The crook flees, frightened, huffing and puffing down the alley, but there's no escaping his pursuer. Glancing quickly over his shoulder, he spies the dreaded emblem of The Bat - followed moments later by a faceful of boot. Just another night in Gotham.
Except this time, the details are different: The boot is crimson red, matching the flowing hair, and the Caped Crusader has breasts. She's Batwoman, of course - and she might just shake up the way some people think about superheroes and comic books.
You might have heard of her already. She made a significant pop-culture splash with her 2006 debut in DC Comics' innovative weekly series 52, thanks to two factors: One, the Bat-emblem she wears; two, the women in her love life. Yep, Batwoman's a dyke. The New York Times called her a "buxom lipstick lesbian" in the little arts feature heard round the world. No kidding: She got press in Europe.
Now, after a few intermittent appearances over the past three years, she's graduated to an ongoing title. In a somewhat surprising move, she now headlines Detective Comics, the same monthly series that, 70 years ago, featured the debut of Bruce Wayne and his pointy-eared alter ego. Although she's far from the only lesbian or gay superhero, when Detective #854 hit the stands June 24, Batwoman easily became the highest-profile queer hero in mainstream American comics.
"We wanted to show a very positive image: a pro-active hero who is also a gay character," says Dan DiDio, vice president/executive editor of DC Comics. "We're really trying to capture much more of the diversity of our audience and of the world around us."
"Sexuality has been a great part of independent comics of the turn of the century," such as Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez, says Patty Jeres, co-president of Prism Comics, a nonprofit organization supporting LGBT comics creators and stories. (Jeres also used to work for DC Comics, until 2005.) "It's only natural that those who work on superhero comics would want to explore sexuality as a component of their own work. Diversity has become a greater part of the superhero concept."
For several years now, DC has introduced new iterations of decades-old heroes. Today, instead of the inevitable straight white Christian male behind the mask, there's a Latino Blue Beetle and a Chinese Atom. For her part, Batwoman is more than just a lesbian in a cape; she's also a wealthy Jewish socialite named Kate Kane. In 52, she celebrated Hanukkah with her former lover, detective Renee Montoya, who will also regularly appear in the current Detective Comics run.
Ironically, this ass-kicking lesbian is a reinvention of a character originally created in the 1950s to reassure a nervous American that Batman wasn't getting it on with Robin. When crackpot psychologist Frederick Wertham wrote The Seduction of the Innocent, he alarmed the country with claims that comics caused juvenile delinquency - and he reserved special scorn for deviants like Batman and Robin ("a wish dream of two homosexuals living together"). The resulting congressional hearings led to stringent self-censorship by comic-book publishers; suddenly Batwoman arrived in 1956, armed with a purse filled with gadgets like tear-gas perfume and smoke-bomb lipstick.
Seen from today's perspective, that old-school heroine has a kitschy charm. But her motivations for donning the costume were always weak: "She wanted to attract Batman and marry him, if I'm not mistaken. We'd like to think that Kate Kane has a better motivation at this time," DiDio says with a chuckle. "We decided to put the purse and heels away." (Actually, the 21st-century Batwoman also wore high heels in her early appearances, but saner minds have since prevailed: Considering how tricky it is drive a motorcycle and leap rooftops in stilettos, she now wears boots.)
While some of DC's character reinventions have met mixed success at best, Batwoman looks like more than a flash in the pan. Two top creators are crafting her adventures, writer Greg Rucka and artist JH Williams III. No stranger to writing intelligent stories or to developing fully human characters, Rucka won an Eisner Award (comicdom's Pulitzer) for a 2003 tale, Half a Life, which focused on Montoya's forced outing in the Gotham City police force. Meanwhile, Williams' stunning illustrations and innovative design sensibilities have made him one of the industry's most critically celebrated artists.
In addition to the ace creative team, Batwoman's pre-eminence in a high-visibility monthly title suggests something about DC's intentions for the character. "This is the first time since Detective #27 [in 1939] that somebody other than Batman has been the star," DiDio points out. "It shows a level of dedication from our standpoint, and level of belief in how strongly we feel about this character. We're putting her in one of the most prestigious DC Comics."