As her previous series ended, Catwoman was more dead than alive, unconscious beneath the streets of Gotham City, with virtually all of the DCU's residents who cared thinking she was dead, killed when she played too close to the fire one time too many.

But not everyone believes the story. Hired by the mayor of Gotham to find Catwoman, Slam Bradley has sifted through clues in the backup pages of Detective Comics #759-#762, and his search has finally paid off. Selina Kyle is back, and she starts a new series in November with Ed Brubaker handling the writing.

And things are going to be different.

According to Brubaker, the first four issues of the new series deal with Selina figuring out who she is, where she fits in the grand scheme of things, and what she should be doing now. "When I was approached to do the book and agreed to do it, I had this vague concept of making her not just�"I'd read issues here and there and was following the current run that was happening at the time, but I just never thought that they�d exploited the character in a way that was interesting to me," Brubaker said. "I felt that anytime anyone used her for a guest appearance or whatever, she was just some sort of bimbo who wanted to make out with Batman and steal things. She was like some klepto or something, like she couldn�t control herself - she's on the run but stops to look though the newspaper and find out some gems are coming though town and has to steal them. How dumb is this girl? You�re hiding out but that the same time saying, 'I gotta steal these things�I just gotta have �em!�

While Brubaker admits he hadn't read much of the series' run when he was coming up with his view of Catwoman, he was at the same time reading a series of detective novels by Lawrence Block, starring the character Matthew Scudder. "Because his best friends end up being guys who sort of live on the other side of the law, about halfway through the series, Scudder starts being a private eye who works for criminals," Brubaker said. "I thought that was pretty cool. I was looking at that and I was thinking about Catwoman, and one thing led to another."

Brubaker came up with a story for the series that needed a prologue, something that explained how she went from the character she was as seen in the first series to her redefined role in his new series. While ultimately, the Detective Comics backup slot provided the perfect location for Brubaker's prologue storyline, putting Slam Bradley on the trail of the missing Selina Kyle, the mechanism for Selina's change came from holding Catwoman's down and dirty post-Crisis origin against her current incarnation.

"If you look at the Catwoman origin from Batman: Year One, she�s either a prostitute or some sort of S&M dominatrix or something," Brubaker said. "And I could never tell what ended up being the DC canonical version - they always left it kind of vague - she was somehow living on the streets and making a living illegally. She was that type of person. I figured I could take her back to those roots, to some degree - what if she ended up being the person who sort of defends the people who live on the other side of the law, who are maybe criminals, but who aren�t necessarily bad people because of it? That was the generic idea that I had, and then I started thinking about everything she has been through for like the last three years of the series and I thought everything that she�s done perfectly leads up to some sort of a breakdown/re-evaluating kind of a moment, which would be a great way to redefine the character and take it in another direction."

Originally though, Catwoman was set to continue plugging along, with Brubaker and penciler Darwyn Cooke coming on as the new creative team. Until DC editorial caught wind of what Brubaker was cooking.

"When I turned in the script of for the first issue and Darwyn drew it, everyone at DC was sort of like, 'Whoa, this is so totally different, we should relaunch the book,'" Brubaker said. "So they hired John Francis Moore to write the last three or four issues of the series to wrap up the previous storyline and lead into this, and then we ended up doing the Slam Bradley thing to go-in-between the old run and runt he new run. The Slam Bradley thing ended up being the place where I could figure out what I wanted to keep as part of continuity and what I wanted sort of jettison. Basically, it kind of ends up that everything that Slam Bradley uncovers is something that really is happening, and anything else is � I�m not saying it didn�t happen � but I�m not going to refer to it.

"Jeph Loeb said the same thing in an interview a few weeks ago about Daredevil: Yellow - just because he doesn�t mention a character in his story doesn�t mean he�s not there necessarily. That�s the same way I'm looking at Catwoman, I�m creating a whole new storyline for her using characters in the comics that have been around the DCU and in some ways connected to Catwoman, but at the same time I�m doing kind of a brand new thing."

So far, Brubaker has found the response to the Slam Bradley transitional story to be a mixed bag. Most fans, according to Brubaker are blown away by Cooke's artwork; however, there are a few who want former Catwoman penciler Jim Balent to return. Not gonna happen though. "I think Darwyn's only one of the five best guys working on comics," Brubaker said. "So people who don�t like this guy�s artwork are on crack�[laughs] but that�s their prerogative. And if people are wondering about the look, Darwyn is using this really gritty inking style with Slam Bradley because it�s about this private eye story, but the style in which Catwoman will be inked [by Mike Allred] will be very slick and commercial."

While his take on the series may be a "brand new thing," Brubaker said his Catwoman will still be familiar to long time fans. "It will still be Selina Kyle and everything that came before kind of influences who she is now, but I was thinking about it and if DC has got a 12 year timeline essentially and they�re always cramming everything to then12 year timeline, then she�s been Catwoman for 12 years and after 12 years as a cat-burglar, she�s probably got more then enough money stashed away in safety deposit boxes all over the country, and in Switzerland, so she really doesn�t need to any more money. If she feels like she wants to deprive someone else of money, I can see her wanting to steal money, but really I stating thinking of her more of like a Robin Hood character."

Selina's�moderating of her criminal activities won't automatically put her into Batman's good graces, however. "The main difference between Catwoman and Batman in my series is that Batman looks at the world in black and white," Brubaker explained. "Things that exist on the opposite side of the law are wrong, and things on the right side of the law are right. Catwoman lives in the grey space between right and wrong, where women may be prostitutes but they might not necessarily be bad women, but they've been forced into that life by their circumstances. And little kids who run drugs for these dealers who live around the corner may be good kids that really just want to play basketball, but this is how they can make money."

All of the above will be sifted together in the series' first four issues. "It�s all about Selina trying to figure out who she wants to be and realizing she needs to be Catwoman but at the same time figuring out what that means now if all this other stuff that has happened to her over the last couple of years made her into something she didn�t want to be anymore," Brubaker said. "In the story she comes across some heinous crimes the police are basically overlooking. She begins to try and solve them, and in doing so begins to find out who she is."

Given their intertwined history, Batman will be appearing in the first couple of issues of Catwoman, along with some other Gotham City regulars. "I�m using Dr. Leslie Thompkins as a supporting character, and brining back some supporting characters from Year One and the early issues of Catwoman," Brubaker said. "But the good thing about being as far ahead as we are and doing the relaunch is we�re kind of getting away with a little of what Kevin Smith is doing, where we don�t have to worry about the continuity of all these other books., we�re keeping it to itself basically. I�m not doing anything that will contradict anyone else�s continuity, like during the "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive" story, I won�t have her hanging around with Bruce Wayne (laughs) but I�m not doing anything that you need to be reading any of the other books to follow."

�That�s another thing that�s totally different about doing this book than say, Batman," Brubaker said. "It�s much more a woman-oriented comic. The man three characters in the first four issues all women, and in some ways it's sort of like a mainstream version of an alternative comic - very much character-driven, with very strong female characters, but with really amazing artwork and intelligent action actually. I�m pretty pleased with it and I can�t wait until, it starts coming out and people can actually see what�s we�ve been doing this whole time."