The one day a year when she says "Great Detective My Ass and it's not a critique, it's a request."

The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.

If you still believe in Gotham City, if you believe in Hope and Heroes, if you refuse to let Gotham be defined by those who know only ugliness and despair, honor Harvey by passing this message along.

Chris Dee
catwoman-cattales.com

The Gotham Rogues: A Knight at the Opera at Main Cat-Tales Website and mobile-friendly mirror Cat-Tales.mobi

Whew! Let’s try not to do THAT again.

Wasn’t any trouble, but it did involve several hours of “waiting around for the cable guy” while they got to our server. Nothing like sitting around waiting on a Monday, so I took the time to whip up a little preview for the next chapter.  Considering how popular the Selina Kyle, Fashionista posts have always been, whether it’s in Cat-Tales or news of Anne Hathaway on The Dark Knight Rises set, I figured this would be of particular interest…

Still, much as we love to see Selina dressed up when she’s not in her Catwoman costume, regular Cat-Tales readers are aware that clothes and jewelry tend to be plot points, not fantasy fripperies in the tales, so in the upcoming installment of The Gotham Rogues, A Knight at the Opera… well, perhaps I should let B take it from here

As she spoke, all emotion had drained from Batman’s eyes, leaving only a gaze of focused control and icy detachment. It held for a heartbeat, then the ice melted and emotion slowly returned… and with it, a long, slow smile of deep and quiet menace.

“Not green for the opera,” he said in a poisonous voice that was barely human. “That purple and black thing you’ve got, the strapless that’s almost the same shade as your costume. Hair up, nothing to pull focus from your neck. We might have to improvise the jewelry…”

Carmine Falcone tried to blow up Two-Face and Poison Ivy.  He tried to assassinate The Joker.  Did he really think The Gotham Rogues would run away to Jersey?

On an unrelated note (is it?) this is Catwoman’s favorite gargoyle, right down the street from the Wayne Tower.  Anyone who saw Cat-Tales knows that, including Batman.

Read The Gotham Rogues at catwoman-cattales.com
or mobile-friendly Cat-Tales.mobi

The new chapter is ready.  It would have gone up today, but instead, it will be released tomorrow so I can add just one small voice to the SOPA Blackout in progress at Wikipedia, Reddit, and other sites trying to spread awareness of the “Stop Online Piracy Act” or SOPA bill which the US Congress will vote on next week.

The bill is superficially about copyright protection and intellectual property.  It sounds plausible, movies are big business.  I’m as worried as anyone about the disproportionate amount of power corporations have gained over US lawmakers, but I think we can all agree that if Warner Brothers is spending upwards of $100,000,000 on The Dark Knight Rises, it’s not unreasonable for them to ask us $10 a head to watch it rather than having anyone able to download it for free.

BUT this legislation that is allegedly about pirated movies and TV shows has provisions to snuff out any website, arrest those who even maintain a site that LINKS to objectionable content, and essentially impose China-modeled controls over the Internet in the United States.  This proposed legislation also seems to have surfaced immediately after WikiLeaks.

There is a history in this country of a government that cannot go after people for one thing – like, say, protesting the war in Vietnam – finding a way to go after them for something else that many of them do – like, say, smoking marijuana.

There is no social site out there where people are forwarding a Huffington Post article about Ron Paul where somebody isn’t also sharing a YouTube from The Brave and the Bold cartoon.  There is no blog network where somebody hasn’t posted a still photo from Twilight made into a faux motivational poster about Edward being the lovespawn of Dracula and Tinkerbell.

ANY SOCIAL NETWORK and ANY WEBSITE can be shut down under SOPA, and a case can be made against any one of us.  This is an attack on free speech in the one medium left that corporations cannot control, where this little gal writing a fan fiction series can shout just as loud as Time Warner, and where the merits of each view decides who the audience will go back to, not the advertising budget behind it.

Whether you are political or not, like Cat-Tales or not, whatever it is you want to say online, this is a time to call your Congressman and tell them to oppose SOPA.  Because whatever other positions they hold, it doesn’t make much difference if they give on this one.  This is the dealbreaker, folks.  This is the one that snuffs out our ability to talk about all the others.

SOPA is not about copyright or piracy.  It is about censorship and free speech.  Use it loose it, guys.  Use it or lose it.

Chris Dee
catwoman-cattales.com

Does it really matter what I say at this point?

Okay, in case anyone is actually reading down here, that picture is from a breast cancer awareness campaign rolled out by an advertising agency in Mozambique late last year, when it might have received a little more attention if we weren’t all occupied trying to figure out what Bane was saying in The Dark Knight Rises prologue and resetting the trailer audio against footage of The Lion King.

