The Resemblance of Selina Kyle to Martha Wayne

[LEADER DESSLOK]

Okay, I know it sounds far-fetched, but I noticed that Selina Kyle bears an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Wayne's dead mother Martha. Now, originally, this probably had to do with Bob Kane's drawing skills but surprisingly, a number of subsequent artists maintained the resemblance. Perhaps due to their own skills as drafts-men and women as well, but think of the story potential; it would explain why Bats has always had a soft spot for her that he never showed Poison Ivy and others.

Waitaminnit. Nocturna and Kathy Kane also favored Martha.

Hmmm, a pattern is emerging...

[Chiroptera]

Some studies have shown that most men tend to be more closely attracted to women that look or act the way their mother's did, so your theory does make some sense.

[Chad]

Michael Fleisher's Superman Encyclopedia offers a fascinating insight into Superman's mind. Fleisher suggests that Superman's treatment of Lois Lane (chasing her as Clark and dismissing her as Superman) is a direct result of abandonment issues he still has regarding his mother. His mother could have come with him to Earth since there was room in his rocket, but chose to stay on Krypton. Because Superman's mother decided that she would rather die on Krypton rather than live with him, he has serious issues that manifest in the way he treats Lois. His mom led him on by offering love and then abandoning him; so Superman does the same with his Clark and Superman identity when dealing with Lois. Lois, of course, looks like Superman's mom too.

Nothing to do with Batman and his mom, but it's food for thought.

[nepenthes]

:confused:

Martha Wayne and Catwoman share a resemblence without about 98.9% of all short dark haired women in comics.

[Earl of the RCs]

True. And bruce has slept with most of them.

[The Xenos]

Paging Dr Freud... Also, Dr Fine, Dr Howard, Dr Fine.

[Bat-Reader]

Okay, I know it sounds far-fetched, but I noticed that Selina Kyle bears an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Wayne's dead mother Martha. Now, originally, this probably had to do with Bob Kane's drawing skills but surprisingly, a number of subsequent artists maintained the resemblance. Perhaps due to their own skills as drafts-men and women as well, but think of the story potential; it would explain why Bats has always had a soft spot for her that he never showed Poison Ivy and others.

Waitaminnit. Nocturna and Kathy Kane also favored Martha.

Hmmm, a pattern is emerging...

Sound like a nice idea at start but then gets kind of pervy... it could bring up questions like "did he sleep with Catwoman becouse of she looks like his mother"... so i believe it's better not to use this idea.

Batman goes easy on Catwoman because she's a thief/vigilante thrill seeker who has no intantions of taking human life unlike psycho Pison Ivy who feeds poeple to her giant flowers and things like that.

:confused:

Martha Wayne and Catwoman share a resemblence without about 98.9% of all short dark haired women in comics.

True. :biggrin:

[Captain Jim]

Paging Dr Freud... Also, Dr Fine, Dr Howard, Dr Fine.

I think you mean Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.

[Captain Jim]

Michael Fleisher's Superman Encyclopedia offers a fascinating insight into Superman's mind. Fleisher suggests that Superman's treatment of Lois Lane (chasing her as Clark and dismissing her as Superman) is a direct result of abandonment issues he still has regarding his mother. His mother could have come with him to Earth since there was room in his rocket, but chose to stay on Krypton. Because Superman's mother decided that she would rather die on Krypton rather than live with him, he has serious issues that manifest in the way he treats Lois. His mom led him on by offering love and then abandoning him; so Superman does the same with his Clark and Superman identity when dealing with Lois. Lois, of course, looks like Superman's mom too.

Nothing to do with Batman and his mom, but it's food for thought.

That version of the Superman origin is really bizarre. I can't imagine any mother sending an infant off in a rocket alone when she could have gone with him, only to stay behind and die with her husband. That version of Lara must have been mentally impaired (not to mention totally lacking in maternal instincts).

[Rev. Calibos]

That version of the Superman origin is really bizarre. I can't imagine any mother sending an infant off in a rocket alone when she could have gone with him, only to stay behind and die with her husband. That version of Lara must have been mentally impaired (not to mention totally lacking in maternal instincts).


That almost made me spit out my coffee. :biggrin:

I never thought about it like that. When you read it it seems terribly romantic and whatnot 'No, Jor-El.....my place is here with my husband....'

Really? Because I would think your place would be with your baby in that rocket.

The rocket that's about to shoot into space.

To another planet.

Sounds crazy Lara, I know......

