In Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale, Catwoman’s backstory is revealed and it is harsh.

Catgirl Selina’s mom brings home a new abusive boyfriend every month until she settles on Dernell. Dernell is physically and emotionally abusive to both Selina and her mother. However, when his cruelity impacts another, Selina runs away from home.

I didn’t know before reading it but this book is published as a young adult comic. I don’t believe teen Catgirl is an example of a good role model. She is a thief. None of the events you would expect, like rape and trafficking, happen to Selina after she runs away from home. She is portrayed as happy living on the street. I know it’s a teenage fantasy but I wouldn’t let my daughter read it.

The backstory of why Selina has a connection to cats and Bruce Wayne is interesting to explore. Making Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale a 4 star read for adults. I’m looking forward to the next volume continuing Catgirl’s transformation into a full grown Catwoman.

Thanks to DC Ink and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This graphic novel gives a new perspective on the backstory of Selina Kyle (Catwoman). It reflects how she grows up in a home with an abusive stepfather until she runs away and finds a new group of friends. This story was well-written, and it was interesting to see it illustrated mainly in shades of blue. I would caution teenage readers that there are some difficult themes and language used in the book. It is an engaging read that offered greater depth to the backstories of the characters involved.

Selina’s mom has had a series of bad boyfriends that treat both of them like trash. After a tragic event pushes Selina out of the house, the future Catwoman finds herself on the street fending for herself. She creates a system where she only needs to count on her own wits and is content … or is she? Selina may have taken on the name Catwoman, but she has a lot to learn about herself and the people of Gotham. Will Selina find anyone she can trust?

Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale is a graphic novel with a new take on the origins of Catwoman. I was a little disheartened with some of the cuss words that were included, even though they weren’t excessive. There is a scene about self-harm and Myracle did a wonderful job ensuring that readers will understand that it is not to be glorified and asking for help should always be an option. Overall it was an enjoyable read, yet there just seems to be something missing. I hope that there will be more graphic novels about this strong female character so that I can learn how she overcomes her own demons.

This is an enjoyable graphic novel that tells the back story in a slightly different way than expected. I don't know a lot about the Catwoman of the comic series, but I have read a number of spin off books and each presents Selina's back story in a different way. There's always some romance brewing between Catwoman and Batman, and this book is no different, although they're in high school. I also found it interesting trying to figure out if any of the other characters featured will develop into other Gotham baddies, etc.

In this book, Selina has a strong personality which it comes through loud and clear. I'm not sure if she's confident in her skin so much as blustering her way through, given her many secrets. I do wish, though, that some of the secondary characters got a bit more page time, especially Briar Rose. But I assume this is the first volume as it ends on a bit of a cliff hanger.

Generally speaking, the story flows well and the characters are well developed. I found that it treated some pretty heavy subject matter in a way that recognized there may be a younger demographic picking up the book (Lauren Myracle would appeal to younger tweens as well as older) but without sugar coating it either. The illustrations are excellent and complement the story well. I would almost hazard they steal the show.

All in all, a great graphic novel and you don't have to like Catwoman or Batman to appreciate it.

This was an interesting look at Catwoman's young life (technically Catgirl in the TPB). It starts with her Mom at their home and some unsavory guys. Then she runs away, has some time on the streets and then meets some other street kids who have made a sorta found family.

Then she comes back into Bruce Wayne's orbit (they knew each other when they were little kids), not to mention she comes up against a horrible serial killer.

The story was both different than other Catwoman origins. I've read as well as being the same in an underlying way. And there was even a little Batman that seemed to be implied.

It was a fun TPB.

I received this book via Netgalley thanks to DC Entertainment.

