The Real Gotham After Dark

Let’s say nearly everything you’ve ever read in a comic book is wrong.  The identities are correct:  Bruce Wayne is Batman, Selina Kyle is Catwoman.  They live in Gotham City.  There is a Wayne Manor, a Batcave and Batsignal, etc.  But the rest is all exaggeration, distortion, and often the outright lies of a tabloid called The Gotham Post, otherwise known as DC Comics.

Cat-Tales tells the truth behind that fiction, revealing characters that are more complex and fully-human than anyone thought possible.  Heart-stopping romance, side-splitting humor, and poignantly understated tragedy, it’s all here: the man inside the Bat, the woman within the Cat, the life between the panels, the truth behind the masks.

Read the Newest Tale

Gifts: Bruce Wayne's Bachelor Party, Selina Kyle's Bachelorette, and it turns out there are actually worse wedding gifts than Booster Gold's.

Latest additions

Pearl: The World's Greatest Detective marrying the World's Greatest Thief, there are only a few ways this story could go. All of them involve a heist. Now an ebook and print quality PDF, available for download.

Batman proposes to Catwoman in Wayne Rises, third part of the trilogy at the end of Book 6 that changed everything.

In between a movie about Sherlock Holmes that comes staggering close to Gotham’s Dark Knight to a movie inspired by Catwoman that doesn’t come within a mile of the real thing, a war looms. From the darkest shadows where the Batman lurks to the glittering world of Bruce Wayne, Gotham is besieged as never before, a relationship evolves—and an old foe returns... Book 6 collects the Cat-Tales from Don't Fear the Joker through Wayne Rises.  Ebook and print quality PDF.

The Knight of the Mirrors: Batman, Superman... a friendship, a partnership... a bad idea for a movie pitting them against each other... 'Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.' ~Don Quixote

Now an e-book.  Batman is Matches Malone, gone deep undercover with the Westies of Hell's Kitchen in Cat-Tales 70: The Neighborhood.

Cat-Tales: Audio Books Selina had no 'origin' in the sense of one defining moment that made her Catwoman... but she hadn't sprung out of the sidewalk at age 23 wearing a catsuit.  "It's a Catwoman origin that finally makes sense" Cat-Tale: Cattitude, by Chris Dee, read by Caroline Sharp.

Read the Best Of...

Not everyone who likes Batman has a keen interest in comic books. While there is plenty for a general audience to enjoy in the first two Cat-Tales collections, there are more references to comic storylines than will be found in the later stories, along with nods to and inversions of related fan fiction clichés and tropes. A general reader might therefore want to begin later and skip around.  To help out, we've assembled some Reader and Author picks for best comedies, dramas, tales focusing on Joker, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, etc., as well as the favorite Bruce/Selina moments in a series build around the pairing.

For newcomers who want a smattering of everything and don't care so much about going in chronological order, click here for The Best of Cat-Tales.

Starting at the Beginning:

The Tales are naturally offered as they were written, on the main story page.  Individual tales can be read online, or downloaded in print-quality PDFs or ebook formats.  They're also compiled into five books, available in the same formats.  The gateway is right here:  Welcome to the real Gotham After Dark.  

-Chris Dee