Batwoman: Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''"It's a '''good''' hit. I feel the blood filling my mouth. Somewhere along the line, someone taught her to '''throw''' a '''punch.'''"''|Renee Montoya, ''[[52]]'', Week 7}}

The original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, was a character introduced to the DCU in 1956 to serve as a love interest for Bruce Wayne, [[Gay Panic|who really was being accused by some people of being gay]]. The character first appeared in ''Detective Comics'' #233 (July, 1956). She was created by writer Edmond Hamilton, and artist Sheldon Moldoff. She lasted for about a decade, but was dropped (Along with the first [[Characters/Batgirl|Bat-Girl]], her niece Betty Kane) in 1964 in an attempt to prune down the Bat-Family, which was overly crowded with characters and had acquired a bit too much camp during [[The Interregnum]]. There was a half-hearted attempt to revive the character during the [[Bronze Age]], but this came to an abrupt end when Kathy Kane was [[Killed Off for Real]] by Ra's Al Ghul's League of Assassins in ''Detective Comics'' #485 (August, 1979).

 

 

[[Post-Crisis]] continuity denied that Kathy Kane had ever been Batwoman. Apart from an [[In Name Only]] inclusion in ''[[Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman]]'' and a few other cameos over the years, Batwoman was largely absent for several decades and only returned to the comics themselves in ''[[52]]'', a weekly series started in 2006. The character had a cameo in issue #7 (June, 2006) and was fully introduced in subsequent issues. This Batwoman, Katherine "Kate" Kane, [[Continuity Reboot|was introduced as a love interest and past girlfriend of Renee Montoya]], one of the main characters of the series. [[Hollywood Hype Machine|Touted as the highest-profile gay superhero in the DCU]], she drifted from comic to comic after her original appearance until being cast as the frontrunner for ''[[Detective Comics]]'' in 2009 with [[The Question]] (none other than Renee herself by this point) serving as the second feature. She was replaced as the frontrunner by Batman at the conclusion of her arc and received a self-titled solo series to continue her story, with a oneshot issue #0 in November 2010, but her series suffered more than one delay and eventually launched as part of the [[DC Universe]]'s [[New 52]] series of #1s in September 2011.

 

Unrelated to the [[Mystery Science Theater 3000]] fodder ''[[Wild World of Batwoman]]''.

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=== Pre-Crisis Batwoman provides examples of: ===

* [[Back for the Dead]] / [[Stuffed in The Fridge]]: The original Batwoman, after years of barely appearing, was brought back for a story in which she was murdered by the League of Assassins to a) further motivate Batman to oppose that group, and b) give [[Suicide Squad|Bronze Tiger]] something to [[The Atoner|atone]] for (He did not kill Batwoman himself, but kept Batman busy long enough for the other assassins to succeed).

* [[The Chick]]: The original Batwoman, who used weapons based on women's cosmetics, often relied on "feminine intuition" instead of deductive reasoning and frequently turned into a [[Damsel in Distress]] for Batman to rescue.

 

=== Current Batwoman provides examples of: ===

* [[Action Girl]]: The [[The Reveal|reveal]] of her [[Post-Crisis]] incarnation is a full-page splash of her knocking out two [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|mutated human/leopard/lion cultists]] at the same time, breaking one of their heads ''through'' a table while kicking the other one clear across the jaw.

* [[Adaptational Badass]]: The current Kate Kane, and the [[Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman|DCAU incarnation]], are both far tougher than the original Kathy Kane.