Under the Moon details teh dark life of Selena Kyle. After dealing with abuse and poverty, Selena finds herself having to take care of herself.
I wasn't big on how the book was broken in small tiny sections. While there is a lot of ground to cover, nothing ever goes too deep. I don't feel we ever got to truly see her deal with her emotions just jumping from plot point to plot point. It did make me cry at one point though; I am a cat girl myself
Weirdly, enough, I had the opposite problem with Under teh Moon that I did with Mera: Tidebreaker. Whereas the romantic story there fit with the themes, Bruce's inclusion here did nothing. In fact, we are supposed to see Bruce as a nice guy, but he is anything but. He can't belittle someone around your friends and help them in private and have true feelings for them. Here, Bruce was just like everyone else and I did not root for her relationship with him.
I did like teh art as well as teh color scheme. It came that moonshadow cast that really went with teh title and teh material

Selina Kyle, the future Catwoman, is left homeless at age fifteen. Living on the streets of Gotham City is tough, and she has to struggle to survive. In a time of her life when she normally should be figuring out what kind of person she is, Selina also has to figure out how to achieve any of her dreams.

Lauren Myracle has written other novels with a young adult voice, and has reached the New York Times bestseller list. That experience really shows in this graphic novel. It's a darker kind of reimagining of Selina's origin, which has been done several times in comics and movie series. Isaac Goodhart's art is done in shades of black, white and blue, which lends itself fairly well to the story, and the dream/fantasy/story sequences in shades of purple pop out visually.

From the beginning, Selina lived a hard life. Her mother was a waitress with a string of boyfriends that never treated her or Selina well, and some are downright abusive. While she values her academics, her loyalty to her friends trumps that or sticking to the letter of the law. So once she actually begins to care about someone else, it hurts that much more when it's gone. Living on the streets gives her a feeling of agency that had been lost, even if it's difficult to do. By making friends with street kids, she learns parkour and finds a new family of sorts, but it's one that comes with its own challenges. Cats along the way have an affinity for her, trailing her through the streets even when she's not seeking them out.

This isn't a happy tale, and does bring up the hardships of being a street kid fairly realistically for a comic. As hard as her life was before, it's harder still without a consistent roof over her head, a way to shower or get clean clothes, how to get food or necessities. Selina refuses to give up, and holds to her independence throughout the story. If anything is a takeaway from this, it's that there will always be opportunities to do more, even if it's off the beaten path.

Selina Kyle is fiercer than she knows. For 15 years, she's put up with her mother's string of bad boyfriends, but when Dernell, her mom's current beau, proves crueler than the others, Selina reevaluates her place in her home. There's no way Selina and Dernell can live under the same roof, and since Dernell won't leave, Selina must.


This was not my favorite rendition of cat woman. This is probably based on a younger audience.

I liked this comic so much! Characters were so well developed, the writing and the story is so good, and I just can't get over the fact how nice Bruce is! I loved the pace of the comic as well. Artwork was nice, although I hated that everything was blue. But still, a really nice artwork. Also, I liked how diverse this is. Although they only appear on one scene, it's nice we have a person in a wheelchair, a queer person and a muslim girl. The comic also talks about some tough things like bullying, and hurting yourself, and what it means to be homeless. But it also have warm friendships. At the end, this is an amazing comic and I hope we will see more of Catgirl!

Catwoman has always been the Batman character that intrigued me most. We know so little about this epic character, so this Catwoman tale of a teenage pre-Batman Selina Kyle was a welcome read. Lauren Myracle writes Selina not as a teenaged version of uberclever Catwoman, but as a much more human young woman still reeling from the abusive home life she grew up in. This isn't an origin story in the usual sense-- don't expect to see Selina don the world's best known catsuit in this book. But does tell a story of how Selina's worldview came to be and how the (catnip?) seeds were planted. It's a much more character-oriented story than I expected and thanks to Myracle's writing exactly what I look for in a graphic novel.

