What makes catwoman

They also allow her to climb different surfaces. The claws, combined with her martial arts skills and and reflexes, make her a dangerous and deadly opponent.

At one point when facing Killer Croc , the cat burglar had her gloves upgraded so that they were sharper and possessed titanium claws in order to pierce his thick skin. It also helps her swing from ledges, grab objects, and trip up enemies. Michelle Pfeiffer trained for months in order to use the whip as Catwoman in Batman Returns. She worked until she could hit a target, wrap a wrist, wanting to be as authentically Selina Kyle as possible.

It was the first time the whip was seen extensively on screen. Catwoman, on the other hand, has no problem wielding a gun. Other than her claws and her whip, she is frequently seen sporting a pistol. Batman is known for possessing a strong moral code. Catwoman, on the other hand, is morally ambiguous. Sometimes she is a criminal, other times she plays the hero. Selina does what is right according to her own perspective.

She will, at times, fight for other people, however. Because she grew up poor on the streets, she will protect those that have no one else to fight for them when the mood strikes. Catwoman plays the hero role only when she deems it necessary. When villains see Batman on the rooftops of Gotham, they are quick to run away. They know he is out to lock thieves, murderers, and psychotic clowns away.

Catwoman, however, fits right in. While she does team up with the Caped Crusader at times, she is not a hero. This works to her benefit. She can essentially work with both sides depending on what she needs. If he could, he would never be Bruce and only be Batman.

In most cases, he acts more like a crime-fighting machine than a human being. Catwoman also had a tragic childhood, but rather than let it consume her, she kept in touch with her human emotions. In their encounters, Selina is quick to remind Bruce of his human side. Her emotional side is also what convinces her to help people on the street who are struggling.

While Batman is a tough, proficient crime-fighter, his lack of emotions perpetuates his loneliness and anger. It is hard for him to see outside his world of justice.

Meanwhile, Catwoman is still able to see the good in people and has kept her sense of humor. When she was first introduced on television in the s Batman show, she fascinated both men and women.

Catwoman has always been very independent. She has never waited around for men to take care of her. If she wants something, she goes and gets it. In the male dominated world of comic books, Catwoman certainly stands out. The Joker has been trying to make the Dark Knight laugh for years. Their relationship is also strained by the fact that they sometimes find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Holly Robinson takes over as the new Catwoman while Selina, living under the alias Irena Dubrovna, turns her attention to caring for her daughter Selina's alias was inspired by the name of the main character in the film Cat People.

Though she takes her role as a new mother quite seriously, Selina dons the costume for a run through the East End some days after Helena's birth. Having understandably gained a few pounds, Selina finds that her costume is now a tighter fit.

In addition, she is easily distracted by a common criminal. Although the situation is defused through Holly's opportune arrival, the sight of two Catwomen active simultaneously in the city is caught on video. Selina returns home from her adventure to find that the mysterious movie aficionado Film Freak has deduced her alias, joined with Angle Man , and grabbed Helena. After rescuing her daughter, Selina convinces Zatanna to mind-wipe Film Freak and Angle Man whom she had bound and gagged with duct tape after beating them brutally in order to preserve her secret identity.

Following the procedure, Angle Man turns himself in to the authorities; Film Freak, however, embarks upon a murderous rampage. Ted Grant informs Selina that Holly has been arrested for the murder of Black Mask ; Selina infiltrates the police station and frees Holly.

Posing as a criminal, Selina gains the Bana's trust and thwarts a terror attack aimed at causing mass casualties in Gotham City. Selina questions whether she should be raising a daughter when her life as Catwoman has already proven to be such a danger to the child.

After enlisting Batman's help in faking the death of both herself and her daughter, Selina puts Helena up for adoption. A month after Helena is placed with a new family, Catwoman asks Zatanna to erase her memories of Helena and change her mind back to a criminal mentality.

Zatanna refuses, judging for herself that such an act would be cruel to both mother and daughter. She tells Selina that she could never reverse Selina's mindset, since she was on the path to becoming a hero on her own. Believing she can no longer function as a criminal, Selina has since decided to become one of Batman's Outsiders.