That said, this should have been a really good campaign.  Because there are factions in comic book fandoms that rail against the titties, who rail against fantasy and sexuality and anything men enjoy looking at as if it’s an insult to women.  But in the words of West Wing’s Josh Lyman:

You know, I realize that as an adult not everyone shares my view of the world, and with an issue as hot as gun control I’m prepared to accept a lot of different points of view as being perfectly valid, but we can all get together on the grenade launcher, right?

It’s breast cancer.  We’re mammals, we can all get together on this one.   We’ve all got ‘em, ladies.  A-cups, D-cups, and the most vitriolic Balent-bashers of every size and shape can all raise their hand for this one: Breast Cancer BAD.  No matter how much it offends you that men like looking at them, dying because a lump went unnoticed in all that fleshiness would suck.

The message of this campaign, which features Catwoman among other busty comic book icons like Storm, She-Hulk and Wonder Woman performing various stages of a breast exam is simple and solid:

There are no super women, nobody is immune to breast cancer, every woman should do this.

That message is delivered following the most basic rules of communication as first codified by Aristotle: Step 1 – Get their attention.  It doesn’t matter what you have to say if you don’t nail that.  You have to GET YOUR AUDIENCE’S ATTENTION.

And unlike some generator repair shack in Mobile, Alabama headlining their webpage “SEX – SEX – SEX, Natalie Portman Naked,” this picture is actually ABOUT the very thing it’s getting your attention to talk about.

So seriously, this is a good ad.  This is a good campaign.  And I desperately, desperately want to tell anybody who has a problem with it to reexamine their screwed up sexual politics.

If only it wasn’t for the claws.  ‘Cause that just looks painful.  I love Catwoman, and I am practically the spokes model for “Get over it, there’s nothing wrong with big-titted women in comics!”  But I look at that and wince.  Of course, if you’re featuring iconic, busty comic book women, you’ve got to include Catwoman.  And of course, you’re going to have the claws in there because how else do we know who it is?   But… look at them.  In the way everything else about this attention getting campaign is exactly right for the message they’re delivering, that is exactly wrong.  It screams (as someone posted on Facebook) “This is an idea from a bunch of teenage boys” – because I don’t believe any woman who has actually done this is going to see anything but those claws.

And who is the ad really for?

So, Mozambique ad guys, love your idea, love your enthusiasm.  Little tip from the target demographic: next time it’s a message intended for the curvilinear customers, run it past a curvilinear coworker first and if she happens to say “These three are great but lose that one” even though “that one” is the center of an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster with unprecedented image recognition—do it.  Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand why.  Just do it.

Chris Dee
catwoman-cattales.com

My favorite Scrooge is Alfred Pennyworth himself, Michael Caine.  The reason is uniquely Deevian: you spend enough time in theatre, certain shows become as familiar as Sunday mass to a strict catholic.  Every year, just like the ballet does The Nutcracker and the art museum does a Festival of Trees, every theatre company in town does some form of A Christmas Carol. 

Those lines that are pure Dickensian beauty lose their meaning through so much repetition:

“Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine.”

“If I could work my will, every idiot who goes around with a ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips would be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart”

“I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I cannot afford to make idle people merry.”

On Michael Caine’s lips, each one of those oh so familiar lines were fresh, completely new.  The scene and therefore the man and his story became entirely new.  I can’t imagine how he did it, how he found such insight, such an angle or inspiration to bring these words to life as never before–without changing a comma.

Because that’s the other thing about the annual theatre Christmas Carols.  Just like comics, there are those who have the daft idea that nobody wants to see it the way it’s always been done, who have to wreck it with the idea that they’re putting their individual stamp on it: they give us the Homeless Christmas Carol, the hip hop Christmas Carol, and the horror fest Scrooge:Scared Straight that makes Tim Burton seem like a perfectly normal, well-adjusted guy without any creepy fixations on Christmas, snow, clowns, stitches or raising the dead.  It never works, the audience flocks to the theatres who understand that the public wants the familiar on these things, that we want the traditional, the ritual.  Every year The Nutcracker is done exactly the same way.  Every year it’s a pine tree covered with lights and ornaments and not a pile of coat hangers strung with silly string.  Every year it’s a turkey, ham or goose and not fish n’ chips.  Things have been done this way forever because it’s right.

Michael Caine’s Scrooge made Ebenezer Scrooge new and fresh the right way – which is the hard way.  I still have no idea how he did it, but there is one more thing that makes the feat insanely brilliant: He was playing to plush.

He was delivering those lines to a goddamn muppet.

I cannot wrap my brain around it, but there it is.

No wonder Nolan cast him to play an Alfred who was unique to his storyverse but absolutely true to the essence of the character.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Tingle Bells” Uncle Ty’s list of the most inappropriately sexy Christmas comic book covers.

CHRISTMAS COMIC COVERS V: Tingle Bells, Chestnuts Roasting, and the Seven Most Inappropriately Sexy Comic Book X-Mas Covers!