For the uninitiated, Greg Rucka is the name of the guy who modernized the character of Batwoman. Well, him and Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Geoff Johns came up with basic idea (e.g. she exists and is gay and jewish) in 2006, but really it was Rucka who would go on to write what is unanimously considered to be her foundational and character-defining text: Batwoman: Elegy. For eleven months back in 2009 and into 2010, Kate Kane took over Detective Comics. Everything from her relationship to her father, to the way in which she outed herself, to DADT, to Sophie, to her drunken stupor, to her training; everything Kate has done in the decade and change since that eleven month run stems from those same stories. Well, mostly. I’m obviously excluding the short-lived Andreyko era.
Anyway, I was surprised to learn the other day that Greg Rucka and Michael Lark (the primary artist on Rucka’s seminal Gotham Central as well as their creator-owned Lazarus) were doing an AMA on reddit. I actually found out about it after it had already happened, because I’ve been in the middle of moving and haven’t really had a chance to sit until kind of right now. I read through the thread and was…surprised at what I (and by “I”, I mean friend of the show @talkingbatwoman on twitter) found.
…what the hell? What does “not my Kate” even mean? Also, what in God’s name was your original intent with Kate, because buddy, let me tell you, if it wasn’t “angry queer Jewish woman screams for right to exist/justice/purpose” then it probably sucked. Not only that, but to go out of your way to say that the folks who continued Kate’s story made some stupid decisions and now everyone else has to cover for them is…wow. That’s so mean for no reason! I get that maybe seeing a character you have a strong personal connection to that you created being written by someone else can be uncomfortable, but your standing rule for working at DC Comics is, and has been for some time: “I’ll always come back for Kate and Diana.” And he did with Diana. Twice.
Yes, you’re the guy who made Kate Kate. Credit where it’s due. And you’d come back for her. Except you wouldn’t, because who she is now isn’t who she’s “supposed” to be, so, uhm, in what way, exactly? I’ve been trying to figure out what fundamental change Kate has undergone that is a strong deviation from Elegy, but it just doesn’t seem to exist. At all. I thought at first maybe it was the whole “Bruce Wayne is Kate Kane’s cousin” thing, even though that was an Andreyko idea and not a J.H. Williams III/Blackman idea, but it’s clearly not. While that change could have swallowed her, it clearly hasn’t because Jacob and Beth are still around. If anything, it further contextualizes Bruce more than it does Kate.
So, what’s different from Elegy to now? Superficial stuff. Kate used to fight lots of supernatural things, but now she doesn’t. Now she goes after her most logical unwinnable/undefeatable foe: the war economy. It’s infinitely more interesting and a far greater fit than the occult, even if that was a fun thing to watch and opened up a lot of kabbalistic possibilities should someone choose to go that route. Plus, the military industrial complex won’t ever stop existing, so a timeless foe is always a good thing. Especially when it is perpetually poignant! Plus, that means she’ll always be fighting literal terrorists. You know, like the people who kidnapped her family and murdered her mom.
What else? Hmmmm, well, she used to refuse working with Batman. Except for all the times when she did and was super chill about it.
Is it that they brought Beth back to life? I kind of thought that was a weird example where ressurection offers far more avenues for narrative than keeping her dead ever would. Kate’s heritage is one of her greatest character strengths, so having her twin sister and her father around makes more sense than just her dad. The trauma is still there, since Beth was brainwashed or something for twenty years, but hey, they’ve got each other. I find it hard to believe that that’s the thing Rucka think fucked Kate up. Since, y’know, he left it ambiguous in Elegy if Beth survived the fall or not.
What about Kate proposing to Maggie? Aside from the fact that it didn’t actually happen (kinda glad it didn’t because that means Renee still has a shot, but that’s another conversation), Rucka was the one who suggested they could have a relationship in the first place within Elegy itself. They met at a GCPD fundraiser, both wearing tuxedos and acting gay as hell.
Really starting to grasp at straws here. Maybe it was her involvement with the D.E.O.? That didn’t actually change her character at all, but…y’know, it was a thing that happened. Was it that she chose not to feel guilty about Beth’s death anymore when she was facing the Weeping Woman? I guess it could be that, but that’s not really changing any fundamental aspect of her character. That’s just…how grief works. Also it wasn’t her fault in the first place? Which is what Rucka wrote.
Look, I meant it when I said you could trace everything back to Elegy. That’s just how phenomenal a story it is. People haven’t been writing from the New52 series of Kate these past few years, Greg. They’ve been trying to capture and expand your Kate. The one who chose integrity over the closet and drank herself half to death because she had zero purpose in life. The imperfect, snarky, almost comically hot mess of a woman who wore a uniform, not a costume. You wrote that, Greg. The Williams and Blackman stuff almost never comes up, like at all, and if it does it’s mostly Batwoman #0, or something to do with Bette or Jacob or Catherine. Not because it was bad, far from it, but because it wasn’t the foundation of her character.
You can claim that they changed Kate so fundamentally that you can’t even read her anymore, but even if that’s true it doesn’t make you look that great. It means that what others saw in Kate, Tynion and Bennett most recently, were thrown in without thought or were the result of a “misinterpretation.” Which means Elegy isn’t nearly as great as we all think it is. On the other hand, if this is just a bruised ego and you feel bad that you didn’t get to write all this cool stuff with Kate because you poured your heart and soul into making her who she is…grow up, dude.
The mark of an excellent and lasting character in this industry is that another author can pick them up and use them to a far greater effect than the creator could have ever conceived. Which is something you should know, because you literally did that with Renee, it’s why we all love her so much.
