Firstly let me begin this by saying I am a big fan of Batwoman, and everything that has happened with her since Greg Rucka’s run with the character. I think she is one of the best characters in DC’s stable, and it is great to finally have a bit more diversity within comics.
However I think this has been blown way out of proportion and people are forgetting some fundamentals here. This character will be a major DC character long after Blackman and Williams III have gotten bored and gone to play with different toys. DC knows full well how much readers hate to read new creative teams back track on the corners the character was previously painted into.
Now I actually think DC has let them get away with a lot on Batwoman:
1. They misrepresent Batman, a lot. He is defeated easily, or sidelined to quickly by Batwoman, he doesn’t appear the mastermind he is. Now this will come up a lot. Batman and Gotham city are pretty much the only character that makes DC any money. For them to allow a Bat title as much freedom as they have been given. The book never got involved or even referenced major Gotham events or DC events.
2. They were given access to pretty much do what they wanted with one of DC’s core trinity of character in Wonder Woman to great effect.
3. They were allowed to have crazy monstrous stories that had major lasting impact on Gotham as a fictional city, these weren’t minor things. This was massive.
4. They did have a lot of freedom to tweak Killer Croc.
I think that people need to remember that Gotham and bat characters are DC’s cash cows, they are what allow titles like Animal Man to be offbeat and crazy. They are what let a title like Dial H or I, Vampire to last as long as they did. So DC has said no don’t change killer croc to that extent, that makes him unusable for the rest of the line. Fair enough, he is a major Batman villain. The other edict, don’t get married. They have a core demographic, that demographic is not, generally, married. The New 52 was a massive risk, a giant gamble. They hit reset on everything, 2 years in, and the writers want to have a character settle down after what 6 months of in universe time. Max. The characters barely trust one another; Maggie definitely doesn’t fully understand Kate. It makes no story sense for them to get married. And whilst many of you may disagree that married characters are less relatable. It doesn’t matter, DC doesn’t want long form stories to be so drastically changed so early into the runs. Batwoman has infinite story telling potential, and I am certain one day they will get her hitched, maybe to Maggie maybe to a different woman, but for right now she isn’t even 25 issues old, and by marrying her off they are chopping away years and years of great storytelling potential. Don’t forget that a wedding issue would spike sales massively in the short term. DC is turning down an obvious top 10 selling issue to keep the story more long form. Whilst I do think they are very bad at handling the creative disagreements, and perhaps they should notify sooner, and perhaps have big meetings where certain things are listed as no-go areas. And they definitely need a better PR team, let’s not forget, once again, that these characters are DC’s forever, they are the creators until they get bored of the character.
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