Drawing Catwoman: Too Big Not to Fail

Image credit: Tucker Stone, The Comics Journal

That... thing comes from Catwoman #8. Now, I have a few problems with the image, but somehow it's the little ones - and not the glaring, anatomically incorrect ones - that niggle most. WHY ARE THERE TINY CAT CHARMS ON THE STRINGS OF HER BIKINI BOTTOM? First of all, the strings. The strings. Why? Now, I may not be a sexy cat burglar myself, but I think they might pose some practical issues. For example, they might unravel right over a laser sensor. That's both embarrassing and unprofessional. Then, the charms. I always figured Catwoman was a confident thirty-year-old woman with some BDSM tendencies, not somebody with the same tastes as a teenaged girl. On the other side, are there charms that express her dedication to chess club and marching band? And oh yes: I almost forgot about the breasts.

Now, talking about the depiction of women in superhero comics isn't the freshest topic in circulation. It's been so churned over, that critics and artists have reached some kind of uneasy detente over the matter. Women will continue to be drawn like they don't need rib cages, and people who don't like it can pass over the spandex for any D and Q title. That's not the point of this post. Rather, I wanted to figure out why this image bothered me more than some of the first drawings of Catwoman I saw as a young, fresh comic book fan. Those were dark years. Those... were the Balent years. For the uninitiated, Jim Balent was the main artist on Catwoman's solo title back in the late '90s, and a firm believer that female anatomy included beach balls embedded just below the neck. Here's an example of his sensibility:

And yet, swimsuit issue Catwoman irritates me more. Jim Balent's vision was so ridiculous that it could be interpreted a clever parody if you were feeling generous, harmless silliness if you weren't. But this Catwoman is just realistic enough to irritate, just realistic enough that it doesn't seem patently ridiculous. It seems achievable. Furthermore, the artist, Adriana Melo, is a woman. Female writers or artists are still a minority on mainstream titles, but when we do get representation, this is the product? I know I should take a deep breath and give Melo the benefit of the doubt. I can't fight for more female creatives, only to dictate what they can produce. And I'm not so naive as to forget Melo was probably working under certain (DD-sized) expectations. But still. At least give Catwoman a form-fitting wetsuit and lose the girly charms. Otherwise, we might have to call Balent back in, that is if he's not too busy haunting vaginas.