Under the Moon is a retelling of Catwoman's origin, starting from well before she ever even dreamed of becoming the thief we all know her as. This origin story's purpose is to explain how Selina ended up growing into the woman who would become Catwoman.
This isn't the first retelling of it's kind, but they've been such a hit lately that I understand why they wanted to go forward and make a graphic novel focused on this beloved character.
Warnings: There is a lot of abuse in this graphic novel. Selina herself it one of the victims, along with her mother. There's also a really graphic animal death scene.
Under the Moon is the first time I've read a Catwoman origin story. I was surprised that they opted to go back so young, but when I stopped to think about it, it made sense. They were trying to explain how she became who she is today, and thus they needed to cover her most formative years of her life.
It all starts back when Selina was a little girl, but quickly speeds ahead to when she's fourteen. As a teenager, she's tired of her mother's abusive boyfriends. And understandably so. I honestly think that her home life alone was enough to justify her stepping out on her own. From there I could see her developing to the character we know her as.
There's more to the story than that, of course. I'll confess that I didn't love that she went to the same school as Bruce Wayne. That made very little sense in my mind. There's no way he went to a public school, and I don't see Selina affording a private school. So that broke the immersion a bit.
My other complaint would have to be what was done with the kitten. I completely understand what they were going for here, I really do. But I also think it was too much. I knew it was going to happen from the moment they introduced that little guy, and I just couldn't handle it. I personally had to skip over that, but it tainted the rest of the graphic novel for me. I just couldn't enjoy any of it after that.
I think that the core of this graphic novel did have some good points and concepts. There were just elements I didn't love about it. Maybe I was just being too sensitive though.
I would love to see more origin stories like this, all things considered. Just maybe with them being slightl

brief summary
A new take on Catwoman's early teenage years, appropriate for teen readers who can handle swearing, self-harm, abusive home lives, and dead cats.

full review
The thing about stories like this is you always know something awful's going to happen to a cat. And it does. But the story Myracle tells about young Selina Kyle is a very human one, kept to a non-super scale that makes it all the more believable since the main character is fourteen years old. The decision to make her fourteen seems a little odd, given how heavy some of the material covered in this story is, making it perhaps a bit too dark for the middle grade readers who would be the expected audience for a story with a fourteen-year-old protagonist, but perhaps it is setting up for further stories which would see Selina growing older.

I am not going to go into DC continuity or canon versus non-canon. As far as I'm concerned, this is a stand-alone work unless there are sequels produced in the same series, and unrelated to the greater body of the DC Universe, sort of like Smallville. I will say, however, that there were lots of hidden DC details which those familiar with the universe will recognize. These are buried in the writing and the background illustrations, so be on the lookout as you read.

The book's greatest strength is its artwork. Artist Isaac Goodhart uses tone to great effect, differentiating between past and present by switching between a cool maroon and a nocturnal navy. The cast he portrays have mobile facial expressions and dynamic poses, and even though the characters are not especially well fleshed out in text, the fine details of his artwork give readers deeper insight into their feelings and motivations. And also serious hair envy. As a bonus art detail: take note of the chapter headers.

Overall, this is a quick read, but the subject matter keeps the tone pretty serious. Selina's home life is deeply awful, and even knowing what was coming with her mother's boyfriend, I was horrified by the casual, unnecessary cruelty he inflicted on the people (and especially cats) around him. Even after Selina takes drastic steps which render her homeless, thieving for survival, this life is somehow made to seem preferable to life in her mother's household. I hope that is not a message young readers take to heart, because Selina's experience with homelessness seems unusually benign. The storyline with Rosie is wrapped up a little too quickly, but allows the volume to end on a hopeful note.

This was a delight. I love Selina Kyle and while she occupies in the gray area it was fun to follow along with her and she finds out if not who she is than what her limits are. Her story, as it always is, is sad and heartbreaking. Her relationship with Bruce and her found family are intriguing and definitely something that seems interesting with room to grow. I'm not sure the best age for this but teens seem to be the most likely.

Under the Moon is a part of the graphic novels that DC INK has been putting out that is mostly based on familiar DC characters as young adults. In this one, we get the story of young Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman. There are definitely some trigger warnings to take heed of before going into this one such as abuse, self-harm, animal abuse and bullying.

