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Saturday, June 27, 2009 

Oops! Dallas Voice gets their facts wrong

The Dallas Voice weekly fawned over Greg Rucka's overhyped, sensationalized concoction of a lesbian Batwoman, but what really provides the laughs here is the paper's colossal error of when Bruce Wayne "died". Towards the end, this classic howler comes up:
During the development process, it became clear Batwoman would lead the Detective Comics title. (For those who don’t follow the comic universe, the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, died a few years ago and Dick Grayson, the original Robin, has pretended to be him ever since.) That represents a sea change in the comic universe.
Umm, earth to Dallas Voice: Bruce Wayne is NOT dead, but when he did "die" it was only a few months before this PC-nonsense cropped up. What a joke.

As to some of the other things this sensationalized article features:
As of Detective Comics no. 854, which came out Wednesday, the lead in the book will be Kate Kane, aka Batwoman. A co-feature in its debut will be eight-page section with another character, named The Question, the secret identity of Renee Montoya — who is also lesbian.

In the comic book world, this is huge...
2 or 3 decades ago, it might've been, but today, it is nothing new, yet they act as though everything is, if that's what it takes to make a quick buck, which is just what the industry has been reduced to: all-stunts-all-the-time, which has only led to diminishing sales.
“The very first story I wrote for her I knew she would be not only gay but deeply in the closet,” Rucka says. “She had been established as gay and from Gotham and it made sense to join her with this other character.”

When word got out, though, that DC was re-introducing Batwoman (the character had originally been introduced in the 1950s to stave off suggestions that Batman and Robin might be lovers), fans began frothing at the mouth. Then an early piece of concept art was pirated, and all anyone knew was that she was “a buxom, redheaded, lipstick lesbian,” Rucka says. “Boy did that story get picked up — it even was on the BBC.”

It also forced DC and Rucka to ramp up the development of the character.
I'm afraid that's an exaggeration. It caused so much controversy and annoyance at how DC was pushing sensationalism onto the scene, that they became embarrassed and largely dropped their lesbian Batwoman from the 52 books she first debuted in for awhile, at least until they thought the coast was clear.

And now that they're shoehorning her into Detective Comics along with the lesbian take on the Question, while tossing out Bruce Wayne, I won't be surprised if, in the end, it only leads to diminishing sales for one of DC's longest running titles as people realize that the book has been hijacked for stunt's sake.

Rucka sounds to me like one of these kind of people who thinks himself a genius, but is not as smart as he thinks he is.

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  • From Jerusalem, Israel
  • I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.
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