Authors J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman announced in a blog post Wednesday they will be leaving DC’s Batwoman series citing creative differences with DC. The move was a response to several “eleventh hour” changes forced upon them which necessitated drastic changes to the planned story arc.
Batwoman was originally introduced in Detective Comics 233 (1956) as a love interest for Batman. Her purpose was to combat allegations of Batman’s homosexuality. From the early days of the character human sexuality has been a big influence and it continues today.
The character was reintroduced in 2006 as a lesbian character in an attempt to diversify DC’s characters and better connect with modern readers. DC’s Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Dan DiDio stated then:
“It was from conversations we’ve had for expanding the DC Universe, for looking at levels of diversity. We wanted to have a cast that is much more reflective of today’s society and even today’s fanbase. One of the reasons we made her gay is that, again when you have the Batman Family—a series of characters that aren’t super-powered and inhabit the same circle and the same city—you really want to have a point of difference. It was really important to me to make sure every character felt unique”
This was the beginning of what would be a groundbreaking turn for the character culminating in issue #17 of Batwoman released in February 2013 wherein she and her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer become engaged. This would have marked the first ever lesbian wedding in mainstream comics.
Enter again DC.
Williams and Blackman wrote on their blog:
in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series. We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end.
We’ve always understood that, as much as we love the character, Batwoman ultimately belongs to DC. However, the eleventh-hour nature of these changes left us frustrated and angry — because they prevent us from telling the best stories we can. So, after a lot of soul-searching, we’ve decided to leave the book after Issue 26.
Williams also later remarked on Twitter:
“Not wanting to be inflammatory, only factual- we fought to get them engaged, but were told emphatically no marriage can result.”
“But must clarify- was never put to us as being anti-gay marriage.”
I can only speculate as to the reasoning for DC’s move. Williams stated it was never put to them as being anti-gay but I’m not sure how else to interpret this decision.
Perhaps DC can shed some more light on the situation but they have yet to respond.