Remember when the internet fittingly lambasted the New52’s ridiculous Catwoman zero cover and then artist Guillem March fixed his work? Now March has been posting a first look at some other rejected Catwoman art on his blog.
Back in 2011, he drew several pages of Catwoman stripping naked on Bruce Wayne’s lawn. The pretext was that Selina Kyle had kissed both Bruce Wayne and Batman and then realized the similarities. She then gets naked for Bruce Wayne’s security cameras to lure him outside because reasons.
The storyline was scrapped, but not before Tomeu Morey had finished coloring the pages for Catwoman #3 and Guillem March had already drawn more pages of Catwoman naked for issue #4. Those frequent, last-minute changes may have contributed to writer Judd Winick leaving DC Comics.
March explains the scrapped pages:
Some people will say they were censored, but that’s not exact. The new pages were not a toned down version of these, they were telling another story. Actually, we had a big turning point here that could have changed the whole book from this point: Selina knows who Batman is. […] Maybe DC didn’t want to explore that storyline.
The Escapist points out that this issue instead followed the storyline of Catwoman dealing with the death of her friend Lola.
March seems to be relieved that he was hired to draw the new storyline. He says:
I’m showing these pages now, but I must confess I don’t like them at all. I don’t like how Selina looks like when she’s naked. Both the body and the face. I’d like to think today I’d do a much better job, and a bit more classy. […] The action in this scene was a depiction of who Selina was: a woman taking advantage of her sexuality to get something from a man. That made sense according on how the character had been approached in the earlier New52.
But what could be more classy (and fitting with the character) than to have Catwoman take all her clothes off to lure somebody outside instead of just breaking into his house instead? It’s not like she’s a cat burglar adept at breaking into houses or anything. It’s not like DC Comics had just been criticized for overly-objectifying the character on their cover of Catwoman #0.
The finished (but rejected) panels for Catwoman #3 are below, with the uncolored versions available here. The uncolored pages for issue #4 can be viewed here, and Guillem March most recently posted the uncensored (as in NSFW) version of one panel here.
Via The Escapist