Batwoman, alter ego Kate Kane, has never been my homegirl, in fact I don't think I've ever read a single issue of any title in which she made an appearance. I love Catwoman and always like a hot uppity bitch like Enchantress from Thor or Phoenix when she's not bogged down in Jean Grey's whining, but Batwoman just never hit my radar. But, she is a hot ginger, socialite, crimefighter and a big ole lez and so when push comes to shove I'm pretty sure I'm firmly planted on team Batwoman. And now Batwoman's creative team, writers J.H. Williams III and W Haden Blackman (sidebar, damn those are some fancy ass names), have announced they are leaving the title because of eleventh hour editorial decisions forced on them by DC. Editorial decisions and creative differences can mean a myriad of things, but in this case one issue jumps out in front of the others, see if you can spot it in this quote from William's and Blackman's joint statement.
"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."Refusing to let Kate and her girlfriend Maggie marry in the year 2013 seems outrageous as more and more states have shown their support for marriage equality. It suggest that either DC is homophobic or fears that the majority of its readership is and honestly I'm not sure which is worse. Comics have long since been a favored medium of the disenfranchised, the ridiculed, the rejects; we call comic fans nerds and geeks and depict them as slovenly Simpsons characters. Young people on the fringe are drawn to the medium because it depicts worlds where anything is possible, where intelligence is valued and where doing what's right defines whether or not a person is a hero or a villain. Because of this a lot of GLBT people feel an affinity for comics and showing such blatant discrimination towards their community is only going to come back and bite DC in the ass. DC has been loosing ground to Marvel for years, other than Christopher Nolan's outstanding Batman trilogy none of their films have come close to the success Marvel has had. Yet still Marvel allowed sometime X-man Northstar to wed his same-sex partner over a year ago. If DC has any hope of catching up with Marvel they need to first catch up with the majority of the country and approve same sex marriage. Just let Kate and Maggie get married, what's the worst that could happen? Besides, this is still the world of comics and we all know anytime anybody is happily married their spouse is just going to be killed by a super villain anyways.
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