And what does Jor-El do, genius that he is? Just nods and accepts this? You would think that one of the greatest minds on Krypton would say 'Hey, really appreciate that Lara but I'm going to need for you to get into that rocket. The baby is in the rocket. We're about to shoot it into space, remember?'

[LEADER DESSLOK]

That almost made me spit out my coffee. :biggrin:

I never thought about it like that. When you read it it seems terribly romantic and whatnot 'No, Jor-El.....my place is here with my husband....'

Really? Because I would think your place would be with your baby in that rocket.


I think this maybe a modern viewpoint, given our liberal (I prefer casual) attitude toward marriage. I've read gothic novels and seen films where the issue of the mother's life is in danger while she's giving birth. The husband usually wanted his wife saved, no matter what the cost. The reason usually being that they could always have more children. Likewise, in other stories, like the original Superman origin, if the mother was assured that the child was placed somewhere safe (like our beloved Terra Firma) the wife would choose to die with her mate.

As for Bruce maybe being in "love" with his mother's memory and his search for women like her, isn't this called the "Oedipus Complex"? Like Hamlet. Uh, oh. Hamlet also lived to get revenge for the death of his father. I wonder if he had a cave somewhere...?

[Chad]

That almost made me spit out my coffee. :biggrin:

I never thought about it like that. When you read it it seems terribly romantic and whatnot 'No, Jor-El.....my place is here with my husband....'

Really? Because I would think your place would be with your baby in that rocket.

The rocket that's about to shoot into space.

To another planet.

Sounds crazy Lara, I know......

And what does Jor-El do, genius that he is? Just nods and accepts this? You would think that one of the greatest minds on Krypton would say 'Hey, really appreciate that Lara but I'm going to need for you to get into that rocket. The baby is in the rocket. We're about to shoot it into space, remember?'

How many times have we seen the ol' hero knocks other hero out cold so that he can stay behind and sacrfice his life while he teleports the unconscious good guy to safety? Now that Captain Jim mentions it, maybe Lara was just being polite. She could have made the offer thinking "There's no way the next words out his mouth won't be 'Get in that craft Lara! Are you insane!?". Once he says this, she could have gotten onboard the rocket knowing that she made the offer and it was naturally refused. Nice loop though that Jor-El threw her instead: "I would like you to die with me Lara, thanks!" "Uhhhhh, yeah, see what I was hoping you'd say is..."

Or maybe Lara took one look at the rocket Jor-El built and said "I think I'll take my chances with the exploding planet"

[Rev. Calibos]

How many times have we seen the ol' hero knocks other hero out cold so that he can stay behind and sacrfice his life while he teleports the unconscious good guy to safety? Now that Captain Jim mentions it, maybe Lara was just being polite. She could have made the offer thinking "There's no way the next words out his mouth won't be 'Get in that craft Lara! Are you insane!?". Once he says this, she could have gotten onboard the rocket knowing that she made the offer and it was naturally refused. Nice loop though that Jor-El threw her instead: "I would like you to die with me Lara, thanks!" "Uhhhhh, yeah, see what I was hoping you'd say is..."

Or maybe Lara took one look at the rocket Jor-El built and said "I think I'll take my chances with the exploding planet"



Or maybe she saw how cramped it was in there and, being clautrophobic, just passed on the whole thing.

'Really, Jor-El? You couldn't have added, oh, I don't know, a seat or something? Maybe a CD player? They can put DVD players in cars now, you know that right, what with our planet being so g.d. ADVANCED.....'




On topic, I don't know if I've seen enough of Martha over the years to really draw any comparisons to Catwoman. You see a handful of images when they show the events leading to their deaths but there really isn't a wide enough variety to really get a solid grip on what a 'standard' Martha looks like.

Most flashback stories like that are usually spaced enough years apart that a different artist will put his own spin on it. They probably don't even have reference drawings to use, they probably just have a note scribbled 'Martha Wayne, late 20's, dark hair' which describes a huge chunk of women in comics anyway.

[Supermancho]

How many times have we seen the ol' hero knocks other hero out cold so that he can stay behind and sacrfice his life while he teleports the unconscious good guy to safety? Now that Captain Jim mentions it, maybe Lara was just being polite. She could have made the offer thinking "There's no way the next words out his mouth won't be 'Get in that craft Lara! Are you insane!?". Once he says this, she could have gotten onboard the rocket knowing that she made the offer and it was naturally refused. Nice loop though that Jor-El threw her instead: "I would like you to die with me Lara, thanks!" "Uhhhhh, yeah, see what I was hoping you'd say is..."

