Selina Kyle in other media: Difference between revisions

Adaptations of Selina Kyle in other media
Created by	Bob Kane
Original source	Comics published by DC Comics
First appearance	Batman #1 (Spring 1940)
Films and television
Film(s)	Batman 1966 Batman Returns (1992) Batman: Year One (2011) The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Television show(s)	Batman (1966) Batman: The Animated Series (1992) The Batman (2004) Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008)
Audio presentations
Radio show(s)	The Lazarus Syndrome (1989)
Games
Video game(s)	Catwoman (1999) Lego Batman: The Video Game (2008) Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008) Batman: The Brave and the Bold - The Videogame (2010) DC Universe Online (2011) Batman: Arkham City (2011) Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes (2012)

Although Batman's frenemy, love interest and wife, Selina Kyle, widely known as the first Catwoman originated as a comic book fictional character, first appearing in Batman #1, Spring 1940, she has been adapted into several other varieties of media. Julie Newmar, Lee Meriwether, Eartha Kitt, Michelle Pfeiffer and Anne Hathaway have portrayed the villainess in various forms of live-action media. Jane Webb, Melendy Britt, Adrienne Barbeau, Gina Gershon, Vanessa Marshall, P.J. Mattson, Nika Futterman, Kelley Hutson, Grey DeLisle and Eliza Dushku have all provided the voice for the character in animated media. Lorelei King has provided the voice for the character in the 1989 BBC Radio 4 broadcast, The Lazarus Syndrome.

Due to other commitments, Julie Newmar was unavailable for the tie-in film produced after the first season of the 1966 Batman TV series so, the producers cast Lee Meriwether for the role^[1]. Meriwether didn't have much difference towards Julie except for speaking in a much more cat-like tone and constantly placing "purrs" behind words which had the same pronunciation such as "purr-fect" or "purr-manent" and she constantly mixed her purring and laughing together; a resemblance to Marlene Aragon voicing Priscilla Rich as The Cheetah in Challenge of the Super Friends. Meriwether's Catwoman was better in using her feminine charms compared to Julie's Catwoman which was better at fighting and weaponry (although she wasn't that good).

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Michelle Pfeiffer portrays Selina Kyle in the 1992 movie Batman Returns as the secondary antagonist. In it, Selina is the worker for Max Shreck and finds out that he is building a power plant which will steal all of Gotham City's electricity. When Max finds out, he defenestrates her. Selina lies motionless on the ground, dead when all of a sudden, dozens of alley cats lick and gnaw her. Selina is revived through her affinity of cats and develops the legendary nine lives of a cat as her affinity for cats matches and mixes with the cats' licking, giving her nine lives which eventually revives her. Selina becomes slightly deranged and insane possibly due to the fall or a flaw in the cats' reviving her. She goes home and fashions a cat-like costume with a stockwhip and vandalises and blows up a shopping mall. The Penguin teams up with her and both villains decide to lay down their differences and defeat Batman who is thwarting Selina's plans for revenge against Shreck. After failing to kill Bats, Selina rejects Penguin's advances who in a fit of rage, hooks her neck to an umbrella that doesn't stop flying. Selina breaks free and falls through a greenhouse glass rooftop into into a bed of flowers. By now she has lost three lives due to Shreck defenestrating her, Batman pushing her off a rooftop into a truck and The Penguin's umbrella act, leaving her with six lives left. After Shreck escapes from The Penguin who had held him captive, Selina attacks him repeatedly with her whip and when Batman/Bruce Wayne intervenes and offers Selina a chance of redemption due to them being lovebirds out of costume, Selina rejects it and whips Bruce in the face and Shreck shoots Bruce, knocking him out but not killing him. Selina dares Shreck to shoot her and Shreck shoots her four times, taking away four lives leaving her with two left. Selina then kills Shreck by kissing him with a taser in her mouth while holding an electrical wire to absorb the full impact and the act resulting in taking away one more life. Bruce recovers and finds Shreck's charred black body but doesn't find Selina's. At the end, Catwoman's silhouette is seen looking up at the [[Bat-signal] thus, Bruce failing to recover Selina's corpse and the "taser kiss" leaving Selina with one life left all cofirm that she survived the resulting explosion from the taser kiss and is alive and well.

