Single And Swinging (In The Wind): DC Editorial, Marriage And Batwoman

Jesus, of all the weeks to skip a comic convention…

Last week, J. H. Williams III announced that he and co-creator W. Haden Blackman were leaving Batwoman as of issue #26 due to last minute editorial interference. Part of that interference was that DC Editorial reportedly pulled the plug on Williams’s and Blackman’s long-standing plans to have Kate Kane marry Maggie Sawyer. And we didn’t report on it at the time because, well, I figured the implied homophobia angle that some outlets were latching onto was a non-starter – you can say what you want about DC Editorial (God knows that we do), but nobody’s dumb enough to make that issue the hill they want to die on in the age of the Internet. And both Williams and DC Comics have confirmed that Batwoman’s sexual orientation wasn’t an issue here.

So absent that, this was, at the time, just another story about creators quitting a DC book over editorial interference at the last minute, and that is a story that we have told before, recently and repeatedly. So unless something or someone changes in the upper echelons of DC Editorial, it’s a story that we’ll probably hear again. So was it news? Undoubtedly. Was it news compelling enough to put down my bourbon? Not at the time, it wasn’t. It would’ve taken pictures of Dan DiDio donkey-punching k. d. lang to get my mitts off of that sweet, sweet dose of Vitamin J. D.

Anyway, that was Thursday. The Baltimore Comic Con started yesterday – a convention we considered attending, but then we watched The Wire on HBO GO – and DC Comics held a panel where DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio reaffirmed that the issue with Batwoman wasn’t the fact that she was going to enter into a gay marriage, but that she was going to enter into any marriage at all. DiDio, in fact, said that real heroes would never get married, as their first duty would always be the superhero stuff, so they don’t have time be married. And, to ward off some of the most obvious questions, DiDio went on to say that Aquaman and Mera – you know, the King and Queen of Atlantis – are not married.

Wait, what?

Okay, let’s start with this: what unmitigated bullshit. I can buy that there’s some reason that DC Editorial has some reason for not wanting their characters to be married, but some sense of duty ain’t it. Based on that, you could extrapolate that it’s not marriage that’s the problem, it’s relationships, and DC Comics’ characters have “relationships” all over the place. Since the New 52 reboot, just off the top of my head, we’ve seen:

• Batman fucking Catwoman
• Batman and Natalya Trusevich (who got killed in Batman: The Dark Knight)
• Flash and Patty Spivot
• Green Lantern and Carol Ferris
• Every Teen Titan and every other Teen Titan
• Starfire and Red Hood
• Starfire and Roy Harper
• Starfire and any dude who stands still for ten seconds (if Scott Lobdell is to be believed)
• Animal Man and Ellen (You know, his wife Ellen)
• Aquaman and Mera (you know, his wife Mera… and check that link quick, before everyone gets home from Baltimore Comic Con; it still describes Aquaman as her husband)
• The Phantom Stranger (written by Dan DiDio on relaunch) and Elena Stark (you know, his wife Elena)

…and it feels like I’m missing one… oh yeah:

• Superman and Wonder Woman

So DC has committed relationships – and marriages – going on not only all over the place, but in one of DiDio’s own books (I will cop to not remembering if Elena Stark was introduced in one of DiDio’s issues; that’s not one of the titles I read every month). And sure, some of those relationships have turned to shit because of the superhero element – Elena was kidnapped, Ellen and Animal Man are separated, Natalya is dead – but it’s not like we’re dealing with a Justice League full of warrior monks, here.

So the concept that DC intends to present their heroes as being too engrossed by their respective missions to get involved in relationships (or marriages), serious or not, just doesn’t hold that much water. Not when just a week and a half ago Superman was ready to kill Batman so he could have Wonder Woman to himself (and yeah, I know Supes was under the influence of Pandora’s Box, but still). So DC clearly doesn’t have some kind of endemic problems with having their characters in relationships, so it’s a problem with marriage in and of itself (and a sudden problem at that). So what’s the problem?

Seriously, I don’t get it. If DC has some kind of a problem with marriage as an archaic institution with no place in the modern world, I can buy that. Hell, I live that; I have spent my adult life operating under the belief that there is no particular reason to bring the courts into a perfectly good relationship. And it’s a lifestyle choice that has worked for me, but I am a drunken misanthrope, and unlikely to ever be mistaken for a member of the Justice League, Justice League of America, or even Justice League Detroit. But the difference between me and DC Editorial is that I can articulate the reasons behind not wanting any part of marriage (the even split of community property in Massachusetts puts an innate pressure on a relationship that isn’t otherwise there, and further, once you’re married, you have to try to make it work, and anything you have to do is always going to be harder and less fun than something you want to do), and my reasons make some fucking sense.

It would be really possible for DC to offer an explanation for keeping their characters unmarried. Hell, I can give you one: Superman married Lois Lane, and Spider-Man married Mary Jane, both after years and years of character development that made those relationships organically make sense. DC’s New 52 universe is only two years old in total, and the editors want to give the characters time to evolve naturally for a while before putting them in a permanent and serious relationship.

See? That’s easy, logical, makes a certain amount of storytelling sense, and leaves DC’s storytelling options open for the future, for Batwoman and everyone else. But just saying that DC is against marriage suddenly, right after Williams’s announcement and the ensuing publicity carnage (even though everyone involved has already stipulated that it wasn’t the gay marriage storyline that brought all this to a head) and with a whole dumpload of evidence pointing directly to the contrary, makes it sound less like a studied editorial position and more like people flailing for an excuse that’ll make the questions stop.

And I want to give DC the benefit of the doubt on this one. I really do, because again: both Williams and DC have said that the gay marriage wasn’t the problem here. But for the love of God, come up with something better than this. Jesus Christ, just say: “With Northstar’s marriage in X-Men last year, we don’t want something as serious as Kate Kane’s wedding to look like we’re riding on Marvel’s coattails for a publicity stunt. It’s too important a story. So we’ll revisit it in the near future.”

See? I’m an amateur with a drinking problem, and I just did better than, “DC heroes don’t get married,” even if that’s what you’re really going for.

One way or the other: explain this better.