The news comes after February’s groundbreaking 17th issue of the Batwoman, in which Kate proposed to her girlfriend, Maggie Sawyer. It marked the first lesbian wedding proposal in the history of mainstream comics. Since its start, the series has been a champion for gay rights, foreshadowing the overturn of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Batwomanalso represents DC’s latest exploration of LGBT storylines.
DC Comics’ Batwoman is losing its two co-authors.
In a blog post late Wednesday, co-authors J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman wrote that they’d be exiting the comic after Issue 26 is released in December, citing creative difficulties with DC.
Batwoman was relaunched in 2010 as a stand-alone series that told a new origin story about female Caped Crusader Kate Kane (aka Batwoman), this time a member of the U.S. Military Academy who was forced to leave after allegations arose that she was gay. Rather than hide her sexual orientation, she opted to leave the academy.
“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,” 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.”
The duo noted that they pitched the first five arcs of the comic before the first issue of the relaunched DC title was even written and rather than make drastic changes to their story, have opted to exit the comic.
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