JH Williams III and W. Hayden Blackman, the co-writers of DC Comics’ Batwoman series, have announced they are leaving the comic due to DC’s refusal to allow the character, the first lesbian superhero with her own solo title, to get married.
Writing on his personal blog, Williams broke the news this morning:
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 [Kane, Batwoman] and Maggie [Sawyer, her fiancée for the last six months] 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 later clarified that the prohibition on “ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married” did mean that the characters couldn’t get married at all, whether “shown” or not.
DC’s editorial decision does not seem to be based on opposition to same sex marriages specifically, but more on an policy against any character being married. Notoriously, the company split up Clark Kent and Lois Lane in their most recent relaunch of the Superman titles in 2011, following Marvel’s similar decision to break up Peter Parker and Mary-Jane Watson in 2007.
Nonetheless, it does seem like an attempt to have their cake and eat it: the company was happy to mop up praise when Batwoman proposed to her girlfriend in February, with coverage in the Huffington Post, and USA Today leading the pack. Those publications may not have been as eager to cover the news if they had known that DC had no plans to allow the storyline to actually come to fruition.
Williams’ and Blackman’s departure from Batwoman is only the latest in a string of high-profile exits from the company. James Robinson left Earth 2, his series about an alternate DC Comics universe which made headlines for introducing a gay Green Lantern, in May. Star artist Rob Liefeld had an extremely messy break-up with his employers last summer. Josh Fialkov quit two titles before he even started, new announced on the same day that Andy Diggle did the same thing with Action Comics. There have been so many stormy exits that a relatively lengthy timeline has been compiled detailing them all – and in nearly every case, the excuse is the same: editorial interference prevented creatives from doing their jobs.
But there’s one piece of good news for DC. Williams’ upcoming Sandman Overture series with Neil Gaiman is not affected by his exit from Batwoman. Those comics, so profitable they’re selling them twice, will make the company’s Autumn a happy one indeed.
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