Catwoman Gets Life in Prison in This Week's Batman

While it's not uncommon for supervillains to go to jail (or the asylum), what's arguably a lot less common is for readers to get any sense of how the sausage is made.

In today's issue of Batman, though, the Dark Knight and Suicide Squad boss Amanda Waller apparently worked together with the President of the United States to get a potential death sentence for Catwoman commuted to life without parole, to be served immediately.

The charge? Over 200 murders, revealed in the just-concluded "I Am Suicide" arc in which Batman took Catwoman and a group of villains to Santa Prisca to take on Bane and Psycho-Pirate. Catwoman wasn't actually responsible for the deaths in question, but she's certain enough that Batman can't prove her innocence that she'd rather take the life sentence and a final, intimate night with Batman before turning herself in than roll the dice trying to prove her innocence, apparently.

(Especially because per her own claims, she did indeed murder the terrorists who were responsible for destroying her orphanage. It's just that there were mitigating circumstances, etc.)

The development may be temporary -- among other things, Batman is the world's greatest detective, and as difficult as it is to prove a negative, it's likely much easier for him to find evidence of why Catwoman would be justified in killing terrorists. We've also seen her on the cover of a solicited February issue, suggesting that the device of a two-issue storyline where Batman takes her in to surrender to authorities at the end is likely a bit of a misdirection.

All that said, it is (at least at the moment) an interesting status quo for a character who has had her own title for much of the last 20 years, and whose status as a villain has been upgraded to "antiohero" more or less constantly since.

Batman #14 is available in comic shops and on ComiXology today. The "Rooftops" two-part storyline will conclude in two weeks.