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DC’s Absolute Universe has excelled by turning DC’s most popular characters on their head, losing the extraneous barnacles that have built up over the 20^th century and instead remaking them from their core out to what they would be… what they should be… in the 21^st Century. And for DC’s Selina Kyle, it’s Batman. That’s the motto of the upcoming Absolute Catwoman series by Absolute Batman co-creator Scott Snyder, co-writer Che Grayson, and artist Bengal. After the character’s debut in Absolute Batman #13, the character is becoming the resourceful and fully-funded vigilante we’ve always known she could be.

“Absolute Catwoman is a high-end, big secrets, higher-stakes Catwoman that we’ve never seen before,” says Snyder’s co-writer, Che Grayson, in a Comics! The Magazine #1 article. “My two references were Ethan Hunt, from Mission: Impossible style set pieces, plot, and action, but also that gritty, hardcore, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Lisbeth Salander-type character.”

“That’s when Nick came back with the designs for her, and it was just amazing,” Grayson continues. “Just seeing the new design and the helmet and everything, things just continued to spark. Scott’s motto is always, ‘in this universe, Selina is Batman.’”

In the Absolute DC Universe, Selina Kyle is the thief you’ve always known her as, but she’s also got that Bruce Wayne wealth (not Absolute Bruce Wayne, but the original), and it opens doors for Selina to be the fullest version of herself, to fight the adversaries she still sees in the world.

“She is a street kid, but she has made it so far, and her North Star is this idea that she grew up in Gotham, where the big guys win, and so Selina learned how to dupe the big guys,” says Grayson. “Ultimately, her end goal is to be free from all of it. And her idea is that the only way to be free is to be so far and so high above it all that you can’t be touched. Like, what is the price of freedom?”

Absolute Catwoman #1 (of 6) is scheduled to debut June 16.

Need more? Here's our picks for the best DC Comics stories of all time, and here's a list of all the free DC comics you can look forward to as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day 2026 and Comics Giveaway Day 2026.