Selina doesn't have a good home life and it made me so mad to see a young catwoman have such a hard life. I hate reading books where these weak women just let some man abuse their children. LIKE!! What are you doing? That's basically what happens with Selina, her mom has a series of bad boyfriends, but then the worst of the bunch ends up staying and makes her life a living hell. Her mom even tries to make it seem like Selina is the one that is the problem. It made me so mad!

I like that we see Selina and Bruce have a little bit of a relationship, as it definitely plays into the lore between these two characters. Bruce is written as he should be, the intentioned rich guy just trying to help everyone, but he doesn't realize just how out of touch he is. Selina is so angry in this story, which I like, but also I found some of her stubbornness to be super frustrating. Mostly because there are people in her life that genuinely wanted to help her, but she just pushes them all away.

The artwork was kind of interesting here, as it wasn't done it full color, it was more done in shades of blue. I thought that was kind of cool because it really set the tone for the seedy underbelly of Gotham City.

The ending of the book seems to be so open-ended that I felt like I was left hanging a bit. I felt like it just kinda of ends with things not wrapped up. I still had a lot of questions in the end. I'm not sure if this means that there will be another book or not, but it felt a little incomplete to me.

"Under the Moon" stands out immediately because of its art direction: the shadowy blue hues set the tone for the stories that follow, and the action throughout the pages and panels move us through Selina's story at a quick pace. It's a tight story with no unnecessary fill, taking under an hour to read its 200 pages.
Selina herself draws you in early on as well. She doesn't pull punches in describing her life and its troubles from the start, which sets up a natural progression into her fight for survival through the rest of the tale. Bringing the classic antiheroine to the forefront at a younger age, Lauran Myracle and Isaac Goodhart lead us through Catgirl's story with skill. The writer and artist can't make us agree with every decision, but they help you understand.
My favorite parts of the story were when Selina found unexpected allies. Her character shines as the loner, too, but the heart of the story lies with the rare glimpses of who Selina is at her best: talented, confident, and not just in the game for herself.
My main criticism for the book is a muddled audience. Selina Kyle's young age betrays the violence and other mature subjects that the story contains. This book is better suited for an older teen or adult audience because of some themes, to which I caution those uncomfortable with self-harm and abuse.

I read this twice and just did not like it. I wanted to very much. However, not even the awesome amount of cats could redeem this story for me.

So over all I really enjoyed the book. Was it the bets thing in the book universe? No. Was it the worst? Nope. So I am gonna give it a solid 3 stars. I felt like I could relate to Selina on some aspects of her life. Yes things were bad in her life but it is what made her who she is. Trigger warnings for physical and mental abuse along with animal abuse. Also not ment for children as this book does use the words penis, virgin, and dick.
Thank you Netgalley and publishers for allowing me to read and review this book.

Illustrated beautifully by Isaac Goodhart, and written by Myracle, this graphic novel began for me in a disappointing way. Retreaded origin stories for super heroes/villains are so five volumes ago and are so common these days that they're tedious to say the least, but before I could become completely disllusioned with a world where robotic reboots are more common than original stories, this one turned around and drew me in. The characters were realistic and realistically drawn, and the main character wasn't any guy's simpering plaything. She didn't need a guy to validate her, which was a refreshing and welcome change.

At fifteen, Selina Kyle makes a deliberate choice to quit both her home and school, and live on the street, having come to the end of her tether with her single mom's endless parade of vile boyfriends. To steal a line from a popular movie, anyone who's anyone knows who she is: Selina Kyle is the girl who will become Catwoman. I was looking for some serious payback with that last boyfiend which I'm sorry to report never came, but maybe volume 2 will take care of that? One can but hope!

