Chris Dee's Blog: Chris Dee's Cat-Tales Blog, page 15

Inside an Enigma: Complete Ebook and Print Downloads now available

“I said I was a patient cat; I am. I said I would wait,  I did. And now Fate, friend of cats, has laid the key to his happiness at my feet.  He betrayed my friendship, betrayed my trust. And now… he is going… to pay.”

Once a tale is finished, I like to release the ebook and pdfs formatted for printing as soon as possible.  In this case, Inside an Enigma was delayed by the Book One audio books.  But it’s here now!  For Kindle /mobi and the universal ebook format ePub; as well as print quality PDF.

“It’s a labyrinth of cunning and puzzles and riddle-mania… but never hard to follow. That’s what makes it riveting…”

“Selina is a lot smarter and a lot scarier than a lot of people realise.”

“Simply brilliant.

“Inspired…

“AWESOME, and so very, *very* Kitty!”

Can you hear me now? Cat-Tales Audio Books

Back when Cat-Tales started its original website, having a Flash splash screen was pretty spiff.  I recorded a few lines that seemed “Signature Catwoman” from Selina’s monologue in A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation and set it against some visual or other.  Ever since, I’ll get a request about twice a year to read complete tales as audio books – or at least “Please please please” some favorite bit, be it Selina’s stage show performace or the origin story Cattitude, the first person passages from String Theory, etc.  Everyone has their own favorites.

Wait til you hear her Harley Quinn

It was always an appealing idea but a little too daunting for me personally.  Then I met Caroline Sharp, a wonderfully talented actress who was not only a Cat-Tales reader, she had an instinctive feel for the fun and good humor that is the core of a proper Selina and the Cat-Tales universe generally.    (Seriously, if you think her Selina is spot on, wait ’til you hear her Harley Quinn.)

Cat-Tales #1: A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation now an audio book.

The goal is to present one or two short stories from each of the collections, starting with Book One.  There was no question that we would have to begin with the first tale: A Girl’s Gotta Protect Her Reputation. the impetus for the series.

In 2001, what DC Comics called its new direction obliterated everything that identified Catwoman except her name.

From Selina’s iconic purple costume to her supporting cast, her personality, intelligence, sophistication and lifestyle, her status as a world-class thief and the tone and content of her adventures, everything that drew fans to the character in the first place was gone.

The Nostalgia Critic recently speculated what the fictional characters of Avatar: The Last Airbender would think if they were real and saw the unspeakably awful  portrayals in the M. Night Shyamalan fiasco.  Reputation does something similar, presenting the DC Comics outrages as the work of a sleazy tabloid called The Gotham Post.  The stage show in which she responds wound up opening a door into this real Gotham.  If the comics didn’t present the real story, the real characters, then who were were these people, really?

Picking a second tale was more of a challenge.  The early tales were essentially an in-joke for a niche audience, loaded with comics references, nods to and inversions of related fan fiction clichés and tropes of the time.  Could I find a story that stood alone, gave a glimpse of the fun to be had for people who simply like Batman without reading or caring about the dysfunctional freak show in official comics?

I could!  Fun & Games was first introduced with the old Monty Python line “And now for something completely different” and allowed readers to get deep into the first scene without realizing it was a continuation of the series begun with Reputation.

Today, I introduce it this way – Catwoman is a fantasy. Either you get that or you don’t, and if you do, you should probably realize that whatever you’ve dreamed up in your imagination, Bruce has imagined quite a bit better.

Once they got together, you don’t think our kinky pair took a few of those ideas out for a spin?

Cat-Tales audio books, like all offerings, are available for free on the CT website.  Listen online or download to your portable player.

New Wallpaper: WELL, SO AM I!

The latest desktop wallpaper is another scene suggested by readers.

Pissed? “WELL, SO AM I!” he screamed. Then he… he swung his sack of rubies at my head! I ducked, and he kept going. Spun himself around almost a full 360 and spilled a few rubies on the floor before he caught his balance, and then skidded on one and fell on his ass.

In Not My Kink, Selina took over Bruce’s *cough*fighting duties while he recovered from an injury.  She lasted all of 5 chapters before Riddler figured out what was going on.  “Zany hijinx ensued” as they say.

All the new wallpapers are available in high definition for all screen ratios and devices.

 

A Freakout of Fanboys

If I say I received two emails Sunday, one with the subjectline Affleck Weekend and one titled simply Fanboy Freakout, I assume no reader of this blog (or for that matter, no one who hasn’t just woken from a coma) needs to be told why.

What’s interesting about this isn’t the freakout itself, but the bizarre timing (Warner Bros made the announcement on Friday when fans would have all weekend to work it into a lather) and then the triple attempt at a shaming response as if the pushback wasn’t expected.

First it was Team Nolan’s rather petulant “Hey, you didn’t like the Heath Ledger idea either.”  Then Joss ‘The One You Still Like Who Had Nothing To Do With TDKR or MoS’ Whedon announces support for Batman casting choice.  And finally, we had the actor himself making a video response with Jay and Silent Bob – as in Oh yeah, he was in Mallrats – as in 1995 Kevin f-ing Smith. So much for the one valid point that was made this past weekend that maybe the guy who was on stage accepting Argo’s Oscar for Best Picture a few short months ago shouldn’t be judged on a body work that predates the CD-Rom.

Reminding us of that ancient history, along with the patronizing attitude, and indeed the whole of the reaction just doesn’t seem like the work of savvy Hollywood spin professionals who knew this was coming. It seems like a kneejerk of people who didn’t think it through because they didn’t see it coming… And I’m wondering why.

