Why Batwoman's History Is So Weird And Confusing

Chances are if you hauled yourself to trusty wikipedia to take a look at the Batwoman page following Ruby Rose's casting announcement, you probably came away feeling slightly more confused than you were to begin with. A cursory glance at Kate Kane's history is a little odd. Batwoman is actually two different characters (sort of) who both share the same name (kind of) and are sometimes related to one another, and sometimes not.

It's a whole mess--but it didn't get that way overnight and there are actually a few relatively reasonable explanations for the whole affair. You just need to brush up on your real world comics history.

The story of Batwoman starts way back in the '50s during an era called the Silver Age of comics, a time period known for a boom in new post-war superheroes like Barry Allen, the second Flash and Hal Jordan, the second Green Lantern, over the top "shocking" covers like Lois Lane marrying Batman or Superman eating chunks of Kryptonite, and the boom of the "imaginary story," one shot comics that would ultimately wind up being revealed to be a dream or a magical illusion by the end of the book.

The phenomena that made the Silver Age what it was were the product of what's known as the Comics Code Authority, a doctrine of self censorship adopted by comics publishers during the height of a morality scare sparked by a man named Fredric Wertham. Wertham published a book called "Seduction of the Innocent" that basically made people believe that comics were corrupting the minds of the innocent youth who read them with images of sex, violence, and deviance. The end result was an entire era of comics for concerned parents seeking out creative ways to mitigate Wertham's concerns--namely, stories that weren't real, stories that rested on science rather than violence or horror, and stories that promoted "family values."

One of Wertham's targets for his deviance argument was the relationship between Batman and Robin, which he believed prompted subliminal homosexuality in readers. The solution to the problem was pretty obvious: Parents couldn't be concerned about a gay Batman if Batman had a female counterpart-slash-love interest--and thus, the original Batwoman, Kathy Kane, was born. She was even given her own sidekick in the form of her niece Bette, the original Batgirl (spelled Bat-Girl at the time) to be a partner for Robin, just to keep things totally balanced and firmly "no homo" across the board.

Introducing Kathy and Bette was also a play at making a grab for another popular comic trope of the age: the "superhero family," something that had been popularized by Fawcett Comics' Marvel Family, some of the most profitable and beloved comics of the '40s and '50s.

Kathy's on-again-off-again spotlight in Batman stories lasted for almost a decade, during which she was built into a comically feminized crime fighter. She carried a purse instead of a utility belt and her weapons were usually disguised as makeup, hair products, or accessories. Despite her various cliches and transparent purpose as a romanceable side character for Bruce's stories, Kathy was actually relatively popular--though there were no shortage of fans who saw right through the ruse to the CCA-prompted panic.

However, when the mid '60s rolled around and the live action Adam West TV show sparked new takes on the Batman world, the character of Bat-Girl was completely revamped, nixing Bette in favor of Barbara Gordon. This continuity change made Kathy harder to justify, and although she would occasionally come up through the '70s, she was eventually phased out entirely.

Later, when the DC multiverse was officially condensed in 1986's Crisis on Infinite Earths event, it seemed Batwoman had been officially buried and forgotten. That was until the early '00s, when the new Batwoman, Kate Kane, was introduced. Kate was created using the bones of what had been established for Kathy, but with a few major differences: Kate was a lesbian, she was Bruce Wayne's cousin rather than his love interest, and the campy femininity of her old gadgets and weapons was replaced by genuine military training.

For all intents and purposes, Kate was a complete rewrite of the old character and a total replacement. But things didn't stay that simple for long. In 2011, in his famously surreal run on the Batman title, writer Grant Morrison restored the original Kathy Kane to continuity in flashbacks, meaning that both Kate and Kathy exist in the same universe.

In order to iron out those wrinkles, Kathy's story took some major twists and turns, ultimately ending in a reveal that she was actually a master spy for a criminal organization named Spyral and really a woman named Luka Netz who had adopted Kathy Kane as a pseudonym. And thus, Kate Kane is still the DCU's Batwoman, Kathy Kane's history still sort of exists, and the Batwoman family tree is a lot weirder than it really should be.

Meanwhile, Bette had been restored to continuity in the post-Crisis world in a much less complicated way and given the new identity Flamebird--but that's a whole other can of worms for another time.