DC Women Kicking Ass - A Guide to Helena Wayne, the old/new Huntress

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A Guide to Helena Wayne, the old/new Huntress

Last week DC announced a new title, Worlds’ Finest, that will star two fan favorites - Power Girl and Huntress. The news also confirmed the suspicion that the Huntress in the current mini by the same writer, Paul Levitz, was not the Huntress that had appeared in DC Comics for more than twenty years. Helena Bertinelli, the star of multiple minis, a co-star in the long running Birds of Prey, co-star in the Question’s Detective back-up series and even a former member of the JLA won’t be in this series. The Huntress in Worlds’ Finest will be Helena Wayne who appeared in comics for less than a decade over 25 years ago and was killed in Crisis on Infinite Earths. To note the return of Helena Wayne to DC Comics, here is an overview of the character’s appearances.

Helena Wayne first appeared in comics in 1977. But she was for a new character given a very high profile debut appearing for the first time simultaneously in two comics — DC Super-Stars, as seen below, and All-Star Comics #69.

Why? IHelena Wayne had a very high concept origin — perhaps the highest concept origin in the history of DC Comics:

Batman and Catwoman get married, have a daughter and she becomes a superhero to avenge her mother’s death.

She’s the daughter of two comic books legends. This was so high concept that it was used as the hook for the Birds of Prey TV show:

When first introduced to comics, Helena Wayne was as a member of the Justice Society of America appearing with Golden Age heroes including the Dr. Fate, the original Green Lantern Alan Scott and, most importantly, the Earth 2 version of Supergirl, Power Girl aka Karen Starr.

Later Helena joined Infinity Inc. a team made up of the children/younger relatives of Golden Age heroes including Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.

Three years after her debut she got her own back-up in Wonder Woman. Yes, that’s right DC had a comic with a female led main story and female led back-up many years before Renee Montoya backed up Batwoman in Detective. The other thing that’s interesting is these were stories taking place on two different worlds. Wonder Woman was on the “main” DCU world, while Huntress was running around on another world where Wonder Woman was married, a mother and had fought in World War II (I should scan you the page where Wonder Woman’s naked body is being examined and they comment on how good she looks. Maybe I will.)

I’m a big fan of Helena Wayne’s back-up. She’s a fun character. You can read an excellent overview of Helena Wayne by Wired’s Corinna Lawson done for last year’s “Most Memorable Moment’s” series by here.

Helena’s friendship with Power Girl, who she called “amiga” was a constant in her appearances. While I’ve seen many people point to Supergirl and Batgirl’s friendship during the Bronze Age, that relationship pales to the friendship of their Earth 2 counterparts.

Power Girl and Huntress appeared together in Infinity, Inc. and Power Girl regularly showed up in the Huntress back-up. They were true, blue BFFs.

But Helena Wayne, like the rest of Earth 2 was about to run into a force more powerful than a locomotive — DC editorial. Dum Dum Dum ….

Earth 2 was heading for the woodchipper as DC looked to streamline its continuity to make it simpler for new readers and to increase sales (raise your hand if you’ve heard that before in the last 6 months). So in issue #12 Helena is crushed by rock and that was it.

Crisis on Infinite Earths closed a chapter on the idea of the multiverse at DC Comics and on characters such as Supergirl, Helena Wayne and Barry Allen and many others. Helena Wayne like many other characters became a memory to readers. And soon there was a new version of Huntress, Helena Bertinelli who had no ties to the Bat-verse.

But dead never means dead at DC. Supergirl once again became Kryptonean, Barry Allen went back to being the Flash and Helena Wayne appeared again.

The first hint was at the end of 2007’s 52, where we saw that the multi-verse still existed including a new version of Earth-2 with a Huntress that Geoff Johns would later admit was Helena Wayne:

Then in 2008, in Justice Society Annual #1 we saw the first full story featuring Helena Wayne in twenty-two years.

The issue played off the relationship of Power Girl and the original Huntress. Power Girl and Helena Bertinelli would later talk about that relationship.

But the Crime Syndicate has arrived and well … now we’ll never know if the Huntress known as Helena Bertinelli and Karen Starr could have been a great team.

As mentioned the original Huntress was model for the Huntress in the failed Birds of Prey TV show.* She was also visually the model for the Huntress on Batman Brave and the Bold. But despite the costume this character, who flirted with Batman, was Helena Bertinelli (as was the Huntress appearing in Justice League Unlimited.)

So why the return to the Pre-Crisis incarnation? Why would they just take two decades of character development and shove it aside to bring back a character not seen in comics for twenty-five years?

I’ll save that for another day. As well as questions such as:

Doesn’t Batman have a daughter on this world?