The Many Lives of Catwoman: The Felonious History of a Feline Fatale

After two excellent books looking at Lois LA e and Wonder Woman, this tome looks at sexism in comics which is worthy, but at the expense of looking at the character. Also, the constant descriptions of underwear and nudity in this and other comics becomes suspiciously detailed.

Excellent book on every count. Serious analysis, complete in all media: books, films, TV, animation. The descriptions are perfect, I could see Catwoman in all her incarnations. The narrative voice is attractive, varied. An excellent book even for those who do not read comics.

Awesome informative book! I e-mailed the author and he wrote back! Very nice guy.

Product was released sooner than expected. Turns out to be an excellent read for cat woman fans. Very happy with purchase, service nd packing.

I really liked this book and learned a lot I did not know.

From the first chapter, where author Tim Hanley disassembles the myth of Bob Kane’s creation of the character (she was actually developed by Bill Finger, like much of Batman’s early mythology), it’s clear that he won’t be pulling his punches.Hanley’s theory is that Catwoman has a unique status in comics. She regularly outsmarted Batman. Because she’s often a villain, she’s an outsider, which allows her to escape the stereotypes placed on so many other female characters in the superhero genre. That also allowed her to be more independent. (And often sexualized, which is the negative flip side of being written and drawn by men.) Her history is so long-running that she’s had a particularly varied past, which keeps her interesting. He calls her adventures “a varied journey of empowerment and exploitation.”We begin, of course, with her origin, with a necessary digression into Batman’s beginning. Hanley makes a good case for Catwoman’s differences from the start, from her prominence as a lead when other female characters were rarely even given names, speaking roles, or believable motivations to Batman’s clear infatuation with her. Unlike other femme fatales, the serial nature of comics meant that she wasn’t published by death or imprisonment.Post-war, with a pressure to reassert traditional gender roles, the Catwoman/ Batman relationship flipped to make her the romantic seeking attention from her crush. At the same time, she got a Kitty Car, an elaborate hideout, more props, and henchmen, as comics because more exaggerated (and sometimes ridiculous). Then, during the Wertham scare era, she disappeared for over a decade, until the TV show resurrected her.Hanley thoroughly covers the various actresses and their portrayals over the seasons of the show and the spinoff movie, including how the attraction angle disappeared once Eartha Kitt was cast in the third TV season because of cultural concerns over interracial romance. The book continues with the checkered history of the character in the comics, from girlfriend for Bruce Wayne to the Huntress’ dead mother and Frank Miller’s post-Crisis sordid reinvention of her as an ex-hooker (in keeping with his sexist history of abuse towards women characters).Additional chapters focus on the Burton Batman movies, a history of the character in animated series, the launch of her solo comic book, the morbid darkness of Ed Brubaker’s reinvention run, Catwoman’s time as a parent, the disastrous Catwoman movie, and the various media she’s appeared in since. By the end, I just wanted to go back to the beginning again, with more positive, entertaining stories than the morass the character has been left in. Hanley’s history made me miss the kind of Catwoman we could have, but his emphasis on the ways the character has been reinvented across her history gave me hope for another one to come sometime in the future.Because this is an independently written history, images are replaced with story descriptions and dialogue excerpts. That’s an understandable but unfortunate liability in any such comic history. An interested reader will likely want to accompany this with  Catwoman: A Celebration of 75 Years  or  Catwoman: Nine Lives of a Feline Fatale  to see a few of the actual comics discussed. (The publisher provided a digital review copy. Review originally posted at ComicsWorthReading.com.)

My familiarity with Catwoman comes mostly (read: nigh exclusively) from Batman the Animated Series, so when I stumbled across The Many Lives of Catwoman I thought it would be a good way to get to know the whole history of the character and I wasn't disappointed. Thorough and meticulous, Hanley traces the history of Catwoman through her origin in some of the first Batman comics (including a short history on the real world creation of the Batman universe, because it has information relevant to the character) all the way up through the most recent comic and game incarnations. Hanley did a great job of describing the various incarnations of Catwoman, how those incarnations came to be, what the great and not-so-great things about them were, and the real world response to them and how that affected character going forward. I learned a lot about one of my favorite female characters over the course of this book. The Many Lives of Catwoman is a book that I'm happy to have purchased and would gladly recommend to others. (And, now having noticed that the same author published the book on Wonder Woman that's also on my to-read list, I'm very excited to pick it up and begin reading.)

This review is for the audio CD version of The Many Lives of Catwoman, written by Tim Hanley and read by Rachel Dulude. I am generally a person who prefers print nonfiction books for both note-taking and references. This is no exception since it is rich in detail and nuance. That said, as an audio book designed for casual listening this is a remarkable edition.For starters, the research and analysis is thorough yet does not bog down the main text of the book. Hanley's insights are both compelling and interesting and brings a wonderful new perspective to both the character of Catwoman as well as the Batman franchise. There are both fun facts any fan will enjoy and detailed analysis to illustrate the changes over the years.I usually prefer a reader to be the same gender as the writer, for instance I was disappointed that Molly Haskell's book on Steven Spielberg was read by a male, the voice seemed wrong. In this case, however, Dulude adds to the strength of the book. Because so much dialogue is incorporated into the text her ability to read the parts in character provided an additional level to the argument Hanley was presenting. This is by far one of my favorite nonfiction audiobooks.I highly recommend this to anyone interested in comic books in general, Batman in particular, and gender roles in comic books both within the narrative and sociologically. For those who might want to study or use this in further research I would recommend adding a physical copy as well. I hope to do so at some point.Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Me gustó mucho. Es un libro muy ameno que se lee muy rápido y se disfruta bastante. Sobre todo si eres fan de Catwoman