Selina Kyle is Catwoman, a costumed adventurer who's been both a super-hero and super-villain. Beginning her career as a thief and enemy to Batman, she later turned to crime-fighting and became part of the Batman Family. Despite her villainous nature, she works hard to protect the East End of Gotham City.
Early years
Selina Kyle's early life was defined by tragedy. When she was just a girl, her brutalized mother Maria committed suicide and her violent father Brian drank himself to death soon after. Selina was separated from her younger sister Maggie when remanded to the Sprang Hall Juvenile Detention Center, an abusive state home for orphaned or delinquent girls. Eventually, she escaped the Center and tried pickpocketing the crowd at a carnival outside Gotham City but failed. She was caught by the man who ran the place and he offered her to join the carnival. Selina agreed and soon she learned the art of contortionism, gymnastics, magic and trickery. Using her new learned skills, Selina also improved her pickpocketing skills. When the owner of the carnival died in a tragic accident, Selina decided to take her chances on the streets of Gotham.
Origins
New 52
Selina and her brother Aiden were separated into different foster homes after their father was imprisoned. She ended up in Oliver's Group Home, where Miss Oliver taught the children in her care to steal for her. After getting caught stealing, years later, she was hired at the Mayor's Office, and used her clearance to look at her own file in the hopes of finding her brother. Instead, she discovered that her identity was not what she thought it was, and when she pursued it, someone shoved her off a roof to keep her from the truth. She survived, realizing that she must have been someone important enough to want dead. Months later, after deciding to become Catwoman, she learned that the files she'd seen were wiped in the interim.
Rebirth
Due to the reality-altering timeline shift by Doctor Manhattan, Selina's origins became similar to her New Earth counterpart, with her father being a drunk who habitually mistreated her mother, the latter committing suicide when Selina was young. She also had a sister named Maggie Kyle. Selina first encountered a disguised Bruce Wayne while on the street. Later, she took to thieving and eventually became the Catwoman around the time Bruce first debuted as the vigilante named Batman.
Dollhouse
After five years of thieving as Catwoman, Selina had crossed one too many bad people and had gotten her close friend and fence Lola MacIntire killed by the gangleader Bone, which devastated her. At Lola's funeral, she encountered her old friend Gwen Altamont - another fence - and, despite some initial hesitance from the cat burglar, the two began working together.
While Catwoman took jobs stealing cars for Gwen, encountering a metahuman named Spark in the process, someone began kidnapping prostitutes from her neighbourhood.[After a failed attempt to stop the kidnapper in the act, Selina turned to Det. Carlos Alvarez for help, despite the fact that he had been trying to catch her - but because he was the only clean cop she knew. Selina tracked the kidnapper to a mansion and discovered Matilda Mathis - calling herself Dollhouse - had been keeping her victims and harvesting their organs before turning them into lifelike dolls. Batman soon interrupted their fight, allowing both Catwoman and Mathis to escape and making Selina question her fitness for vigilantism.
Catwoman
Catwoman's status as hero or villain was always fluid. She had her own moral code and had occasionally teamed up with Batman and other heroes against greater threats, even saving the lives of the entire Justice League on one occasion. She represented a gray area in Batman's otherwise black and white life where the line between good and evil blurred, and his attraction to her stemmed from the perception that, in her own way, she's a female version of himself: another dark creature that prowls the night.
Shortly after the Holiday murders, Selina visited the grave of Carmine Falcone where she expressed her belief that she was Falcone's illegitimate daughter, but was unable to find any proof. Around this time, Selina met Falcone's son Mariowho would later become head of the Falcone crime family.
Catwoman Costume: The skintight costume features retractable razor-sharp claws in her gloves and spring-action climbing pitons in her boots. Catwoman's costume is designed to give her maximum flexibility and movement while providing her some anonymity, and stealth. Her mask covers her features, keeping her from instant recognition in her civilian identity. The material is a thick insulating cloth, protecting her from cold and wet, while being fire retardant.
Catwoman possesses the peak human strength level of a woman her age, size and weight, in addition who engages in intensive regular exercise and combat training. Catwoman is capable of pressing up to twice her own weight (270 lbs). She is capable of swinging uninjured with a grapple or whip.
There is a large amount of circumstantial evidence that Selina Kyle is the biological daughter of Carmine and Louisa Falcone -- enough evidence that Kyle herself believes it. However, it has never been conclusively proven
Catwoman has had many nicknames in the past, some of them include: The Cat, Plundering Kitten, Princess of Plunder and Madame Moderne.
Selina's alias, Irena Dubrovna, was inspired by the name of the main character in the 1942 film Cat People.