This version of Selina was a more mad and insane version. She demonstrates many points of madness. One is before her defenestration where she works for Shreck as she regularly laughs for nothing. Two is after her fall and before she makes her Catwoman outfit, she blends soft toys in the sink and sprays her apartment room with black spray. Three is where she does her first act of vigilantism, where she saves a woman from a thug and after that, when the woman thanks her, she grabs her cheeks and says, "You always make it so easy don't you? Always waiting for some Batman to save you. I am Catwoman, hear me roar." And then she does back handsprings into the night. Thirdly, when she tries to vandalise a shopping mall, she uses her stockwhip to knock the heads of display dolls and uses the whip as a skipping rope. She also sets the mall to explode and she does back handsprings towards The Penguin and Batman and puts up her claws in a defence manner and says, "Meow." She also tries to swallow The Penguin's pet bird alive and whole to make him listen to her. At the aftermath of Shreck simultaneously shooting her, she says, "Six, seven. All good girls go to heaven. Hehehahahahahahahahaha. Two lives left. I think I'll save one for next Christmas. But in the meantime, I'm gonna kiss Santa Claus." Before doing her "taser kiss".

Pfeiffer won a MTV Movie Award for Most Desirable Female and a MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss (with Michael Keaton as Batman) for Selina's role.

Selina was to get her own movie titled Catwoman with Pfeiffer reprising the role but the film was lingered in development limbo for years, eventually becoming 2004's Catwoman with Halle Barry taking the role and portraying Patience Phillips instead of Selina Kyle.

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Anne Hathaway portrays Selina Kyle in the 2012 film The Dark Knight Rises, Catwoman's best hit so far. Catwoman is portrayed as a sly, cunning vixen who is a cat burglar and hired by Batman's enemy Bane. She steals Bruce Wayne's fingerprints and sells them to John Daggett. Selina is unaware that he is also working for Bane and she is after a device which can kill anyone and help anyone to escape. John tricks her and says that it doesn't exist. Selina escapes him with her cunningness. Selina goes after John again, this time in her Catwoman outfit and demands what he wants with Wayne's fingerprints and for the device. The League of Shadows intervenes and Selina faces off with them. Batman arrives and "aids" her. She escapes from him. Having seen the good in her, Batman asks her to take him to Bane. Selina brings him to Bane and traps him in a massive room with only him and Bane. Bane brutally beats up Batman and breaks his back. Selina then leaves the country with the fear of Bane maybe coming after her. She is arrested by John Blake and is sent to Blackgate Penitentiary. When Bane plunges the city into anarchy after Batman is being held captive, he orders the citizens to free the inmates of Blackgate and Selina escapes in the ensuing madness and rioting. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. The Scarecrow becomes a judge and sentences many people of Gotham City to death by exile including John Daggett who eventually dies. Selina finds the escaped Bruce and helps him to stop the chaos by blowing up entrances for policemen trapped in the sewers to escape, attacking Talia al Ghul and blasting Bane to pieces. At the aftermath of the movie, Selina is seen with Bruce in a café.

This version of Catwoman's appearance was more like the Modern Age of Comic Books version of Selina Kyle except that she didn't use any personal weapons including her whip. Her personality was more like the Silver Age of Comic Books and Bronze Age of Comic Books in which Selina crosses both lines of hero and villain and has a love interest for Bruce Wayne but doesn't show it very clearly.

It is rumoured that Hathaway might be getting an award at the end of 2012 for Selina Kyle.

Eliza Dushku voices Selina Kyle in the 2011 feature-film Batman: Year One. This version of Catwoman is depicted as the one in the Batman storyline Year One. In it, Selina is a cat burglar who is an expert martial artist, gymnast and burglar. She is also shown as a prostitute and allures men to her by leaving her costume zip open. The DC Showcase Presents made a short film called DC Showcase: Catwoman which features the Batman: Year One version of Selina Kyle chasing down some thugs and was released on Blue-Ray^[2].

Julie Newmar portrays Selina Kyle in the first and second seasons of the 1966 Batman TV series. She is depicted as a cat burglar who leads a gang of criminals. Although she is not a good fighter and agile like her comics counterpart she is very cunning and seductive villain who plans one step ahead over everybody and loves to hiss and scratch people with her claw-tipped gloves. Above all, she is an expert at using certain types of stockwhips and cat-o-nine-tails. They represent her cat's tail and she uses them to fight opponents and as a lasso. She also doesn't display true love for Batman like she doesn in the comics but rather "false love" as when Batman and Robin tries to thwart her plans, she will dare to use her stockwhip and weapons to kill them willingly and when they capture her, she displays her "false love" in the form of seducing Batman and kissing him romantically and then either shoving him away, succeeding in whipping him causing excruciating pain or using her claw-tipped gloves to pierce his chest or stomach and escaping from him. For the three episodes in the third season: "Catwoman's Dressed to Kill", "The Funny Feline Felonies" and "The Joke's on Catwoman", Eartha Kitt portrays the character. In "The Entrancing Dr. Cassandra", an uncredited actress plays a cameo role for Selina. One of the costumes tailored for Julie was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, displaying how iconic the character is. ^[3]

Catwoman appears in Filmation's 1968 series The Batman/Superman Hour as a core villain in the Batman segments voiced by Jane Webb. This Catwoman resembles Julie Newmar's personality and wears a green suit with white gloves, boots and a domino mask. She doesn't have any fixed paraphernalia as she carries only what she needs for that particular heist.

