Che Grayson reveals how ‘Absolute Catwoman’ turns Selina Kyle into DC’s deadliest spy – AIPT
Plus, we talk cyberpunk espionage influences and why this rage-fueled take is especially dangerous.
There’s a moment in Absolute Catwoman when Selina Kyle makes her intentions perfectly, abundantly clear.
As we might expect with other “versions,” she’s not sneaking through Gotham alleyways looking for leftovers. She is not flirting her way through danger with nerves of steel. She is also not waiting for Batman to determine her orbit. Instead, this Selina walks into a room already knowing that she’s the smartest person there, armed with gadgets worthy of Ethan Hunt, enough rage to fuel a revolution, and the kind of confidence only someone who clawed their way out of hell could possess.
For co-writer Che Grayson, that reinvention starts with reframing why Selina steals in the first place.
“She learned to be a thief because she understood all of the things, all of the resources that are taken from her and people like her,” Grayson said in a recent all. “And so it’s a complete reframing of why Selina Kyle and Catwoman does what she does.”
Absolute Catwoman #1 — launching June 10 from DC — reunites Grayson with co-writer Scott Snyder. Meanwhile, artist Bengal brings Nick Dragotta’s original Absolute Universe design into motion with sleek cyberpunk energy and globe-trotting espionage thrills. The series spins Selina out of Gotham and into a dangerous international conspiracy, where high-tech heists, buried trauma, and a fractured past collide.
The setup appears closer to Mission: Impossible, The Matrix, and The Girl with Dragon Tattoo than a traditional Batman comic, though Grayson says that’s exactly the point. That said, Che made it clear that Absolute Catwoman is the Batman of this universe.
“If she’s the Batman of this world, if she has the wealth and all the gear and all the gadgets, what does that look like?,” Grayson said. “When you think about an Ethan Hunt or a Batman, none of them look like her.”
That very question became the backbone of the book. In the Absolute Universe, Selina isn’t simply surviving Gotham; she escaped it. At 25 years old, she’s already one of the most accomplished thieves on the planet, stealing secrets instead of diamonds while attempting to leave behind the pain of her upbringing in Gotham’s foster system. She’s bought herself a villa in Sicily. She wants peace, isolation, and, ultimately, freedom. Naturally, the comics have other plans.
“She wants to be free. She wants to be untouchable,” Grayson said. “It seems like she’s always almost there.”
Part of what makes this Selina feel so distinct is Grayson’s decision to root the character in an Afro-Cuban identity, something she says was central to her original pitch to Snyder. Rather than relying on the traditional superhero shorthand of dead parents and endless tragedy, Grayson wanted Selina’s deepest wound to come from disconnection itself.
“The thing that she’s dealing with is this idea of being separated from this home,” Grayson said. “If you’re torn from a place, who are you?”
In Grayson’s version, Selina has almost no connection to the place she came from before Gotham consumed her entirely. That absence informs everything about how she moves through the world. She isn’t driven by nostalgia or legacy — she’s driven by survival and self-invention.
“There is nothing for her in the past,” Grayson said. “The second you accept that you can’t get those answers, you have to decide to take control of who you become.”
That emotional foundation also fuels one of the more surprising ideas in the Absolute line so far: the Calicoes, a crew of cat burglars tied directly to Selina’s past. Grayson describes them as this universe’s answer to the Bat-Family or Birds of Prey, though with considerably more anger and emotional baggage attached.
“We’ve never really seen a crew that revolves around her,” Grayson said. “This idea that instead of a Bat-Family, there could be a cat family is something that I really wanted to play with.”
That focus on identity, found family, and emotional survival comes naturally to Grayson, whose background stretches far beyond comics. Before co-writing one of DC’s biggest launches of the summer, she built a career as a filmmaker, TED speaker, and storyteller fascinated by horror, trauma, and transformation. Her original comic Rigamo — about a young Black girl whose tears resurrect the dead — emerged from those same themes.
Grayson studied filmmaking under Spike Lee and Kasi Lemmons at NYU, developed genre projects rooted in emotional conflict, and spent years refining stories focused less on spectacle and more on the people surviving it.
That shared focus on character is exactly why Snyder became an ideal collaborator for Graysin.
“What he has to say is always so clear,” Grayson said. “There’s always going to be a heart. There’s always going to be a theme. He’s not going to leave you with just, ‘That was the most awesome thing I’ve seen.’ He’s going to leave you with, ‘How do I feel about what these characters went through?’”
The collaboration also helped Grayson rebalance how she handled superhero comics structurally. Coming from filmmaking and creator-owned work, she admits that her early scripts tend to cram “18 things” into 22 pages. Snyder encouraged her to slow down, let moments breathe, and to really trust readers to sit with the characters instead of rushing towards the next explosion.
Still, the explosions are there. So are motorcycles, spy gadgets, globe-spanning conspiracies, and action sequences. Bengal reportedly attacks the story with near-total creative freedom. Grayson repeatedly returns to the idea that each Absolute title occupies its own genre lane. Absolute Wonder Woman leans heavily into the mythical and supernatural, and Absolute Green Arrow channels some gripping horror. Absolute Catwoman lives firmly in sleek espionage thrillers and cyberpunk noir.
“You’re going to get little bits of cyberpunk, little bits of thriller espionage, and that globe-trotting feel,” Grayson said.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Grayson’s approach is what she intentionally avoids. Catwoman’s sexuality has long been central to the character across comics, film, and television. However, Grayson wanted this version’s power to stem from somewhere else entirely.
“My biggest influence for her was Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Grayson said. “There’s a way that you can be sexy and angry.”
This Selina doesn’t seduce people because she rarely needs such access. She’s too capable, too armed, and too furious to rely on manipulation. Her anger becomes the defining force behind the character, fueled by systemic inequality, displacement, and years spent building herself into someone truly untouchable.
And when the past finally catches up to her, Grayson promises Absolute Catwoman is prepared to go bigger, stranger, and more dangerous than readers expect.
“We want to take it all the way,” Grayson said. “The kind of people she’s rubbing elbows with are so powerful, they’re the ones you don’t even know about.”
Absolute Catwoman #1 arrives in comic shops on June 10.
