I got into comic about three years ago, and I started out reading Batman. I read all the evergreen trades you can name, plus the Brubaker, O’Neil, Morrison, Snyder, and even some Dick Sprang era Batman for the fun of it
I enjoyed it a lot, but one thing has been bugging me ever since. I don’t feel that the Batman/Catwoman romance is genuine.
And this doesn’t apply for other supers. I think Lois and Clark are great, Ollie and Dinah are fun. But something just feels off about Brice and Selina.
I think my biggest hang up has to be WHY does Batman love her? It’s usually kept pretty vague. We know that considering his level of discipline, he wouldn’t just fall for any beautiful woman in a skintight leather jumpsuit. So we often hear that Catwoman “understands” his trauma, and that they are both “crazy” enough to empathize. However, I don’t see what’s so special about Selina. I have never seen a writer in a Batman comic portray her as more than a clever femme fatale character. For me, that doesn’t feel convincing enough for the calculating, logical Batman.
I find that even the romance with Talia feels more organic than Selina, because at least then they were forced to spend prolonged time together and Bruce was still relatively young/naive.
King’s run has especially done a poor job of showing why they are meant for each other, but I won’t delve into that since I’ve written enough.
What do you guys think? Can any shipper convince me of why this two are a match made in heaven? Or is Selina just an obligatory love interest for the heroic protagonist?
She's a klepto nymphomaniac thot wearing skintight leather and he's a self-destructive emotional wreck who forces himself to be as ascetic as possible. Their attraction and relationship should only ever be physical, imo, but I think Batman should never have a healthy relationship anyway.
Ryan Diaz
It's a classic femme fatale dynamic and it doesn't work when you have them actually being so nice to each other like in a relationship.
Thomas Lopez
"Why does he love her"
Dude. Have you ever felt love?
If you know "why" you love somebody, you don't really love 'em. You just acting selfish because those reasons make you do it.
The fact that Batman has no reason to love her is the reason why his love for her is real.
Jacob Flores
Love isn't always rational, but I can give you a few ideas as to why they love each other Bruce >Feels like he can "save" her. A natural desire to better someone. Moreover, he respects her talents, and firmly believes she could do a lot of good with him. Forbidden fruit. Etc Selina >Hard to get guy has charmed her. Doesn't believe she's worth saving, or even considers herself a good person, and yet he keeps trying.
Of course you could also argue both are fucked up people afraid of being alone, and are the only two who can understand one another given their fucked upbringing and night hobbies.
Leo Hill
>So we often hear that Catwoman “understands” his trauma, and that they are both “crazy” enough to empathize. Only Tom King thinks that.
James Smith
>Dude. Have you ever felt love?
If you mean romantic love, then, uh...no
Camden Brown
>nymphomaniac
Not really sure where that came from, unless you consider Year One to be canon. Even then, she was really enthused about sex work
Justin Williams
>Can any shipper convince me of why this two are a match made in heaven?
They are not. If Lois and Clark are the golden couple. Bruce and Selina are the broken couple living in the trailer park who beat on each other.
Carson Martin
I don’t get the Talia stuff, she 9/11 Wayne tower and killed his kid.
It would be like Batman dating Osama
Eli Robinson
You got it all wrong. Bruce and Selina are not a match made in heaven. In fact, they're a very disfunctional couple because f how much they enable each other's bad habits. That's why the pair is so popular. It goes back to the popular notion that Bruce will never find true happiness, and his fling with Catwoman is as good as he's going to get.
Nathan Collins
I enjoyed the double date they had with Clark and Lois.
>I don’t feel that the Batman/Catwoman romance is genuine. You can feel that way but no one is obligated to convince you. If you don't see the attraction then you never will.
Jonathan Scott
I've always been of the opinion that Catwoman is 100% using Batman and doesn't give a shit about him at all.
