Gotham City is certainly no stranger to strange romance, but with recent developments in Rebirth’s Batman ongoing, the on-again-off-again dynamic between Batman and Catwoman might be getting more complicated than ever. Are there wedding bells in the Dark Knight’s future? Could a marriage for Batman even work? Haven’t we been down this road before?

RELATED: Batman Proposes To Catwoman In Rebirth Development

Well, as you probably guessed, the answer to all of those questions is a resounding “it’s complicated,” all the way across the board.

So let’s break it down, and illuminate some of the murkiest parts of the Bat-and-Cat story, starting at the very beginning.

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ROUGH STARTS

Batgirl vs. Catwoman, from Batman #197
Batgirl vs. Catwoman from the cover of "Batman" #197, by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson

The strange relationship of Batman and Catwoman has gone through its fair share of incarnations since Catwoman’s original introduction in Batman #1, back in 1940. Selina was one of three featured supporting characters in that issue, and the first official female supporting character for Batman’s mythology. Her origin story was muddled and drenched in the same cavalier “just put it on the page and sort the details out later” attitude endemic of the Golden Age, but her purpose was actually twofold: she was placed in Gotham to simultaneously attempt to draw female readers into the book (similar to the way Robin was made to appeal to young readers) and to give the book a layer of sex appeal.

However, as you might imagine, only one of those missions was ever really served, care of the book’s exclusively male creative teams (a problem that would go on to haunt Selina for decades after her creation). The goal of making her appealing to female readers didn’t necessarily vanish, of course, but it never quite escaped the incredibly misguided and male-oriented grasp of people like Bob Kane who would explain that Selina’s cat iconography was due in part because he found both cats and women to be “hard to understand” and “cool, detached, and unreliable.”

And so, the initial relationship between Batman and “The Cat” was just that -- the interplay between a hero and a femme fatale as imagined by men who openly admitted to being unable to really wrap their heads around the mysterious and arcane minds of the women in their lives.

READ MORE: The Complete History Of Batman And Catwoman's Romance

In short: things weren’t all that great. Even by the incredibly loose standards of Golden Age proto-continuity, Selina’s stories were hastily pasted together and often directly contradictory. Her “romance” with Batman was often times just given as an assumption, to be pulled in when convenient and forgotten when it wasn’t -- or, in the case of the mid-1950s and the crackdown of the Comics Code Authority, written out entirely rather than adjusted to fit the stringent new rules.

Selina’s rocky, malleable and often muddled foundations afforded creative teams the building blocks to construct increasingly disparate incarnations of both her character and her relationship with Batman and -- surprise! -- not all of them were successful, or even engaging.

The most important thing to understand is that while there is “canonical” ground to be tilled for Bruce and Selina dating back to the 40s, not all of it was worth planting. So what makes a romance between The Bat and The Cat work? Well, to really answer that question we’ll need to take a look at what make them not work.

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THE NEW 52 PROBLEM

You may not remember, but back in 2011, at the start of the New 52, the Catwoman ongoing hit shelves with a brand new issue #1 -- and caught some critical flack while doing so for ending on a sex scene between Selina and Bruce that felt both tasteless and abrupt.

Part of the problem was certainly the fact that prior to the New 52, Selina and Bruce’s romantic relationship had been largely sidelined. Bruce spent the twilight years of the Pre-Reboot universe canon displaced in time, assumed dead, with his protege Dick Grayson stepping into the cowl. What’s more, immediately before Bruce’s quote-unquote “death,” he’d been given a plot that focused heavily on his past romantic entanglements with Talia Al Ghul, with whom he’d had a son.

The transition from that status quo into the New 52 reality where suddenly Bruce was having frantic rooftop encounters with Selina all over again was jarring to say the least -- especially for fans who hadn’t been familiar with either character when such things were relatively commonplace.

However, surprise was not the only thing causing an issue with this newly spotlit incarnation of Bat and Cat. The real and perhaps more insidious problem sprouted from a fundamental misunderstanding of how Selina functions both as a “femme fatale” archetype and as a foil to Bruce Wayne.

The scene plays out like this: after narrowly escaping an undercover mission gone south, Selina runs into Batman in a penthouse as she catches her breath. It’s unclear what his actual intention is for showing up, other than to check on Selina’s well being after her apartment was destroyed, because before he gets more than two sentences out, Selina is literally throwing herself at him. Bruce tries to stop her, pointedly saying that they’re “not doing this again,” but Selina won’t take no for an answer, forcing Batman to the ground where he finally acquiesces -- or, rather, readers are forced to assume he acquiesces as he begins to return her advances, there is no more dialogue after this moment. In fact, the only words on the page become Selina’s narration boxes, which don’t offer much context beyond a rather ham-fisted attempt at ramping up the sex appeal of the moment. (“This isn’t the first time.” “Every time he protests...then gives in.” “...And most of the costumes stay on.”)