She also appears in four episodes of the 1977 sequel to that series, The New Adventures of Batman, voiced by Melendy Britt. Her only difference to Webb's Catwoman is that her hair, domino mask and suit is now orange. These two Catwoman's have never been mentioned as Selina Kyle but they are most likely her as the only Catwoman around that time was Selina Kyle.

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Selina Kyle appears in various TV series in the DC Animated Universe voiced by Adrienne Barbeau. Her costume style was modelled after Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costume in the 1992 film Batman Returns. She has a pet cat called Isis which she adores above her other kittens as Isis can see through invisible security lasers. She has an affinity for Batman and will even save him as depicted in the episode "Almost Got Im" where different Batman villains recount on their plan that has come the closest to killing Batman and when The Joker recounts on his one, the flashback shows Batman being nearly electrocuted to death if not for Catwoman cracking her whip down on the goons.

Selina again appears in the 2004 TV series, The Batman voiced by Gina Gershon. She was the only major Batman villain whose appearance was not altered although she did have goggles. This version of Catwoman is a cross between Julie Newmar's and Adrienne Babeau's as she does willingly fight Batman but also displays her love for him. She also thinks that Batman is scary as seen in her last appearance "Rumours, after Batman saves all of his enemies from being executed by the villain "Rumour", Selina meets him on the rooftop and says, "Meow. Just wanted to say thanks handsome. And by the way, I still find you scary." And doing back handsprings into the night.

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Selina appears in the hit TV series Batman: The Brave and the Bold voiced by Nika Futterman. She resembles her appearance from 1947-the end of the Bronze Age of Comic Books where she wears a purple suit with a purple mini-skirt and a purple mask (resembles Michelle Pfeiffer's mask) and a green cape with her iconic stockwhip. She has a deep romantic love for him but covers it up with her evil side. In "The Knights of Tommorow", she is married to Bruce Wayne and they have a child called Damian Wayne.

Selina Kyle appears in the DC Nation Shorts segment Batman of Shanghai sorts as a chinese thief working in Shanghai in the 1930s.

Talia al Ghul hires Selina Kyle to steal a an ancient crystal skull from the Gotham Museum which her father, Ra's al Ghul will use to create a weapon that can destroy the whole city.

Catwoman is a playable character and voiced by Vanessa Marshall. She is the partner of The Penguin and she often uses her kiss and seducing abilities to escape Batman. Her special ability is to seduce guards to make them open doors and utilizing her whip.

Selina is not a main villain in this video game but a tertiary villain voiced by P.J. Mattson. She and Lex Luthor are brief partners and the two recruit a few other DC villains and the DC heroes to defeat the invading warriors. At the end, she escapes and gains powers to transform into a black panther at night.

The Batman: The Brave and the Bold version of Catwoman appears in this video game again voiced by Nika Futterman. She teams up with Catman to steal an ancient artifact and turn all of the police into cats, in order to terrorize the city easier. When the pair believe they have killed Batman and Robin, Catwoman feels guilty and misses Batman. When they terrorize Wayne Manor, the Dynamic Duo appear to stop them, much to her joy.

Selina appears in this video game voiced by Kelley Huttson and is a member of the Secret Society of Supervillains although she doesn't interact with them much and she is more an anti-hero than a supervillain.

Selina Kyle is a playable character voiced by Grey DeLisle. Selina is originally captured by Two-Face, who intends to have her tried before a kangaroo court for pillaging his hideout. After being rescued by Batman, she attempts to locate stolen articles which were seized by the authorities upon her arrest. Catwoman, with the reluctant aid of Poison Ivy, eventually pilfers her loot from Hugo Strange's heavily-guarded vault, but sacrifices a chance to escape Arkham City in order to save Batman from the destruction of Joker's base. The character's storyline, which culminates in a final showdown with Two-Face at an old natural history museum, has been estimated to be approximately ten percent of Arkham City's content.

Grey DeLisle reprises her role from Batman: Arkham City to voice Catwoman. This time, Catwoman is not a core villain like in Lego Batman: The Video game but a supporting villain.

Catwoman, voiced by Lorelei King, appeared in the 1989 Batman radio drama The Lazarus Syndrome as one of the villains that Commissioner Gordon interrogates. Although she is not referenced to as "Selina Kyle", this Catwoman is likely her as the way she behaves and her affection for Batman is exactly like Selina.

• Catwoman in other media at the DC Comics Database, an external wiki.