"Heartbroken" Batwoman Creators Leave Title Over Dispute With Editorial

Haden Blackman and J.H. Williams III, the co-writers on DC Comics's Batwoman, will leave the book following December's #26, Blackman announced via his blog. The decision comes as the pair have apparently struggled with a series of changes to their stories mandated by editorial, culminating in the marriage between the title character and her fiancee Maggie Sawyer being rejected by the publisher. "In recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series," Blackman claims. "We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc's origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman's heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end."

While some fans have been questioning the publisher's handling of the GLAAD Media Award-winning series in the last few hours, it seems less likely that they're opposing the marriage between two female characters as much as they're opposing the marriage of any of their superhero characters. Long-married superheroes like The Flash and Superman were reverted back to bachelorhood when The New 52 relaunch took place in 2011. Williams seems to have confirmed as much, tweeting, "Not wanting to be inflammatory, only factual- We fought to get them engaged, but were told emphatically no marriage can result. But must clarify- was never put to us as being anti-gay marriage." Williams will (presumably) continue his relationship with DC as the artist on Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Overture. No word yet on Blackman's next project.