New writer for Batwoman is Marc Andreyko. Click the jump to see more.
News came in today that Marc Andreyko will be taking the place of J.H. Williams and Haden Blackman in writing the Batwoman title, who recently quit due to DC’s frequent censorship of their work on Batwoman, including Maggie and Kate’s wedding. The news of the new writer was revealed by DC publisher Dan DiDio, who justified the omission of the wedding by stating this below:
“Heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives. They are committed to being that person and committed to defending others at the sacrifice of their own personal interests,” he continued. That’s very important, and something we reinforced. It’s wonderful that they try to establish personal lives, but it’s equally important that they set them aside.”
As for the dissent surrounding cutting out the wedding, DiDio reassured that DC will stand by their gay characters.
“Name one other publisher out there who stands behind their gay characters the way we do,” he said. “We put her in the book the company was named after, and the series will continue better than ever with new writer Marc Andreyko.”
To sum it up, the current response from DC on the Batwoman controversy is “We can’t put in Kate and Maggie’s wedding or anything good about her personal life, not because we don’t want a gay wedding in our comics, but because our characters are not allowed to be happy.” Because without all the angst and tragedy, what would these heroes be?
The problem with this response is that it’s very typical of DC. We all love DC, and we all know that, even if the wedding did happen, it would be tragically torn apart somehow a few months later because that’s just how DC works. But even so, I disagree with the idea of cutting out the wedding altogether just because the hero needs to be unhappy. Having the wedding included in the comic is actually something new, different, and powerful, and I believe it would provide a fantastic contrast to the rest of the dark, twisted things we’re used to seeing in the Bat-titles.
Ever since Alan Moore’s run on Batman, DC comics have leaned more towards a dark, psychological genre. And more recently, as they’ve been hiring more horror writers for these titles, the comics have been packed full of shock value, to the point where it sometimes detracts from the storyline. For example, in Death of the Family, Joker had the Dollmaker create a tapestry from live human intestines. That sort of thing has become so common in the Bat-titles that at times it gets to be too much. And when that happens more and more, a problem arises, and the creators and publishers will have to ask themselves – “How do we top that?”
As with anything, violence has its limits. If there is too much violence or shock value, eventually the readers will acclimate to it, and it will become the norm for whatever they’re reading. And what happens then? What happens when the creators can’t think of anything else that will still surprise the readers? Put simply, it’ll just get old. Unless there is a certain amount of contrast and variety in the aesthetic and the storyline, people won’t want to read it anymore. Saying that “heroes should not have personal lives” confines those characters to a certain standard that makes it impossible to develop them any further, and cutting out the character’s happy moments reduces the effect of the tragedies. By preventing Kate and Maggie’s wedding just so they can keep Batwoman more intense, DC has counter-intuitively made the character more bland.
DC has and will always stand by their homosexual characters, which is not something that most other mainstream comic publishing companies can say. Even so, if they really want to strengthen both their support of their gay characters and the stories themselves, they should allow Kate and Maggie’s wedding to be shown. Even one beautifully drawn panel can bring strength to a story in a way that affects readers on a deep, personal level. And a lovely wedding amidst a sea of darkness wouldn’t just do that, but it would send a powerful message to even the most indifferent of readers.
Source- Comics Beats