It's not long before Selena meets a criminal element, but these guys (and a girl) - who all have stories of their own - are not your usual gang-bangers or drug pushers. They're pretty much in the same boat that Selina is, and once she begins training in Parkour with one of them whom she meets by chance, she soon starts hanging with them, but is never really one of them. This story has depth and feeling and is very engaging. This is the kind of origin story I can enjoy, despite my weariness with such stories, and it made me want to read the next volume, like, now!

The only sour note it struck for me was the high school story - but I'm not a big fan of high school stories which are almost (but not quite) uniformly cookie-cutter tedious. Selena lives with her lower-class single mom. Buce Wayne is the orphaned child of a billionnaire. Yet they've known each other from childhood because they attended the same schools together? How is that possible? I'm sorry but it didn't work, and no explantion was even attempted to explain how it might. The Gotham TV show rooted in DC Comics' Batman world tells a much more plausible story of how these two people from such different worlds came to meet.

That failure aside though, this story was different, entertaining, inventive, and enjoyable. I commend it as a worthy read, and I'm very much looking forward to volume 2!

REVIEW WILL BE POSTED ON GOODREADS and BLOG ON PUBLICATION DAY.
This is the REVIEW that will be posted.

What a beautiful graphic novel. So visually appealing, I just love having it on my shelf. CatWoman has been one of my most beloved DC characters since I was a little girl. I couldn't wait to get my hands on this when I read about it a while back. This book has multiple trigger warnings which I will list below, but for now, lets just talk about this book.

My emotions were at stake while reading the beginning of this. To me, and I hope not to much of you, this was so relatable. I grew up with a mother who was an alcoholic. She had many different boyfriends, and yes some of them were abusive. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and my mother did nothing. It was bringing up some old memories of mine but this is a story so I just reminded myself of that. Selina Kyle is only 14, but she seems much older in this novel with her wits, but it is marketed for 13-17 year old teens. Selina Kyle walks away from her abusive home, she becomes homeless, and she finds herself with a group of other homeless kids near her age. They essentially become her new family.

I know some reviews have knocked this book for being too vulgar, abusive, animal harm, what-have-you. But here's the deal: She is a teenager who is in a very very very difficult position, and pulls herself out of it to do what is best for her. I can't remember how many times I wanted to run away from my mothers house growing up. I was fortunate enough to have my dad around, but again, that's not so relevant to THIS story. These unfortunate happenings show the true character of Selina Kyle. It gives the reader the sense of who she is, how strong she is, and what she has overcome to get to the point she is at.

And let me just say, I love how this book does not sexualize Selina's character. Yes there is a part in the book where she helps out her gay friend who is being bullied, but you will have to read it to understand it, because I truly don't want to spoil these characters for you.

I won't give away any more details about the book because I truly don't want take away from your reading experience if you decide to read this. Tragedies happen to young kids, teenagers, young adults, and so I think it's important to show books where these things happen, and yet the character can rise from them. Make something of themselves. Do you know what I mean?

Trigger Warnings:
Parental Abuse
Alcohol abuse
Animal abuse
Self harm
Homelessness
Depression
Bullying

Under the Moon has a very diverse set of casted characters. LGBTQ friendly, and so much more. This book is a very important graphic novel for it's age group as long as is it read respectively and not to be taken so seriously.

Please do not ever condone to self harm. If you are in a terrible home situation SEEK HELP. talk to someone. A friend, a teacher, a friend's parent, someone. There is help. You all know my page is a judge-free zone, so go forth and blow up the comments if you need to. Click my CONTACT tab and shoot me a message if you need to. Please seek help and talk to someone if you need to. I truly can't express this importance.

Much love to you all,
DauntlessReading

I have known about Lauren Myracle for a number of years. I sold lots of her books when I was managing Waldenbooks stores in the Seattle area, but alas had not yet read any of her work. I always love finding books for younger readers that I'm encouraging to read. Most of the time, all they need is something to pique their interest. Then the magic of good writing takes over. Myracle provides that kind of reading with this title. Now I want to read more of her work, so I can pass on recommendations to younger readers.