Luke Richardson
Then why do people root so hard for their marriage?! It’s clear it’s not gonna work out
Wyatt Long
Batman is still human and he can still feel attraction for other people. Selina is gorgeous and charming, that's all the reason Batman needs to be interested in her.
Austin Brown
Because people like happy endings and Selina is nice girl who can keep pace with Batman.
Jonathan Rogers
Good thing opinions are not facts.
Jonathan Thompson
Because no matter how it ends, Batman marrying Catwoman is the closest thing he'll ever have to a good ending.
Jeremiah Taylor
cuz she's hot
Jeremiah Russell
Did Clark hold back?
Parker Sullivan
Yeah OP lost me there too. If Batcat is a shallow pairing than Talia and Bruce is just straight up illogical.
Owen Powell
Sounds like a kid that’s mad at his friend for not trading back his alakazam.
Nathan Reed
I think that an interesting version of Batman/Catwoman would feature Bruce meeting Selina for a while before she starts doing the Catwoman thing. They date for a while, he gets to know her, starts to like her, etc.
Then he meets Catwoman and finds out she's Selina and has to find out whether or not that was real or just part of the con.
I think Telltale did a little like that.
Juan Clark
He's mentally a child in comic after a blow to the head, so you're not wrong.
Dominic Torres
I completely agree There's something abotu the two that just makes me think it's mostly the attraction to something dangerous and external, but I can never buy the chemistry between these characters cause their actual personalities seem really at odds (at least from what I've seen irl)
Cooper Peterson
Yeah, the Telltale game had it kind of in reverse though It starts with Batman chasing Catwoman, then Bruce meets with Harvey (whose campaign he's sponsoring) and Harvey is dating Selina and they instantly recognize each other. And most of their interactions are as Bruce and Selina beyond that point. The big issue is that the whole Bruce/Selina thing lacks any interesting interactions or dynamics beyond the literal and figurative chase. Once that chase is over, it's hard to say that they'd actually enjoy spending time together because they're just two different people. It's like hwo you have people who bond over really extreme experiences but then have no other chemistry; it's bonding by circumstance
Jason Collins
I know people like this in real life.
A friend of mine is a smart, articulate dude, perhaps to the point of overthinking things and being overly academic.
But he's madly in love with this other friend who's a borderline-personality-disorder unstable stripper.
I'm friends with both of them. But like, the dude, I can actually have intelligent and deep conversations within about culture and politics and philosophy and shit. With the woman, I can only really talk about surface-level shit.
I have no idea why this smart dude likes this kinda dumb bitch. She's not even that hot, despite being a stripper. Like, I'm a hair away from being an Incel, and even I have no sexual or romantic interest in her or plans on beta orbiting her. I'm just her friend.
I was asking this guy what he sees in her, and he just says being drawn into her world and feeling needed to fix crises makes him feel special. Even though their relationship is dysfunctional and fucked.
Honestly, I just want to take this guy friend on a night on the town trying to pick up chicks so he realizes she isn't so damn special.
Attraction and love don't make any sense.
Parker Walker
Cuz marriage is seen as the end all to a relationship. Shippers root for it no matter how unhealthy tge couple is.
Which BaTCat is. Shes still a criminal. Bats continued lasp with her is such a stupid thing because hes just a hypocrite. If Selina ever actually did her time like in the old comics it would be so bad. But repeatedly its written that Bats kets her go or pleas away punishnents as Bruce Wayne cuz thats totally the kind of person you wanba tie yourself too.
Why cant batman just be a brooding crime fighting detective who only talks to alfred and James Gordon? Fuck the bat family, make him an obsessive compulsive paranoid introvert with a searing hatred of criminals and a boner for justice
>why this child covered in bruises and always has bloody noses and black eyes? >uhhh... because um...the Wayne foundation...uh...we...we have violent gay sex! Hes definitely not a robin...and I'm not batman...
well gotham is corrupt as fuck. or maybe gordon helps him to cover everything...
