Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 07: She Has Strong Potential To Draw More Women To Comics

Dear DC Comics,

What more can be said about Helena Wayne at this point that hasn't been said already? After all that's been discussed this past week, there are more than three good reasons Helena Wayne is a highly marketable, even highly sellable character. The problem is you need to actually be smarter about the way you use her in the DC Universe and how you try to sell her to a wider demographic. It is in these two areas where you have consistently failed the character, particularly in ways that made female readers feel excluded as a potential audience, and drove even interested male readers away from her.

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 06: She Diversifies A Disproportionately Male Wayne Family

Dear DC Comics,

There is no more beloved DC family than the Batman family, but the Wayne family itself is a sausage fest with the added bonus of ignoring the existence of important female members like Martha, Selina, and Helena Wayne. In fact, there is no sexism more overt than the way you treat the female Waynes from the way you downplay Martha's importance to Bruce's narrative, to the consistent fridging of Selina Kyle (Bruce's wife on Earth-2), to the way you've marginalised Bruce's own daughter in the New 52 to make sure you had a male Wayne as his successor on Earth-2. You even walked the extra mile of allowing the fridging of Helena Wayne in your latest event so that your story could focus on that male Wayne less than few Earth-2 fans care about.

I often find myself wondering if you are even aware of the overt sexism surrounding the Wayne women, or if you just plug your fingers into your ears and sing to yourself 'La la la la la, sexism? What sexism? Don't look at me! I'm just fulfilling my male power fantasy with characters who actually look like me!'

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 05: She Was A Member of DC's First And Oldest Team, The Justice Society

Dear DC Comics,

We're about to have another conversation about your baffling decisions again--this time your decision to completely erase the Justice Society from the current Earth-2. This isn't even going into the fact that Earth-2 was the biggest wasted opportunity of the New 52--a discussion for another day. What's more baffling are the reasons for the erasure of the Justice Society, and dumber yet was the decision to destroy Earth-2 after only three years of existing. Even if the Justice Society does form on Earth-1 with the refugees from Earth-2, it'll be nothing short of another Justice League team on an Earth full of Justice League teams.

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 04: She Had Her Own Narrative Complete With Her Own Cast

Dear DC Comics,

We're on Day 04 of our ongoing discussion, and we still have so much more to go over.  One of those things being the fourth reason I love the Huntress, which is the fact that prior to the New 52, she had her own narrative, complete with her own supporting cast of characters.

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 03: She Is Friends With Power Girl

Dear DC Comics,

Good news! Reinstating the Earth-2 Huntress and Power Girl friendship was one of the best things you did in the New 52! I just wish their book actually had a better editor, a more clearly defined direction, and especially a different creative team. While I 110% understand why Paul Levitz was attached to a Huntress/Power Girl book given his history with both characters, it was still a book that could've greatly benefitted from being written with more depth, and by a writer who doesn't shy away from exploring loving relationships between two women on a deeper level.

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 02: She Was A Lawyer

Dear DC Comics,

Continuing our discussion from yesterday, another thing that immediately drew me to the character of Helena Wayne was the fact that she had a career in law! While career women have a lot more representation in today's media than they did at the time of Helena Wayne's initial publishing, they are still regrettably lacking in representation in superhero comics, including your own. Even the ones who did have careers in the past no longer have them in the New 52. Why is that?

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress, Day 01: She's Batman and Catwoman's Daughter

Dear DC Comics,

For a publisher that's currently engaged in one of the most overt love affairs with Batman any of us has seen in recent years, it's amazing to me how often you ignore Helena Wayne's existence. It is especially alarming how often you downplay her status as a legacy character, her importance and contribution to Bruce Wayne's mythology, often attributing all that she revolutionised to his son, Damian, a character that appeared in comics only eight years ago. You even went out of your way to deny that the Huntress existed as Helena Wayne for two decades, effectively denying her of her own birthright and legacy. I was even surprised you left her out of your 75 Year Batman Anniversary issue of Detective Comics #27 despite being the daughter of the original Golden Age Batman (a character you clearly acknowledged as the character's first incarnation), and despite having stories that explored the idea of Bruce Wayne as a father and husband. It very much says that even you are selective of your flagship character's history, particularly in ways that exclude important women from his mythology.

Seven Reasons DC Comics Should Love The Huntress: Introduction

Dear DC Comics,

You and I have been on a love-hate roller coaster for quite some time now. I'd even call it an abusive relationship since I very much love your characters and their respective mythos, but you--the publisher that owns them--have consistently found new ways to violate these characters and everything they stand for in the last three years, and for no good reason than what you think will "sell" better. Most of the time, I can't work out the logic behind many of the regressive changes you've imposed, let alone how these changes are supposed to appeal to a diverse readership. The fact that you've repeatedly found new ways to marginalise (even brutalise) your women characters in particular (including queer and women of colour) on the basis of their gender (and, to an extent, their power levels) has made reading your books a rather discomforting experience these past three years.