Authors J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman will leave the title after the upcoming 26th issue. This is another of those DC editing decisions that has been causing the creators to leave the company lately, but this one has more going on. Williams and Blackman stated via Willaims blog.
“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. 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.”
Quite the number of changes that. And a rather controversial one to boot. I can understand why they chose to leave, heck I’m surprised they stuck with it as long as they did. What do you all have to say? You can also find the full post detailing the leave after the jump.
Dear Batwoman readers —
From the moment DC asked us to write Batwoman — a dream project for both of us — we were committed to the unofficial tagline “No Status Quo.” We felt that the series and characters should always be moving forward, to keep changing and evolving. In order to live up to our mantra and ensure that each arc took Batwoman in new directions, we carefully planned plotlines and story beats for at least the first five arcs well before we ever wrote a single issue. We’ve been executing on that plan ever since, making changes whenever we’ve come up with a better idea, but in general remaining consistent to our core vision.
Unfortunately, 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. 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.
We’ve always understood that, as much as we love the character, Batwoman ultimately belongs to DC. However, the eleventh-hour nature of these changes left us frustrated and angry — because they prevent us from telling the best stories we can. So, after a lot of soul-searching, we’ve decided to leave the book after Issue 26.
We’re both heartbroken over leaving, but we feel strongly that you all deserve stories that push the character and the series forward. We can’t reliably do our best work if our plans are scrapped at the last minute, so we’re stepping aside. We are committed to bringing our run to a satisfying conclusion and we think that Issue 26 will leave a lasting impression.
We are extremely thankful for the opportunity to work on Batwoman. It’s been one of the most challenging and rewarding projects of our careers. We’ll always be grateful to everyone who helped us realize 26 issues: Mike Siglain, who brought us onto the project originally; Greg Rucka for inspirationally setting the stage; our amazing artists Amy Reeder, Trevor McCarthy, Pere Perez, Rob Hunter, Walden Wong, Sandu Florea, Richard Friend, Francesco Francavilla, Guy Major, Dave Stewart, and Todd Klein; Larry Ganem, for listening in tough times; and editors Mike Marts, Harvey Richards, Rickey Purdin, and Darren Shan.
And most of all, a huge thank you to everyone who read the book. Hearing your voices, your reactions, your enthusiasm every month was such a joy, so humbling, so rewarding. You guys rock! Because so many of you embraced the series, we were able to complete four arcs, and your passion for Batwoman encouraged us to push ourselves to do our best work with each and every issue.
Thank you for loving Batwoman as much as we do.
Goodbye for now,
Haden & J H
3 Comments
Yuppies DC is shooting themselves in the foot. I hope that these two stay together on a project and I for one am going to follow them there. Batwoman was/is a fantastic title.
While DC clearly seems to have issues these guys are far from the first to “leave” in a very public way. However you don’t write a blog like this if your not trying to enlist sympathy and PR.
Things that get views and news stories
*Creatively being limited CHECK
*Gay Marriage CHECK
*Promise of a great story they can’t tell us about but it would “bold” CHECK
Call me cynical but this post looks tailor made to create buzz. And look buzz. W. Haden Blackman wasn’t even important enough to have a Wikipedia before all this. Yet we are supposed to believe this writer of little note was going to “defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways.” That is about as believable as death is comics these days.
If you look at July’s top 300 BatWoman is ranked 90th. Not bad over all but on the low end of bat titles.
Simple truth is we don’t know the whole story and likely never will or won’t for long time so its a he said she said kinda thing. It plays into the mentality of people not thinking on the internet only looking for something to outraged by until the next outrage happens.
/shurg is a hard economy I noticed despite his outrage J.H. Williams isn’t leaving Sandman because that only owned by DC but that is different than being owned by DC I guess.
I would also note DC has commented on this but there update seems to missing from this article.
Thing is, though, this is happening amidst many other creators leaving DC and reporting similar last-minute changes. If that many writers are leaving at the same time, DC clearly has an issue holding on to its talent, and that has made me hesitant to invest in any title they publish.