An album of love, lust — and a whole lot of squabbling…
Batman #50 is out Wednesday (7/4) and in it we’ll find out once and for all whether Bruce and Selina actually say “I do.” (And, yeah, the details have been spoiled elsewhere but we’re not playing along with that. It’s uncool.)
Their relationship goes back to 1940’s Batman #1 but Catwoman didn’t make her cover debut until Detective Comics #122, seven years later.
So that’s where we start for this 13 COVERS salute:
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Bob Kane pencils, Charles Paris inks
Carmine Infantino pencils, Mike Esposito inks
Nick Cardy
Mike Allred
Jim Aparo
Amanda Conner
Jim Balent
Tim Sale
Win Mortimer
Alan Davis pencils, Paul Neary inks
Ed Hannigan pencils, Dick Giordano inks
Mortimer
David Finch pencils, Danny Miki inks
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MORE
— 13 COVERS: Batman and Catwoman: Engagement Edition. Click here.
— The 13 Coolest BATMAN #50 Variant Covers. Click here.
— 13 Great BATMAN AND CATWOMAN Action Figures. Click here.
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Cover images and credits from the amorous Grand Comics Database.
July 2, 2018
Personally, I can’t see the married life working with the current version of Batman (and even more so for Catwoman) that DC is publishing. Maybe it was okay for the Batman of Earth-2, the Superman of Earth-2, the Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Reed and Sue, Hank and Jan, Katar and Shayera (or Carter and Sheira), Aquaman and Mera, Ralph and Sue Dibny, or even Barry Allen and Iris West.
But the married life did nothing to improve Spider-Man’s adventures, and IMO (some may disagree) has done no favors for the modern age Superman since the mid-1990s, either (and that goes double since the introduction of Jon Kent). The hoopla surrounding “the joyous event” is nothing but a short-term sales bump at best, and a plot device which ultimately complicates things too much for characters who need to continue on in adventures for decades on end. Ultimately there’s always the temptation for editors and writers to try to goose sales during a slow season by interjecting some tragedy or nastiness to disrupt the ho-hum state of happy family life — kidnapping, torture, divorce, messing with their minds, or some romantic rival (possibly one with Machiavellian intentions) coming between the couple. Come to think of it, at least half the couples I mentioned above were made to suffer through similar twisted plots in order to shake up the status quo.
July 2, 2018
Does anyone really conceive Bruce Wayne as a “happily ever after” kind of guy, anyway? Living la dolce vita in a state of marital bliss takes away Batman’s edge, his “hardon for crime”, as it were.