Review by Win Wiacek

A sultry, sneaky, powerful thief has been alternately vamping and thumping a stiff-necked, doctrinaire, high-minded myrmidon for eight decades now and that relationship is still going strong. Catwoman and Batman perpetually run hot and cold, generating plenty of sparks and engrossing entertainment.

As much promoting the Batman/Catwoman wedding event as celebrating eighty years of tantalising sexual tension and masked roleplay, this carefully curated hardcover and/or digital compilation gathers material from the 1940s to the 2010s.

The third story in the landmark first issue of Batman was ‘The Cat’, and she later added the suffix “Woman” to her name to avoid any possible doubt or confusion. Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson have her plying her felonious trade of jewel theft aboard the wrong cruise-liner, rapidly falling foul for the first time to the dashing Dynamic Duo. Even then she tried to escape the consequences of her actions by vamping the big boy scouts with no appreciable result.

The larcenous lady returned in Finger, Kane and Robinson’s ‘The Batman vs. the Cat-Woman’. Clad in cape and costume but once again in well over her masked head by stealing for – and from – all the wrong people. She graduated to full villain status in 1943’s ‘Your Face is your Fortune!’ by Jack Schiff, Kane and Robinson as the Feline Fury takes on a job at a swanky beauty parlour to gain intel for her crimes, but inadvertently falling for society batchelor Bruce Wayne.

There were decades of stories before Len Wein and Irv Novick supply 1980’s ‘The Cat Who Would be King’, which significantly reveals a growing intimacy leading to something more as the Dark Knight remorselessly battles Catman for a mystical remedy to the disease inexorably killing Selina Kyle.

Next up is an alternate universe yarn from 1983 where Alan Brennert and Joe Staton reveal how in 1955 the Earth-2 Batman and Catwoman clashed with the Scarecrow before finally sheathing their claws and getting married in ‘The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne!’

Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake detail ‘A Town on the Night’ from 1986 as a newly-reformed Feline Avenger futilely seeks to get her masked man to take her on a date in Gotham City. There’s then a jump to 2004 when Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale expand on the theme for ‘Date Knight’. Of course, Selina is back to her wild, wandering, pilfering ways now, which she thinks adds a slice of spice to the affair.

Extracted from extended epic Hush from 2003, ‘The Dead’ by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee is pretty incomprehensible on its own, but is significant for one single interaction between the Cat and the Bat. In 2004 Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips reveal how the on-again, off-again relationship gets very serious indeed in ‘Only Takes a Night’, before we jump to August 2017 and the highlights of the whirlwind romance leading to the supposed wedding. ‘Every Epilogue is a Prelude’ (Tom King, David Finch, and Clay Mann), ‘Bride or Burglar’ (King, Mikel Janín and Joëlle Jones) precede ‘The Wedding of Batman & Catwoman’ (by King, Janín and an army of guest creators).

Also included is a gallery of classic covers for tales which didn’t make the final cut here, and some wedding dress designs, to tantalise and keep all the romantics on edge for the next 80 years!

Fun and thoughtful, whilst reviving a few lesser-known yarns, this is a solid serving of froth and cake to delight fans of costumed dramas. And who doesn’t love a wedding, right?