Catwoman’s best costumes could never work in DC’s Batman movies

The world is just days away from another live-action Batman, Catwoman and other Gotham City characters. While Batman’s twists and turns remain shrouded behind its release date, there’s something we can say for certain: Zoe Kravits’ Catwoman probably won’t have ears that flick around like a real cat’s. This would make the film look ridiculous in live-action.

You know exactly where it looks cool? In this week’s issue of Catwoman.

Were there other things happening within the pages of comics we love? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. It may not provide enough context. However, there will be many great comics. You can also read the previous edition if you haven’t seen it yet.

Catwoman stands at a display case containing a diamond the size of her head, smiling. In the next panel as she is surprised by a figure appearing behind her, she frowns, and the ears on her cowl pin back like a real cat’s, in Catwoman #40 (2022).

There are many things that wOderk in superhero comics that don’t work in the realm of live-action cinema — like one-to-one transpositions of colorful skin-tight costumes, or the unique quirks of serialized storytelling that simply don’t translate to even a trilogy of films. But there’s also the matter of artistic license without expectation of explanation.

One of my favourite things, for example, is creators. Catwoman #40’s Tini Howard and Nico Leon, say “Fuck it, Catwoman’s ears and tail move according to her mood.” And they are correct!

It’s way cooler as artistic license than it would be if we had to explain why Catwoman had mood-sensing servomotors in the hood of her costume. Sometimes the thrill of living-action is at the expense of comics and animation.

A creepy-looking man swings a huge sword down on a masked hero, neatly slicing the hero’s word balloon in half. The balloon reads “!” In Orphan and the Five Beasts #4 (2022).

Speaking of stuff you can only do in comics, seeing the villain’s sword bisecting the word balloon of the hero’s reactionary noise to the sword stroke itself is sublime. James Stokoe’s Orphans and the Five Beasts — a gonzo, gross out kung-fu adventure — is not something I expected to like and that continuously surprises me.

A huge armored figure with a broken helm, revealing its true face, a child-like visage with a sad expression, vines, some glowing, entwined in its hair and right eye, in Step by Bloody Step #1 (2022).

This is a wordless fairy tale set in a fantasy world. Step by Step Bloody StepIt is about not explaining too much. I wanted to highlight this splash page from the initial issue. This kind of reveal — underneath its armor, the fragile little girl’s giant, violent armored companion is… the same as the little girl! — would be the trite ending of a lesser story. The fact that writer Si Spurrier and artist Matías Bergara unleash it in the first of four issues is tantalizing in the extreme.