She's going to Bat for the other team: DC superheroine gets updated as a lesbian socialite who fights crime
Dave McGinn, National Post Published: Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Batwoman has spent the last 50 years in both Batman's shadow and the closet. That changes today with her reappearance in the pages of DC Comics, this time as a lipstick lesbian.
Gone is the utility purse, and new to the character are a skin-tight black suit and an on-again, off-again relationship with former police detective Renee Montoya.
"When you're looking at Batman and the world of Batman, [they're] characters that were introduced nearly 70 years ago," says DC executive editor Dan DiDio. "We've always got to find new ways to freshen them, give them new points of view, and expand their world and, more importantly, grow with the world around us."
Introducing such a high-profile gay character may help the DC universe resemble the world we live in, but mainstream comics have historically had an uneasy relationship to homosexuality. Any mention of the perceived gay subtext of the Batman-Robin relationship will send many fans into a tizzy. Costumed heroes, traditionally, have been hetero.
But DC and Marvel, its rival, have slowly begun to embrace gay crime fighters. In 2001, Marvel introduced a Japanese lesbian superhero in the series Exiles. Recently, Green Arrow legalized gay marriage during his tenure as Mayor of Star City. The new Batwoman, though, is by far the biggest blip on the comic gaydar.
Batwoman first appeared in 1956, though she seemed to spend as much time doting over her niece, Bat-Girl, as she did chasing bad guys in her full-body yellow suit. And, up until she was killed by the League of Assassins and the Bronze Tiger in 1979, she always harboured a romantic interest in Batman. Not at any more. Kate Kane, the new Batwoman, is a bold, tough-talking, redheaded lesbian socialite by night, and "a crime fighter by later in the night," according to DC.
"The fact that she's a lesbian is not something that plays so heavily because this is surely a superhero comic," says DiDio. "But this is an aspect of her personality that hopefully enriches her background and gives us more sense of story as we tell it in the future."
DC's announcement that Batwoman would be a lesbian has drawn fire from some conservative groups in the United States. The Culture and Family Institute and the American Family Association both posted complaints on their Web sites.
"You have very vocal and very passionate opinions on both sides of the fence," says DiDio. "I'd like for everybody to hold their opinions until they see the character in the story and how the story is told before rushing to judgment."
Batwoman appears today in 52, an epic new series that debuted in May and will publish weekly for an entire year, telling the history of the DC universe. The series, focusing on every character in that universe, is a chance for the comics giant to diversify a pantheon of characters who have traditionally been white guys in super suits, says DiDio.
Besides the new Batwoman, DC has introduced a Hispanic character who has taken over as the new Blue Beetle, a new Asian character known as The Atom and has plans to introduce more such characters as the series progresses.
"The issue of diversity is important to 52 because you can't tell the history of a world or a universe and just have the characters looking and acting in the same fashion," says DiDio. "You really have to show that this is a multicultural world. It's important to tell stories like that. We need to grow and expand with what the world really is today."
