As comic-book message boards buzz over this weekend’s revelation that DC Comics’ new Batwoman is a lesbian, U.K.’s Metro turns to a gay and lesbian advocacy group, which says the publisher’s move is more about pandering to male fantasies than it is diversity.
“Most pre-adolescent children neither know nor care about the sexuality of their comic book heroes,” Outrage spokesman David Allison said. “And it is well known that lots of men get turned on by the idea of lesbians.”
However, DC’s Dan DiDio told Newsarama this weekend that it’s not about titillation, but character and storytelling: “If the character is gay, she might have had different levels of challenges in her life. The fact that she conceals her own sexuality to some of the people around her and to her own family is going to be a bit of a story, so there are going to be secrets within secrets. You’ll also find more and more about who she is as the story is told, and see how it plays against her lifestyle.”
Kathy Kane originally was introduced as Batwoman in Detective Comics in 1956, and appeared as an occasional guest star until 1964, when much of the extended “Bat Family” was weeded from the titles. She carried a “utility purse,” and used charm-bracelet handcuffs and an expanding hairnet.
The new Kathy Kane, who will debut in a July issue of 52, is a lesbian socialite with a connection to former Gotham City police detective Renee Montoya. Her traditional yellow-and-red Batwoman outfit has been traded in for a black-and-red costume designed by artist Alex Ross. The “utility purse,” too, is gone, replaced with a utility belt.
Update: A spokesman for the gay group Stonewall sees the new Batwoman differently:
“I think anything that promotes diversity is a very good thing and we welcome the introduction of characters like this,” he told The Independent. “A lot of lesbians and gay men are fans of these comics and it is good that the publishers are beginning to recognise that, and feature people who reflect the society we live in. Lesbians and gay men may also identify with the genre because comic book characters are often misfits who are left on the margins of society and have to fight to be accepted.”
June 8th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
[...] Because I didn’t join the team until a while after they moved to this site, I don’t have any “Just Past the Horizon” from one year ago. However, last year about this time was a busy period for Melissa and I at When Fangirls Attack. I would say that last Spring was the time the “Feminist Comics Blogosphere” was fully realized as a community in its own right. Its really all Mr. Larsen’s fault. Starting with his assertation that the appeal of Power Girl and Phantom Lady was entirely contained within their flimsy bras, he wrote three columns that managed to collectively enrage 90% of the female population of the online comics community. To be fair, Larsen is an artist and not a wordsmith, but the fact that he’s a high-ranking bigwig at the 4th largest publisher and spewing such sexism was more than many readers could bear. There is much ranting and raging all through the month of May, as each column written by Larsen that mentions the topic manages to dig him a deeper hole. Towards the end of May, X-3 hit the theaters to the horror of feminist Jean Grey, Rogue, Storm, and Magneto fans. Two days later we learned about the sensational character find of 2006: Lesbian Batwoman! Kevin followed her trail across the mainstream global media right here as I followed her across the blogosphere for WFA. On the heels of Lesbian Batwoman, Girl-Wonder.org (which had been organizing through the entire Larsen debacle) officially launched their plan for fangirl world domination, Step One of which involved burying the Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics in a swarm of fan letters. We can probably gather that he was very surprised to learn that Stephanie Brown, the object of these letters, had so many fans. [...]