The intention is pretty clear: this is a Selina who we are supposed to be reading as sexually powerful, weaponized, and dominant. What actually comes across, however, is uncomfortable, drenched in the sort of dubious consent that probably should have pinged the radar of someone in editorial, and drawn in a way that is so nakedly in service of the male gaze it becomes anatomically suspect at best and grotesque (seriously, no one wants a latex bodysuit to contour to their bodies that much) at worst.

In short: despite Selina’s objective autonomy and power over the situation within the walls of the narrative, the context of the moment leaves her to be read as an object, a victim of Bruce’s inescapable masculine magnetism. She is physically in control, but only in a way that signals to the target demographic of readers that she is there for them to look at and to fantasize about. It’s the catch-22 that’s plagued the femme fatales of superhero comics for decades -- the logical loophole that allows “powerful female characters” to become “powerful sex objects.”

Now, the temptation to conflate this critique with an aversion to showing Selina and Bruce in any sort of relationship is real, and admittedly very easy to do. Femme fatale characters fall into a trap where, by transitive property, criticism leveled at the depiction of their sexuality on the page often is read as criticism of the character herself. This is also, unfortunately, a function of that same logical loophole -- the femme fatale’s characterization is buoyed by her sexuality and therefore any displeasure with that sexuality is also displeasure with the character’s central identity, QED.

But often, that’s hardly the case -- the problems with making the Bat and the Cat work as a romantic dynamic have nothing to do with overt displays of sexuality and everything to do with the context of those interactions as they play out. The backbone of a successful Selina-and-Bruce love connection is all about power... but maybe not in the way you might expect.

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BAT/CAT REBORN

Now that we’ve taken a look at the pitfalls of a poorly rendered Batman and Catwoman dynamic, it’s only fair that we take the time to highlight one that manages to dance over most, if not all, of them.

If you’ve been keeping up with Rebirth’s current Batman ongoing, you’re definitely familiar with the newly rekindled flame between Selina and Bruce by way of, well, a marriage proposal for one thing. Yeah, it’s that serious.

But more importantly, it’s also overtly sexual. The mini-arc that actually set up the question-popping moment, “Rooftops” by collaborators Tom King and Mitch Gerads, featured a diamond drenched sex scene during one of the duo’s many rooftop rendezvous. At first glance, it’s a scene that could very easily be read as a cut-and-paste retry for the distinctly similar New 52 pages I just spent the last several paragraphs critiquing.

The thing is? It’s not.

Why? Well, for one thing, the escalation to the moment of truth comes care of two full issues designed to make the connection between the two characters ring as legitimate -- and what’s more, “Rooftops” had the advantage of a full thirteen issues of Rebirth Batman marching before it to seed the relationship. Compare this to the New 52’s issue one announcement, and it’s not hard to put two and two together. A romantic subplot is always going to be more easy to believe when it’s spent some time making itself at home in the page real estate afforded to it.

But the real delineation between the Rebirth and New 52 incarnations of the relationship has less to do with the relative ease at which it’s introduced to readers and more to do with the way Selina works in this newly kickstarted DCU.

Rather than being the “victim” of Bruce’s undeniable, brooding masculine magnetism -- a Bond Girl style vixen who just “can’t help herself” but fall for the dangerous and strong hero even though she knows better -- Rebirth Selina is an active player in the “game” she and Batman had established between themselves. Bruce isn’t an object of uncontrollable lust for her, he’s not a reluctant participant in the crosshairs of Selina’s performative sexuality, he’s the other half of a conversation happening across Gotham City’s rooftops, gargoyles, and crime scenes.

This incarnation of Selina’s femme fatale tropes isn’t invested in making the reader believe that her sexuality has a one to one ratio with her physical strength, but takes the time to build a believable case for mutual attraction and mutual gain between the two parties involved. For Batman, Selina represents an exit sign on a very long, very dark highway -- the potential to escape his endless crusade, despite the innate knowledge that he’ll never be satisfied with calling it quits. For Catwoman, Batman represents the ultimate conquest, a shot at stealing away the love and attention of the Dark Knight, the most valuable thing in Gotham, despite the unmistakable understanding that she’ll never be able to hold on to it for too long.

It would be inaccurate to say that it’s a mutually beneficial relationship on the table, but it’s certainly mutual, and that’s what matters. The power is evenly distributed. And maybe more importantly, that distribution of power doesn’t force Selina to sacrifice or compromise her autonomy or her sexuality. It’s her decision, within the narrative, when, how, and why she should weaponize any aspects of herself -- and she does so to serve the story she exists in, without the added baggage of performing for a target demographic of readers.

So, can a relationship between The Bat and The Cat work? Certainly. The bones of a romance have been written into these two characters from day one. It’s just been a matter of mining their marrow, stripping out the failings of seventy plus years and sequencing the DNA into something new -- something successful that serves to bolster both characters. This is something Rebirth Batman has done to great effect over the past year, with painstaking attention to detail and restraint. It doesn’t just work, it works well, for maybe the first time in almost seventy years.

But, should it work? Is this a sustainable path for a Batman story to travel?

Well, Catwoman’s answer to Bruce’s proposal is set to be revealed in Batman #33, so, until then, your guess is as good as mine.