US: Batwoman writers abandon DC Comics after lesbian superhero’s wedding is ‘prohibited’
Two writers for DC Comics’ Batwoman have declared they are abandoning their publisher after finding out the lesbian superhero’s marriage, first revealed in February, is to be “prohibited” as a storyline.
In a blog post co-authors J.H Williams and W. Haden Blackman said that they were exiting DC in December claiming they had been asked to “alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines that we feel compromise the character and the series”.
The co-writers say they have been told at last minute by DC to change several longstanding story arcs including “most crushingly” showing Kate and her girlfriend Maggie getting married.
In February, the comic seemed to make history as Kate Kane (Batwoman) proposed to her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer. This came amidst controversy surrounding the publisher’s decision to hire a writer with anti-gay views to write for another title.
Williams and Blackman wrote: “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.”
Last year, after it was revealed that a major character of DC Comics would come out as gay, lesbian or bisexual, one of the company’s oldest characters, Green Lantern, was reintroduced as a gay man.
Marvel‘s Northstar, the first openly gay hero, tied the knot with his boyfriend Kyle Jinadu in an issue of ‘Astonishing X-Men’, last year, and recently the creators of Judge Dredd suggested that he could be gay.