Fanboys flip out.  It’s what they do.  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.  How in the name of #DanSlottRapedMyChildhood can you be an adult, on the internet, and working in some capacity even remotely connected to comic book superheroes and NOT BE AWARE?

And so, for the edification of those caught off guard last week and the entertainment of those who simply made popcorn, I present AN EXALTATION OF LARPS: A Guide to the Collective Nouns of Fandom*.

A Freakout of Fanboys: A Guide to the Collective Nouns of Fandom

*That title, by the way, is a nod to An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, which you really should check out. It’s a wonderful book.

Inside an Enigma Concludes in Part 7: Tarot

Now that the Whiskers & Nutmeg fanbase have been appeased, we can return at last to the humans who consider themselves the main characters in Cat-Tales:

Selina was a Rogue.  She knew the rules.  And the rules say the Riddle-Clue has to lead somewhere.

They also say be careful what you wish for.

Guess which one Eddie forgot in the final chapter of INSIDE AN ENIGMA:

Inside an Enigma: Tarot

Tarot!  Now available on the Cat-Tales Website and mobile-friendly mirror Cat-Tales mobi.

 

The Hour of Second Napping

A few weeks ago there was a Gutters that showed a Justice League parody, killing The Grumpy Cat with the caption “I don’t think DC Comics understands how the Internet works.”

I do. Whenever I’m asked about the most popular original characters in Cat-Tales, I have to answer twice.  Humans like Sly, Raven and the ex-henchman outfit known as The Z all deserve recognition, but the fact is, when it comes to fan favorites, no “two-foot” in the storyverse can hold a candle to Selina’s cats Whiskers & Nutmeg.  The little furballs have a fan base, and not long ago, it mobilized lobbying to get them more screen time.

Never let it be said that Cat-Tales doesn’t respond to its most invested readers (even if those readers don’t technically read but arrange to have the stories read to them).  Harking back to a time when mainstream comics also wanted to please readers, I grabbed the old “Because you demanded it” tag and put together an old school cover for The Hour of Second Napping, revisiting events from Cat-Tales: Inside an Enigma from the a POV within Wayne Manor and, uh, below the doorknobs.

The Hour of Second Napping – A Cat-Tales Extra Starring Whiskers & Nutmeg

Theatre fans among you may recognize this as the narrative model from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but I figured if I acknowledged that by calling it something like “Whiskers & Nutmeg Are Dead,” it might be misconstrued and our Feline Overlords might just shut down the Internet until the misunderstanding was straightened out.

Catwoman v. Riddler – Inside an Enigma 6

Quite early in Cat-Tales: Book 1 something happened which was long overdue in Wayne Manor, a house with 80+ rooms and therefore 80+ doors which was also the home of a man with a secret identity and therefore telling a lot of lies.  Farce!  I know superhero comics and Batman in particular has been asphyxiating on the dark & gritty for 30 years, but even so, superhero comics were around for decades before that.  It’s hard to believe we stumbled into such camp before uncovering a comedy staple like farce.

Which actually has nothing to do with Inside an Enigma 6, but that farcical episode did include the following line:

“Bruce has had this coming for a long, long time.”

And that’s what’s been echoing my head in releasing this chapter, because something else has been coming for a long time.  Catwoman v. Riddler.  Selina v. Eddie.  He’s had his moments of being a stand-up guy since learning Bruce’s secret (and hence Selina’s secret that Catwoman was romantically involved with Batman after all) way back in Cat-Tales: Strange Bedfellows.  He’s had more moments of being petty, manipulative, and an insufferable dick.  The tensions have built, shifted, friendships were tested,  mended and tested again.  Now, Selina’s had enough.

Hello, Eddie.  I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining the obvious… Riddle me this, riddle me that.  Expect to get scratched if you screw with a cat.

-S. Kyle, Inside an Enigma 6: Sawdust

 

Batman and Catwoman: Chemistry

It’s been noted before that for the Definitive Batman and Catwoman series, it’s hard for readers to recommend to hardcore shippers since a lot of the best Bruce/Selina moments are nestled in stories that are about other things. So I’m going to try to make it easier than pointing to the 5+ book collection. This video is the first of what I hope will be little bite-size slices of the Cat-Tales life, recalling the first encounter from Catitude as recounted in Electron 29

Zogger, Zoophilly and Zeitgeist

We all love Selina, but she does have a nasty streak that we haven’t seen in a while, and it’s stretching like a cat after a long nap.

“I said I was a patient cat, I am.  I said I would wait, I did.  He betrayed my friendship, betrayed my trust.  And now… he is going… to pay.”

-Selina Kyle in the last chapter of Inside an Enigma.

Now the new installment is here…

Cat-Tales: Inside an Enigma 5: Zogger, Zoophilly and Zeitgeist

…And if I were Edward Nigma, I’d be very worried right now.

Inside an Enigma: Zogger, Zoophilly and Zeitgeist on the Cat-Tales website and mobile-friendly Cat-Tales.mobi.

Frenemies

It’s been a week since the a certain kiss up at Arkham that tasted of a Hail Mary Pass and the goings on outside Arkham are about to collide with the happenings inside its walls.  But first, we did leave off with Selina back from a few weeks abroad and thanks to some kryptonite-infused kelp, she and Bruce haven’t had their reunion yet.  Dare we hope that for once there will be more apricot silk than claws & batarangs?

Maybe?

Maybe?  “Just this once,” as they both like to say?

And who remembers when we last saw these guys?

Cat-Tales: Inside an Enigma 4: Frenemies

 

It’s Chapter 4 of Inside an Enigma: Frenemies on the Cat-Tales website and mobile-friendly mirror Cat-Tales.mobi.