Saturday, February 14, 2009

Holy Bat Estrogen

I don't trust the return of Batwoman by DC Comics. I suspect that her character will be written as lesbian in order to titillate male audience members, rather than to introduce a woman who is not heterosexual. Additionally, this doesn't fit with Batwoman's historical story line at all - she is Batman's love interest. So did she ditch him and become a lesbian after things didn't work out in the happy Batfamily? Or is DC Comics retconning her past such that she meets Batman later and he wins her over?

Oh, I've heard she's Jewish too (per unconfirmed sources). What that has to do with anything in DC comic's mind I don't know, but aren't there enough comic book heroes around to be diverse with that they don't have to cram all the diversity into one resurrected character? Next we know, Batwoman will probably end up being the descendant of Chinese railway workers from San Francisco and escaped African-American slaves from Ontario too. On her father's side.

It would have made far more sense, from a literature perspective, for Batman to come out of the closet. And then we could make more sense out of this Robin sidekick thing too.

And if they want diversity, why not do more with Green Lantern? Heck, he could run for president. Unless that's been done before.

That said, I like the boots. Are those acrylic heels?

More Batwomany goodness:

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Yes she was retconned. Her character was wiped out during the Crisis on Infinite Earths series in the mid-80's. All the alternate Earths were merged into one, etc...

Then they un-spooled all of that by having a crazed Superboy punch through the dimensional barrier, bringing back the DC Multi-verse and retconns of several characters including Batwoman were born in 2006. It brought back Hal Jordan too. Then this year they did this crisis/new gods event supposedly killing Batman ( http://io9.com/5131349/finally-is-batman-rip-or-not ) And bringing back Barry Allen as the Flash after he died in 1985. They just need to write good stories, do some innovative, creative and web interactive comics and not create a doomsday story where "important characters will be killed" when everyone knows it's just a stunt.

You're right, it's silly and sexist, contrived and a bit naive on their part. Thank God, my nearly 13 yr old isn't into comics. I can just imagine him buying each issue, waiting for the girl on girl kiss! (which will just be scanned to a blog in about 5 mins of being released anyway!)LOL