She quickly quit however and was replaced by Batgirl. During the events of Final Crisis, Batman is seemingly killed. He is replaced by Nightwing , Dick Grayson. While contemplating her loss, and her unexplained physical weakness despite being fully recovered from her physical heart trauma, she rescues two bystanders from a new supervillain-wannabe who calls himself Boneblaster. However, her physical weakness becomes obvious when she fails to fight Boneblaster effectively.

Before Boneblaster can cause her permanent harm, she is rescued by the sudden appearance of Poison Ivy. Concerned at how weak Catwoman had become, Ivy takes Selina to where she'd been staying, the home of the Riddler. Selina discovered that Ivy had apparently seduced and drugged the Riddler with her plant pheromones, keeping him in a vegetative state. She also discovered that Ivy had similarly taken Harley Quinn into her new sanctuary. Selina then offered the idea that all three of them stay together to better survive in the new Gotham City.

Before accepting Selina's idea, Ivy secretly paid a visit to Zatanna through her plants, to find out if she had anything to do with Selina's weakness. Zatanna suggested that the weakness was likely psychological in nature. But before Ivy and Selina can discuss the matter any further, Boneblaster returns and tries to once more make a name for himself by attacking Ivy, Harley and Selina.

While Ivy and Harley distract him, Selina ends Boneblaster's threat by shorting out his gauntlets with a live electrical conduit, deducing that the villain had yet to get used to the technology, and had failed to properly insulate his gloves. As a result of the fight, Edward Nigma's apartment is wrecked. Selina then obtains an abandoned animal shelter as their new home from a man calling himself The Broker. Ivy and Harley move in, but before Ivy makes a final acceptance of Selina's offer, she surprises Selina and drugs her with truth serum-like spores.

While Selina falls into a stupor, Ivy says that she wants total honesty between all of them if they are to trust one another. She then asks Selina to reveal the identity of the original Batman.

Selina, using a mental discipline taught to her by Talia al Ghul, avoids the interrogation and gives Ivy and Harley a fabricated story about there being multiple Batmen over the years, and that she's had a personal relationship with more than one of them. Ivy and Harley accept this answer for the moment, and Ivy tries to make amends by growing all manner of exotic fruits for Selina.

Meanwhile, Harley goes shopping. Knowing that the real Bruce is dead, and that the man with Harley is really Thomas Elliot Hush , Selina takes Ivy to the restaurant where the picture was taken. She is shocked to see a Harlequin doll at the table, its head stabbed through with a knife. Harley's phone is next to it. Together Selina and Ivy manage to rescue Harley from Elliot, but not before having to deal with an old associate of the Joker's who is posing as Joker trying to kill Harley for taking his place.

Together the girls manage to stop the faux Joker and move in together. Although Bruce is gone, Selina continues to keep close ties to his family, spending Christmas Eve with Dick Grayson and Alfred Pennyworth and to a lesser extent Damian. After he tells her that he plans on getting an emotional response before killing her, Selina steals a car and heads to the mental institution where Maggie Kyle is held, believing Black Mask is coming for her.

Black Mask attacks the institution, and somehow awakens Maggie from her coma. Selina arrives in time to help her sister flee into the sewers.

While on the run, Maggie angrily tells Selina that she ruined both of their lives the day she decided to become Catwoman. Devastated by her sister's statement, Selina fails to realize they have both been heading for a trap. Just as Black Mask is about to gouge Maggie's eyes out and shove them down Selina's throat, Harley and Ivy arrive and defeat the Black Lantern by trapping him in the stomach of a man-eating plant.

Selina is helped to her feet by her friends, who tell her that Maggie has fled the scene. The next day, the staff members of the mental institution are shown discussing Maggie's escape, also mentioning that a nun that works at the hospital had been found beaten and stripped of her uniform.

Maggie is then shown in the depths of the Gotham City sewers clad in the bloodied nun robes, muttering about her plan to kill Catwoman in order to free Selina's soul. Now calling herself Sister Zero, Maggie attempts to kill Selina, but ultimately flees after being defeated by the Sirens. She is last seen going over her options, now realizing that she cannot murder her own sister, and therefore must personally exorcise the "cat demon" from within Selina's body.

In the follow-up to The Return of Bruce Wayne , the Sirens help Zatanna put out a massive fire at a local park near their home, only for them to be ambushed by a creature made of mud. After being dragged underneath the soil by the creature, Catwoman awakens tied up and gagged on the floor of a dark room, and is quickly forced into an illusion by her unseen captors.

