“The Cat and the Claw: Part 1”
Story by Sean Catherine Derek & Laren Bright
Written by Jules Dennis & Richard Mueller
Directed by Kevin Altieri
Episode #013
Supervising Composer Shirley Walker
Music Composed by Shirley Walker, Harvey Cohen, Wayne Coster
Animation Services by Sunrise
Original Airdate—September 5th, 1992
Plot: Unbeknownst to Batman, Gotham’s new cat-burglar is also Bruce Wayne’s latest love interest, environmentalist Selina Kyle. This “catwoman” gets in over her head when the multinational corporation she breaks into turns out to be a front for the terrorist Red Claw.
This is the first episode of Batman: the Animated Series to air, and the first five minutes are about as perfect an introduction to Catwoman and her relationship to Batman as you could get. Immediately, Kevin Altieri drops the viewers into Selina’s vertigo inducing life of climbing buildings fifty stories off the ground. She uses the more fetish-y parts of her outfit, the whip and the claws, as tools of her trade. Two lines in and she drops the “purr-fect” pun, four lines in and she’s flirting with Batman. The moonlit cat-and-mouse chase across the rooftops, with Catwoman going all out to stay half a step ahead of the Dark Knight, both of them shocked and excited by a partner who can keep up, is a great microcosm of their relationship. And it even ends with Batman risking his life to save her cat, a nice homage to Batman: Year One, and a single image that shows how Batman prioritizes saving lives, even animal lives, over fighting crime.
Unlike the Joker or the Penguin, who had also been featured in the Tim Burton Batman movies, Catwoman is given an introductory episode. Perhaps this is because, despite a hair color taken from Michelle Pfeifer, this is a very different character from the mousey secretary reanimated by cats wearing stitched together vinyl that appeared in Batman Returns.
The Animated Series version is a thief motivated by environmental concerns. That’s not to say Catwoman is good, per se. There are probably safer, more effective, and legal ways to save mountain lions. She chooses to be Catwoman because she clearly gets off on the thrills of being a cat burglar. And when Batman rejects Catwoman’s sexual advances by saying “the thing between us” is “the law,” Catwoman winces at how painful that line is then kicks Batman off a roof, even though he JUST saved her life! Adrienne Barbeau delivers Selina’s lines with appropriate purr that quickly turns to growls when she doesn’t get her way. This is not a woman to fuck with.
This sets up a complicated love quadrangle, Bruce Wayne is head over heals for the beautiful, intelligent, charming, and determined Selina Kyle, but Catwoman is only interested in the tall, dark, and violent Batman. We rarely see Bruce have to pursue anyone, so it’s great to see him blushing and flustered. You have to let your disbelief suspend a little extra (why don’t they recognize each other’s voices, or chins?), and ignore what Selina’s exact relationship is to her live-in secretary Maven (Mary McDonald Lewis), but the love/hate relationship between Catwoman and Batman is dynamic and fun.
However, this is a two-parter….
“The Cat and the Claw: Part 2”
Story by Sean Catherine Derek & Laren Bright
Written by Jules Dennis & Richard Mueller
Directed by Dick Sebast
Episode #016
Supervising Composer Shirley Walker
Music Composed by Harvey Cohen
Animation Services by Akom Production Co.
Layout Services by NOA Animation
Original Airdate—September 12th, 1992
Plot: Red Claw’s terrorists steal a weaponized virus and try to kill Selina Kyle, ruining her and Bruce’s second attempt at a first date. Then Batman follows Catwoman to the Multigon site, where they are captured.
As with “Two Face.” the second part just isn’t as good as the first. And the fault here falls mostly on Red Claw, another villain original to the series (though she bares a passing resemblance to DC Comics villain Cheshire). Everything about her is as vague as the roughly Eastern European accent Kate Mulgrew uses to portray her. She’s a terrorist, but aside from money it’s not clear what her cause is. She seems very taken with herself as a terrorist who is also a woman, but it’s not like she’s particularly a good feminist. She calls herself Batman’s match, but really she’s just a footnote. Cobra Commander with an off the shoulder blouse.
I guess the idea was to contrast Catwoman, the batman villainess who is Batman’s match, with one that isn’t, but Red Claw is such a generic bad guy that really any villain could have been used. The much better comparison would be Poison Ivy. Like Catwoman, she’s motivated by environmental concerns and uses a combination of seduction and outright criminality to get her way. Catwoman even has an unexplained psychic bond with cats that mirrors Ivy’s connection to plants. However, Catwoman is introduced as an effective criminal first and a sexy lady second, unlike Ivy, and Selina is obviously MUCH saner, if still morally flexible.
If Batman had to rely on Catwoman to fight a greater evil, even though he knows that Catwoman is untrustworthy (i.e. prone to kicking him off roofs), that could have been an interesting story. Instead, Catwoman goes from being a villain in her own right to being a plucky girl reporter who gets in over her head and needs to be rescued in the second episode. By the end, instead of being Batman’s match, Catwoman is just another person Batman needs to protect. Sigh.
Other than the story problems, the second episode is okay. Dick Sebast moves away from Altieri’s dynamic action style to a more moody, Hitchcockian take, especially in the car chase sequence and the assault on Mavin in Selina’s apartment, using POV shots and reflections to place us in the heads of the characters involved. Harvey Cohen reflects Sebast’s style by filling the score with riffs on Bernard Herrman’s scores for Vertigo and North by Northwest. Kevin Conroy does a fantastic job, especially in the date sequence, as he slips in and out of Batman voice in the heat of the chase, only to deliver a great Bruce Wayne line explaining how he can drive so well, “I’ve been going to the Paris Grand Prix for years. You know, one of these days I think I’ll enter it.” And Barbeau is excellent, as always, as the femme fatale.
The leads are so good, and the writers have the Batman/Catwoman relationship down so well, that I really wish that the first Catwoman episode had been just a Catwoman episode, with no other villains involved. Surely that story could have been written.
Steven Padnick is a freelance writer and editor. By day. You can find more of his writing and funny pictures at padnick.tumblr.com.