Matthew Rivera
the best version of them is two people who are of gotham and know gotham but have reacted to it in different ways. (lonely kids who saw evil gotham and adapted to thrive in it)
selina loves bruce bc hes the only person she believes in bc gotham only made him want to save it, bruce loves selina bc shes the only person that sees gotham like he does and also loves bruce wayne as much as batman and sees them as the same person.
every other batman love interest wants either bruce or the bat or the detective but not the whole thing, just as for selina batman sees both selina and catwoman and isnt scared of either one.
the conflict for batman is loving a criminal and trying to fix it, and catwomans journey is either give up crime and believe gotham can be better or eventually lose her hero
Juan Butler
Are you saying that if a hot twenty-something redhead, probably the tighest in the city due to the workouts you taught her, sat in your lap and started making out with you that you could resist? He's BATman not FAGman.
Brayden Nguyen
Here's the best intradiagetic justification I can come up with: Bruce Wayne, acting as Batman, hopes to eventually be able to come to terms with his endless war on crime someday, even though he knows consciously and rationally that the chances of him being able to retire from his obsession are very, very slim. However, subconsciously, Selina Kyle as Catwoman represents a bridge to that reality. She's grounded enough to not go all-in on his crusade like Alfred and his wards have, because she's mostly in it for self-gain, but she's also crazy enough to pursue that selfishness by also dressing up like an animal and performing in costumed heroics. On the surface, too, she's also a relatable sexy young socialite who harbors a dark and troubled past, just like Bruce Wayne. The conscious and unconscious acting in tandem creates good chemistry between the two, or at least a plausible justification for Batman's attraction to her.
Isaac Green
The general problem with Batcat is that no writer will commit to it, because DC won't let them commit to it. This always leads to a series of events where Batman and Catwoman are super romantic and practically made for each other for a story, but then right at the end it all goes down in flames because one of two things happens.
A) Selina betrays Batman because she sees something shiny, or just abandons him because commitment is scary. B) Bruce's autistic sense of justice doesn't allow him to let her go on a crime, despite the fact that he's let her go on that same type of crime at least three times a month every month since he first met her.
Because god forbid super heroes have wives and families for longer than half a decade.
Aiden Nguyen
I prefer WonderBats, so I can't comment. Oddly enough I think Gotham is making the best case for why it could never work given they are just Bruce and Selina; the shit she keeps getting him into, and her general effect on his life, is destructive. And by that same token she can't become what he and thise around him want and expect, nor should she, and her own life ends up shittier with the occasional wholesome moment.
>If you know "why" you love somebody, you don't really love 'em. Unless you're 15 or a delusional 19th century romantic poet, you definitely should know why you love someone. Appreciation of their character traits and nature strengthens the relationship, and ideally lets you both develop as people as you draw out the best in each other. The whole "dude, love isn't rational" is absolute bunk and usually means that the person claiming it will never have a good relationship.
Parker Fisher
Not OP, but I can at least buy the attraction between Bruce and Talia, as unhealthy as it is. BatCat on the other hand is just a void of negative chemistry.
Hudson Allen
It really depends on the writer. I really enjoyed how they were handled in Heart of Hush, where they ground each other. King's biggest problem seems that he goes for melodrama and twilight tier soap opera when he should be cementing their dynamic.
Leo Martin
The only person who makes Talia work is Denny O'neil. Everyone else fucked them up, with Morrison making them toxic.
Gavin Russell
>I got into comic about three years ago, Your opinion means even less you fucking filthy casual bitch. Reading the most fucking casually recommended stories doesn't make you a fucking expert.
Easton White
It never worked
Carter Fisher
>being this mad
I’m not an expert, that’s why I made a thread for others opinions. What’s your deal?
Gabriel Powell
Love is a chemical reaction in the brain that compels animals to reproduce
Let’s not dress it up here
You can love a person for being attractive, you can love a person for being nice, you can love a person for being rich
