DC Comics has just released a Catwoman one-shot comic meant to satirize the American presidential election. While Penguin stands in for Donald Trump, new character Constance Hill, aka Jamie Allen, is sort of Hillary Clinton’s Gothamite avatar. While a Trumpy Penguin says things like “It’s like the only thing she has going for her is being woman. Sad!” and promises to build a wall around Gotham, Constance Hill is a murderer. Both candidates run for Gotham’s mayoral seat, and somehow everyone loses.
The comics’s Canadian co-author, Meredith Finch, says Catwoman: Election Year is her best attempt at telling a neutral political story. “The characters themselves are not neutral characters,” Finch tells Inverse. “Nobody could call your election a neutral election. The candidates have these large personalities, so you easily get drawn into who they are, and we were easily able to incorporate a lot of Trump into Penguin.” Finch admits that this particular iteration of Penguin borrows a great deal from Trump’s personality, but she calls Constance Hill a more original character. In truth, there’s not a ton tying Hill to Hillary, aside from the fact that Catwoman can’t shake the idea that she’s shady, or “crooked.”
However, it appears DC’s attempt at satire functions a bit more like a loose interpretation. “I would certainly hope I was able to draw effective parallels between the candidates in the story with the players in the actual election right now,” Finch says.
Although the comic’s storyline is certainly intriguing — Catwoman must return to her childhood in order to figure out what rubs her the wrong way about candidate Hill — it doesn’t actually comment on the election it uses as a loose frame. Election Year feels like an opportunistic shot at a timely comic, which is a fine prospect on paper, but it doesn’t really go anywhere with the tools it’s given. Luckily, Finch and her co-author Mark Russell say they’re hoping this isn’t the last readers will see of Catwoman’s in DC’s new comics, and that certainly seems like it’ll be the case.