Or maybe Lara took one look at the rocket Jor-El built and said "I think I'll take my chances with the exploding planet"

LOLhttp://www.smileyhut.com/laughing/roll2.gif (http://www.smileyhut.com) Oh Chad, thanks for the laughs.

http://www.yelims.com/IPB/Invision-Board-France-234.gif

[The Xenos]

I think you mean Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Howard.

Aha. Yes. Why.. soitenly!

[LEADER DESSLOK]

This whole thing with Lara and the rocket really is intriguing.

There is actually, supposedly, a real-life equivalent.

According to an ad concerning some sort of Titanic collectible, a married couple was on board the doomed ocean liner. The husband managed to get his wife into one of the few lifeboats. According to the legend, the wife got out of the boat and chose to die with her husband.

I've never seen the movie. Does it make use of this legend?

Back to the main thread, true, there are a lot of raven haired women in comics, but excluding the limitations of various artists, it's still pretty interesting that Bruce leans more toward brunettes than redheads (Vicky Vale) or blondes (Silver St. Cloud). Most American men tend to have a weakness for blondes (as exploited by the advertising and porn industries). But Bruce, for various reasons, seems to be the exception. This is what I noticed.

[BatWing]

This whole thing with Lara and the rocket really is intriguing.

There is actually, supposedly, a real-life equivalent.

According to an ad concerning some sort of Titanic collectible, a married couple was on board the doomed ocean liner. The husband managed to get his wife into one of the few lifeboats. According to the legend, the wife got out of the boat and chose to die with her husband.

I've never seen the movie. Does it make use of this legend?

Yes it does, actually. There is a shot in the movie of an elderly pair on a bed. They're hugging each other, while the ship is sinking. A deleted scene on the special edition shows the bit you mentioned. She gets offered a place on a lifeboat, while she insists on staying with her husband. Given that there were very few lifeboats that actually got saved on time, it wasn't even a bad idea.

[Gothos]

Michael Fleisher's Superman Encyclopedia offers a fascinating insight into Superman's mind. Fleisher suggests that Superman's treatment of Lois Lane (chasing her as Clark and dismissing her as Superman) is a direct result of abandonment issues he still has regarding his mother. His mother could have come with him to Earth since there was room in his rocket, but chose to stay on Krypton. Because Superman's mother decided that she would rather die on Krypton rather than live with him, he has serious issues that manifest in the way he treats Lois. His mom led him on by offering love and then abandoning him; so Superman does the same with his Clark and Superman identity when dealing with Lois. Lois, of course, looks like Superman's mom too.

Nothing to do with Batman and his mom, but it's food for thought.

Chad,

The Fleischer hypothesis, while good doctrinaire Freudianism, is flawed by not having taken all facts into account.

The most significant fact is that the first telling of Superman's origin, by Siegel and Schuster, says nothing about Lara being able to go along with Kal-L. It's clear that sending the infant away in a test-rocket, never intended for human occupancy, is a last-ditch effort on the part of the doomed parents.

Years ago I asked a fellow fan/correspondent, the late Rich Morissey, where he thought the "Lara going along for the ride" idea had come from. He thought it came from a late 40s reiteration of the origin authored by Bill Finger, probably after Siegel and DC had parted company. I've read that story and it does indeed include that motif (though I don't recall the title right off). Given that Supes' origin was not often retold in the 40s, I can well believe that it was the first version with that detail, especially given the source-- for Finger is also apparently the first person to claim that Batman's burglar didn't shoot both Thomas and Martha, but that Martha died of a heart attack when she saw her husband shot, as recounted in "The Origin of the Batman," also from the late 40s.

I think the theory is good up to a point-- the point where it applies only to stories by Bill Finger. There probably are a fair number of good psychological motifs to be found in the stories of both Jerry Siegel (first Superman origin-tale) and Gardner Fox (first Batman origin-tale), but Finger's stories are marked by a LOT of psychologizing. I think that in both mythologies he articulated the very Freudian idea of the mother choosing to die with the husband over living for her son because Finger did have a feel for that kind of Freudian archetype (so to speak). So Fleischer's theory applies well to Finger but not to the mythology as a whole.

I think Lois Lane looks like Lara, but you see so little of Martha in the 40s stories that I'd not draw comparisons to Selina Kyle. And of course both can be explained by simply saying that artists always draw ideal "types," from John Romita to Dan deCarlo.