The Summer in Cat-Tales: My Precious, The Bat Walapang, The Dark Knight Rises and the Return of the Gotham Post

It’s been forever since I did one of those weekly updates, hasn’t it?  Let’s see, what all has been happening…

I got a new laptop, henceforth to be known as My Precious. As long-time readers are aware, the previous laptop was originally known as Precious, but as Adobe Programs and Second Life videos began clogging up its innards, it came to be known as “the workhorse” and finally as “that $#@^*&@^*! @&&*$# *}}@\&*(!!!!” While this may not seem like Cat-Tales news, getting set up on the new machine did take a bite out of writing time somewhere between Chapters 3 and 4. On the up side, new screen width for me tends to mean new wallpapers for everybody,  If you haven’t sought out Cat-Tales on Facebook, be sure to come like us to unlock some exclusive high-def wallpapers. Meow!

The 10th Anniversary is still under way, and our Look Back at Year 6 and the bat Walapang brought an interesting question to the Ask Catwoman feature.

That Nolan guy is making a Catwoman movie, er, I mean, you know, a third Dark Knight movie, and that led to a few pieces I wrote for outside sites.  Not Cat-Tales-specific, but let’s call them Cat-Tales-adjacent: Why Ninjas Don’t Wear Purple and Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman’s Goggles, and an Offer You Can’t Refuse at Blog Critics and O for a muse of #fire at Red Room.

The news isn’t all good, unfortunately.  Gene Colan died in June, and it threw something of a pall over DC’s Retroactive Batman.  More than one person mentioned that Tom Mandrake, the artist brought back for Batman of the 1970s issue was more of an 80s artist, and the sad fact was, he was used for the 70s because many the real stars of that earlier decade are gone.  Colan, like Aparo, drew the Batman many of us grew up with.  He drew a magnificent Catwoman too, and oh yes, of special interest to Cat-Tales fans, he drew Nocturna and Nightslayer, aka Natasha “damn that woman can work a metaphor” and Anton “looks like a potato” de Nuit.

Most of all his covers are alive with movement and energy we seldom see anymore.  His passing was a loss, but a reason to go back and look at those wonderful old pages, to post them in our blogs, and, frankly, to show the AH fanclub what great comic art actually looks like.

And finally, speaking of covers, something I really thought would have passed unnoticed but since a few eagle-eyed readers caught it…

Cat-Tales: Comedy of Errors concluded last week in a farcical extravaganza that, as one reader put it, owes more to Hepburn, Lombard and the screwball comedies of the 30s than the Shakespearean title implies, and now “all we need is a leopard.”  (Long story if you don’t know the classic Bringing Up Baby, but take my word for it, considering who we’re talking about, it’s apt.)  Thing is, the latest Cat-Tale owes a little something else to somewhere else.  As more-than-casual readers are aware, Cat-Tales began by lampooning developments in DC Comics as the lies and distortions of a tabloid called The Gotham Post—up until the end of Cat-Tale #46, also called “The Gotham Post.”  In that final chapter when Eddie says “Fuck the Post,” that is pretty much the end of DC Comics mentions in Cat-Tales—up until last week.  The gag with Oswald replacing the staid and conservative Gotham Times distributed by the hotel with a sensational Post displaying a hot Batman/Catwoman kiss on the cover is indeed based on this cover in the solicitations for October or November’s comics, the rebooted and relaunched Catwoman #2.

Everyone, please calm down.

I don’t know anything about the relaunch beyond what I said back in April in Retro-Active and Reichenbach Falls.  I don’t even know if it’s Retro-Active or Retroactive, what the difference is between that and Flashpoint, or what if anything is the difference between a relaunch and a reboot.  I. Don’t.  Know.  If I did, I’m sure I couldn’t tell you or I’d have to kill you, but since I don’t, not an issue.  All I can say is that a friend showed me that cover, and since Bat and Cat were already on the table in Oswald’s machinations against the imagined Bruce-Selina wedding, I tossed it in. That’s all.

As Oswald said: It wasn’t part of the original wreck-the-wedding plans, but one doesn’t let a gift like that pass unused.

It doesn’t mean we’re back to Cat-Tales #1 and regular commentary on the machinations of The Gotham Post.  It doesn’t mean I’m reading again.  It doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the very real Possibility #3 laid out in that Reichenbach Falls entry.  It is simply too early to say.  I do think the world of DC’s creative director Geoff Johns, and this blog has seen an actual love letter to Jim Lee.

I wish them both all the luck in the world as the Matt Albie and Danny Tripp of DC Comics.  Break a leg, guys.

Chris Dee
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