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A new origin story for Selina Kyle shows why she was always destined to be by Batman’s side.
When it comes to iconic comic book romances, Batman and Catwoman remain at the top of the list as one of the most well-known couples in all of popular culture. Part of what makes this romance so enduring is the aesthetic similarities between the two animal-themed personas who sometimes stand on different sides of the law. Deeper than that though is the intrinsic bond the two share with one another in their status as orphaned children who had to learn at a young age how to survive in a cruel world without the guidance of a family to fall back on.
Batman/Catwoman Special #1 (by Tom King, John Paul Leon, Bernard Chang, Mitch Gerads, Dave Stewart, and Clayton Cowles) highlights this by giving us a fresh angle on the history of the two characters, as we see a young Selina Kyle as a child developing feelings for Bruce Wayne, years before the two of them would ever meet face to face.
The Special opens with a homeless man drunkenly singing the carol “Silent Night”, while an alley cat stumbles onto a baby Selina Kyle, who had been discarded in a dumpster. The story then flash-forwards a few years later, during Selina’s time at The Wayne Home for Orphaned Children where she began to talk to a painting of a young Bruce Wayne standing beside his parents while drawing a picture of a cat for him. This goes on for a number of years, as she also spoke to the painting on the morning after the death of Bruce’s parents, as she told the painting of Bruce that she was sorry for what happened and that she also does not have a “mommy and daddy” and hopes that she and Bruce could become “best friends.”
This new addition to the origin of Catwoman makes sense, especially in the alternative future of Batman/Catwoman, which sees Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle eventually marry and raise a family of their own. By “introducing” Selina to Bruce at a young age, King helps establish how the two orphans are almost destined to be together, with both filling the holes left in each other’s parent-less childhoods. This theme is present in the special, which also gives readers a brief glimpse into how this timeline will pan out by showing us the eventual deaths of Bruce and Selina and how their lives were intrinsically linked to one another from the begining.
Even outside this specific timeline, the addition to the origin story is also very true to the core iterations of Bruce and Selina’s relationship. At the heart of both of their respective missions is the fact that they are both orphans, who struggled to survive in Gotham without the guiding force of a family. Whilst Bruce would find purpose in his mission to save Gotham and travel the world to master the skills required to become Batman, Selina was forced to stay in Gotham and had to learn her cat-burgling and combat skills by herself and use her own wits to survive due to her being born into poverty. Despite her hardship, however, Selina has a certain enjoyment of life and emotional stability that is at odds with Bruce’s stoicism and eternal focus on protecting Gotham, with her nonchalant demeanor helping him move away from his rage and obsession.
Despite their different backgrounds, both know the struggle and loneliness that comes with not growing up with a family and thus having a kinship that would naturally lead to a romantic relationship. Highlighting this theme early in both characters’ childhoods helps to establish why Bruce and Selina have such a connection to one another and how they fill the void in one another’s lives and helps to deeper our understanding of why their relationship is one of the most complex and thematically rich romances in all of pop culture.
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