Back in reality, Talia reveals to the Sirens that just a few hours prior, an unknown benefactor had offered up a massive reward to whoever could kidnap and deliver Catwoman to him, with the hopes that he could penetrate her mind and learn Batman's secret identity. Before the knowledge can be ripped from her mind, Selina's captors revealed to be Shrike and a new villain named Senpai , are eventually defeated by the other Sirens.

Once Selina is freed, Talia orders Zatanna to wipe Bruce's identity from her memory, reasoning that her kidnapping has proved that the knowledge is too dangerous for her to handle. The two women initially restrain Selina and attempt to remove the knowledge from her, but Zatanna refuses at the last moment and ends up fighting Talia in order to protect Selina. Talia tries to kill Selina before vanishing, but she survives and ultimately reunites with Bruce, who had recently returned to the present.

After stealing the contents of a safe belonging to the Falcone crime family, Selina returns home to find Kitrina Falcone , a teenaged escape artist and Carmine Falcone's long lost daughter, breaking into her room.

She attacks and subdues Kitrina, who tells Selina that she had unknowingly stolen a map that details the location of the new Black Mask's underground bunker. Realizing that she could use the map to capture Black Mask and claim the 50 million dollar bounty on his head, Selina leaves Kitrina bound in a locked room so that she can keep the map for herself. She later calls Batman to her house in order to turn the would-be thief over to the police, but discovers that Kitrina had managed to free herself and steal back the map.

This impresses Selina, who mentions that she had tied up the child using an "inescapable" knot that Bruce had shown her years earlier. Following a massive battle with Black Mask and his henchmen which ends with neither woman being able to claim the bounty , Selina agrees to take on Kitrina as her new sidekick, Catgirl. Once Bruce Wayne returns from his time in the past, he establishes Batman Incorporated, a global team of Batmen. Selina accompanies him on a mission to break into Doctor Sivana's armory, and later travels with him to Tokyo in order to recruit a Japanese representative for Batman Incorporated.

According to the timeline, Selina was the daughter of Rex Calabrese who was placed into foster care after his arrest. She also had a brother called Aiden Mason , who she lost contact with after they were place into care. Growing up on in Oliver's Group Home, she and the other residents were taught to steal objects in order to continue living there.

This was further explored within the "Keeper of the Castle" trade of Catwoman's new 52 run. It took the character in a completely different direction, giving us a new view of Selina.

It let us see what it would be like if Catwoman were ever in charge of others rather than being a loner. Naturally, her run as don didn't last long before she put the catsuit back on, returning to the status quo.

This run was hands down the best of her new 52 work, even if to some it went against what made her Catwoman much like Grayson. Part of this is because Genevieve Valentine is a pretty good writer and because Ann Nocenti is one of the worst. Valentine helped make Catwoman readable again.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to rid herself of bad live-action movie from her memory. If it was, we'd be right in line with her, that monstrosity makes Green Lantern look oscar worthy.

Potshots aside, Zatanna not only wiped her memory but altered it to make Catwoman believe she was more heroic than she truly was. It was the cause of her becoming the savior of the east end and Batman and her falling into a committed relationship. Worst of all, the Justice League was in on it. It's such a convoluted and confusing storyline that only comics could think up. Unsurprisingly, when she finds out, she freaks out and throws Zatanna out a window.

This is how Catwoman was first introduced Known as The Cat then to the world, yes, it's a woman wearing an orange cape and a cat head. Even for the s, that is a ridiculous looking outfit. Even worse than that outfit, back then, it was heavily hinted that she outright killed people. While deaths have been on her hands since then too, she's always been a thief first, only killing when people deserve it.

Back then? No, it was just whoever got in her way. Thankfully that got toned down as the years went along, helping shape her into the character she is today. Long before Harley Quinn was forcing her way into comics from a television show, there was Julie Newmar's take on Catwoman.

The s Batman is many things, campy fun, super upbeat, and most of all, one of the trailblazers of the superhero genre. While most would point to Adam West for that, rightfully so. It was actually Julie Newmar who had the most impact on comics themselves, forcing them to adhere to her well-liked look from the show. If not for her, there's no telling if Catwoman would ever be suiting up in her iconic catsuit and ears.