Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Batman, catwoman, clay mann, dc comics, dc fandome, Tom King

Tom King, Clay Mann's Batman/Catwoman Finally Scheduled For December

Once upon a time, Tom King was fired from his Batman run, twenty issues shy of its planned completion. His run ended with City of Bane, and James Tynion IV took the book on. As a kind of sop, Tom King was given a twelve-issue spinoff to finish his storyline in a non-continuity fashion with his Heroes In Crisis artist Clay Mann. And so we got Batman/Catwoman, scheduled for January at the beginning of the year. That slipped and slipped further but now, ahead of DC Fandome this weekend, it has now been rescheduled eleven months late, for December 1st 2020. And finishing his story about the Bat and the Cat…

Gotham City. Today. Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle have rekindled their long-running, on-again, off-again relationship. Believing all obstacles are removed from their path, they once again begin operating as a duo in their secret lives: Batman and Catwoman working together to fight crime. In Batman/Catwoman, a crime story told across three separate timelines, Tom King, Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey return to the romantic saga of Batman and Catwoman, continuing the story they began in the pages of Batman!

Bats and Cats of Christmas past, present and future?

There's the past, when The Bat and The Cat first fell in love. Did they meet on the street? Or was it on a boat? Rooftops, ramparts and gargoyles, and over 80 years of fans that have read their comics, are their only witnesses.

I thought we established it was the beach?

There's the distant future, where after a long and happy marriage Bruce Wayne has passed away. Selina Kyle decides to settle an old score without having to worry about the Batman objecting. Catwoman is serving a very cold dish: Revenge.

We glimpsed this in recent Batman Annuals.

And in the present, Bruce and Selina's union is threatened by the arrival of one of Batman's past flings, Andrea Beaumont, a.k.a. Phantasm. Beaumont's return calls into question how each character chooses to operate in their costumed, and personal, lives, and any move by Phantasm could change the fate of Bruce and Selina's future.

Ah yes, originally from the Mask Of The Phantasm cartoon that the trailer all but spoiled.

The only other person besides Bruce and Selina to have been along for the whole ride has been the Joker, and what he did in the past is going to have direct consequences on today and tomorrow. Batman's greatest foe will intervene any time Batman and Catwoman try to take steps towards peace—he already robbed fans of a Bat/Cat wedding celebration! Any change in the Caped Crusader's life will be matched with the chaos of the Clown Prince of Crime…

Because there aren't enough comics with the Joker in them right now.

…and the Joker's not leaving any witnesses. Not even a gargoyle. Will Selina make good on her final kill?

At the time, Tom King said he had to get permission from the top AT&T bods to make a big change – and not the killing of Alfred. Will that still be happening? Oh and it's Black Label now.

Batman/Catwoman, by Tom King, Clay Mann, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, edited by Jamie S. Rich and Brittany Holzherr, will launch a 12-issue run on December 1, 2020, with a cover by Mann and Morey and a variant cover by Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair. New issues will ship monthly with a skip month planned for a Batman/Catwoman Special in June 2021, and the series will carry DC's Black Label content descriptor, indicating content appropriate for readers ages 17+

This special? Oh go on then, I was a complete sucker for King's run on Batman, I'll be definitely back for this one too.

Man, they will be scheduling Marc Silvestri's Batman next.

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