Kick Ass LGBT Women: One Year Later

Sunday is Pride Sunday, the culmination of National LGBT month. Last year I did a post about the status of LGBT women in the DCU. Today I am going to update it as well as discuss their representation in the DCnU.

This year has seen a dramatic drop in the number of appearances of LGBT women. The majority of that decline was due to the ending of the Batwoman and Question features in Detective Comics.

The character with the most appearances since my last post is Scandal Savage. She was an ongoing character in Secret Six and was also seen in an issue of Action Comics. Secret Six, however, is cancelled as of September and the character has not been identified as part of the DCnU.

Renee Montoya was named recently by IGN as number 87 on the list of the top 100 superheroes. This year, however, saw a huge drop in the number of appearances she had in comics. Last year at this time Montoya was ending her back-up in Detective Comics and capping many years of regular appearances in the DCU in Gotham Central, 52, her own mini-series and a back-up feature. Following the end of her co-feature in June, Montoya appeared a few days later in Wonder Woman #600 and then disappeared for months. In December she reappeared in both the Detective and Batman annuals. She recently appeared again in the May and June issues of Birds of Prey. Montoya has not been identified as part of the cast of any of the DCnU 52.

If intention counted Kate Kane/Batwoman would be second on the list. Batwoman was scheduled to debut in February of 2011 and she would have appeared in six issues by now. Those, along with her appearances in Wonder Woman #600, Batwoman 0 and two issues of Batman Inc. would have given her 10 appearances. Batwoman has been confirmed as one of the 52 DCnU titles debuting in September.

Liana Kerzner, Scandal Savage’s girlfriend, made appearances in six issues of Secret Six. Like Scandal she is not scheduled to be in the cast of any of the DCnU 52 titles. Neither is Scandal’s other girlfriend Knockout, who made two appearances.

Grace Choi, once one of the leads in the long running Outsiders title, had two appearances this past year. She also appeared in Wonder Woman #600 and had a guest appearance in the Outsiders #36 along with her girlfriend Anissa Pierce who finally came out of her coma.

Maggie Sawyer appeared in Batwoman 0 and is scheduled to appear in the DCnU in the cast of Batwoman, potentially as a love interest to Kate.

Holly Robinson, the only other character on last year’s list I haven’t mentioned is still MIA.

If I have overlooked any characters, please chime in.

While DC’s commitment to Batwoman is impressive, an inventory of the last year and look at books heading into the DCnU is discouraging.

During the series I ran on “The most memorable moments in DC history for women”, the writer Bluefall did an eloquent post that discussed the importance of non-canon same sex couples given the paucity of canon couples in the DCU.

This past year I ran a tournament for favorite couples in the DCU and the one same sex couple who made it closest to the finals (and missed out by only a few votes) was a non-canon couple, Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance. Despite the fact their relationship was never made canon (although at the time of my post last year, writer Gail Simone stated she believed that Dinah Lance was bisexual) it was considered to be by many, many readers. I will be surprised given that characters will be appearing in separate books that there will be any more interaction to support that belief in the DCnU.

The one piece of good news I can report is that Apollo and Midnighter are now part of the DCU staring in September. This is a positive move given how few gay male characters have been seen in the DCU the past few years.

I ended last year’s post with the words, “Still work to do DC.” I’ll end this post the same way. I have been vocal in my concerns about the DCnU in regards to female characters. Nothing will please me more than to be proved wrong. I will also be delighted that my concerns about the decline in LGBT women appearing in the DCnU is proved wrong.