brains. There are far too many strong, powerful, and highly intelligent women in comic books.
Response Three:	=	She sexxxxxy. Mommy, I wanna taste!
Response Four:	=	As a male reader, it's hard not to notice Selina's appealing figure. This may have contributed to me buying the comics when I was a lot younger. I have just hit the big 30 in years, and it does not influence me as much as it used to. This lady has to have the strongest will of any woman in the DC universe. She is grown up hard, and doesn't take smack from any one. She is loyal to friends, and cares very little about what others think about her. This is sexy. Ultimately, it is what keeps me reading. 15

Readers' thoughtful (and sometimes sexually colourful!) responses show that they are either self-aware or self-reflexive about their choice to read Catwoman. Men do respond to Catwoman's appearance, but they also respond to the same attributes that women readers respond to: her circle of relationships to other characters, strength, and perseverance under extreme adversity. While beauty may draw male readers to the title as young men, the character's development over time, after the days of her exaggerated body parts in the pages of Batman, speaks to the concrete reasons that kept them reading not past, but through her physio-anatomy. Insofar as women readers are concerned, the aesthetic change of the character to a more realistically drawn physique increased her popularity, indicating women, too, need new anti-heroes – ones that reflect the type of realism that escapes many of the Amazon sheroes in male titles. Some readers of yesteryear surely read Batman and Catwoman to consume soft-core porn, or to live vicariously through a character whose behaviour they longed to emulate. However, male and female readers on the message board claim to read the title because Catwoman represents a modern, fallible woman: women that they know, or women similar to the identities and contradictions they already inhabit.

The spaces of difference that the title reflects for women readers is significant given the male domination of comic book and graphic novel production and consumption. Indeed, the last writer for Catwoman, Ed Brubaker, shared with me that: ‘There were more women fans for that book than any other I've done’ (Brubaker 2006) (Figure 6). According to a small pool of comic book store retailers interviewed for this study, Catwoman’s readership spans ages 16–50, includes an approximate 50/50 readership of men and women, and as the inclusion of MB responses reveal, readers cross national borders, sexualities, and embrace a spectrum of cultural politics. ¹⁶ Catwoman’s readership is gender inclusive; therefore, no fixed analysis of identity categories, reception, Catwoman the graphic novel and Catwoman the character is possible.

Figure 6. Contemporary Catwoman embraces the philosophy of Nietzsche. Source: Ed Brubaker (w), Cameron Steward (a), and Matt Hollingsworth (i), Catwoman Secret Files #12–19. National Comics Publications (DC Comics). Reproduced here with the kind permission of CATWOMAN ™ and © DC COMICS. All Rights Reserved.

Conclusion

My historical timeline of Catwoman, analysis of her character in various forms of print and visual culture, and inclusion of reader interpretations show that while gender, sexuality, and race mediates production, consumption, and reception, there are no guarantees ahead of time concerning what the relationship between those variables constitutes. Celebration of the character in terms of a politics of race in the twenty-first century, however, requires serious forestalling. Although fans read her race in wide and ambiguous ways, the perceived debacle of Catwoman the film seems to have stalled, rather than expanded, the representation of Catwoman in relationship to race. In 2009 issues of the comic book Gotham City: Sirens, the once racially ambiguous Catwoman seems codified as ‘white’, and she joins her DC sisters Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn in pursuit of crime, thereby returning to her days as a crime offender (Dini and March 2009). Though imperfect over the past seven decades, the contradictory components of her racial, gender, and sexual representation nevertheless situate Catwoman as a significant, groundbreaking part of the historical lexicon of comics and of the DC franchise. I end, then, with the words of actor Eartha Kitt, concerning Catwoman's implications for readers, and the spaces of difference she creates, negotiates, and defies: ‘Catwoman is a unique breed. Never taking the same form twice, but whatever form she takes, she'll always reign supreme’ (The Many Faces of Catwoman, 2005).

Notes

¹ Caniff's engagement with Orientalist motifs provides a context to understand The Cat's/Catwoman's development throughout the 1940s as a refraction of the depression era and later, World War II America's antagonisms with China, Japan, and ambivalence about the growing autonomy of women, their place in the workforce, and in the public sphere. It is also telling that Caniff's work was available in military newspapers, thus underscoring his work's use to facilitate patriotic and military agendas. On the work of Caniff see Harvey 2004. On Orientalism, see Said 1978. On The Dragon Lady caricature in popular culture, see Shah 1999.

² Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle, and Black Canary were popular superheroines that were advocates for American patriotism and social justice against ‘the forces of evil’ during World War II and slightly thereafter. There was a resurrection of all these characters in a variety of mediums, including other comic books, television and animation series after the Golden Age of comics.

³ On the relationship between Blackness and comic book production see Frederik Stomberg's visually stimulating Black images in the comics: a visual history (2003).

⁴ The Comic Book Codes were a set of self-governing rules (or censorship) instituted by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers in the wake of and in response to psychiatrist Frederick Wertham's claims about the negative effects of comic book reading for children and United States Senatorial hearings on juvenile delinquency (spearheaded by then Senator Carey Estes Kefauver of Tennessee). The hearings, which cited Wertham as a reputable source, singled out comic books for sexual and violent content deemed inappropriate for the reading of youth. As a result, many titles retired characters and storylines that had direct and indirect sexual themes. On marriage and sexuality, for example, the Comic Book Codes held that:

1.	Divorce shall not be treated humorously nor represented as desirable.
2.	Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at nor portrayed. Violent love scenes as well as sexual abnormalities are unacceptable.
3.	Respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. A sympathetic understanding of the problems of love is not a license for morbid distortion.
4.	The treatment of love-romance stories shall emphasize the value of the home and sanctity of marriage.
5.	Passion or romantic interest shall never be treated in such a way as to stimulate the lower and baser emotions.
6.	Sex perversion or any inference to same is strictly forbidden.

For an analysis of the Comic Book Codes, see Nyberg 1998, pp. 166–9. Nyberg includes the 1954 version of the codes in her appendices.

⁵ Readership of comics went from 50% female in the 1950s and 1960s to 10% by the late 1980s. Statistics on gender identity and comic book reading appears in Biagi and Kern-Foxworth 1997, p. 249.

⁶ Lee Meriwether played Catwoman in 1966’s Batman, The Movie.

⁷ The Stonewall Riots refer to a series of interventions and protest to the discriminatory singling out of gay clubs in New York City (Greenwich Village) by law enforcement. Before and after this moment, Kitt's mixture of Catwoman camp and nightclub performances situated her as a popular culture icon in queer representation. On the convergence of popular culture, the public spheres, and queer history, see Creekmur and Doty 1995.

⁸ Catwoman cost $100 million to make, and earned $39.6 million at the box office, resulting in a $60 million (approximately) loss for Warner Brothers’ films. Catwoman was the first action film of this magnitude and budget to feature a lead Black female actor. The release date of the film was 23 July 2004, and the release date of the special edition DVD was 7 June 2005.

⁹ The conduction of the audience study was as a participant and as an observer on DC Comics’ message board. However, given the nature of electronic media as an open forum that all users may access and respond to, the following excerpts are treated as quotations from a public internet forum, rather than as a ‘controlled experiment’ conducted by an academician working with human subjects. Thus, from hereon I am citing from the message board by use of scholarly documentation, rather than presenting the voices as interviewees. The threads were generated in July 2005 and are archived at DC Comics Catwoman Message Board site, http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/forum.jspa?forumID=29208977.

¹⁰ Vixen is an African female superhero character.

¹¹ Carmine Falcone is an Italian American villain in the Batman book series.

¹² Comment on ‘Catwoman's Ethnicity’, DC Comics Catwoman Message Board site, http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/forum.jspa?forumID=29208977.

¹³ Avid reader responses differ from the opinions of moviegoers and television enthusiasts presented in a Netflix survey of 300 subscribers to the video rental franchise. In the Netflix survey Halle Berry was the most popular Catwoman garnering 31.9%, Julie Newmar 13.8%, Eartha Kitt 13.1%, Lee Meriwether 0.3%, Other 5%. Moviegoers ranked Catwoman the third most relatable graphic novel character, with Batman and Spiderman, respectively, ranking as the first and second most relatable characters. A summary of these survey findings are in Guy 2004.

¹⁴ MB refers to message board.

¹⁵ Comment on ‘Male and Female Readers of Catwoman’, DC Comics Catwoman Message Board site, http://dcboards.warnerbros.com/web/forum.jspa?forumID=29208977.

¹⁶ These statistics come from my interviews with five comic book retailers in Tucson, Arizona whose answers were consistent about the title's readership.