I’m not sure if this makes Didio or Levitz a homophobe or an idiot.

The fourth part of CBR’s Homosexuality In Comics contains a particularly interesting bit from former Batman: Gotham Knights, Titans and Nightwing writer Devin Grayson. Many have wondered for a while what happened to rumors of her involvement in a new comic featuring Kate Kane, the new “lipstick lesbian” Batwoman who debuted in the highly successful weekly comic 52.

This was a project fans seemed pretty in demand of, judging simply by the significant sales boost for the issue of her debut in 52.

Grayson actually liked the infamous New York Times write-up that stirred up the Batwoman controversy in the first place, but again, the fact that the piece made such a big deal of the character’s sexuality before the hero even graced the page of a comic book went a long way towards nullifying any positive effect Batwoman might have had on the industry. Consequently, the character was relegated to the backseat of the “52” event rather than the forefront of her own title.

In fact, Grayson was eight months into the development of the proposed “Batwoman” title when she found out from a newspaper article that the project was dead, and to this day, the writer has not received so much as a phone call from upper editorial on the matter. “That reversal really surprised and disappointed me,” Grayson admitted. “I won’t pretend not to be resentful of how badly DC treated me in that exchange, but the majority of my concern and sympathy goes out to the character, who was basically thrown away by a company which had a lot of support to make her successful and unique. My experiences up to that point had been much more positive, although admittedly less ambitious, and it was really sad and discouraging to see the ball so badly dropped.”

The most reasonable conclusion to infer from this is that DC or Warner Brothers, scared shitless of a media backlash calling them gay-sympathizers or, even worse, gay themselves, canceled the title before it got out of the gate. The only other option is that the book was shaping up to be complete crap, but this is unlikely largely because this certainly hasn’t stopped DC from publishing anything before, or recently. This seems like a fairly stupid move in comparison to just letting the work speak for itself. Nothing actually happened to Marvel when Rawhide Kid came out, and while that was probably a lesser controversy it’s still indicative of the fact that sales figures don’t really show any kind of audience reaction to homosexuality other than maybe a sensationalist sales boost.

As a matter of fact, frankly, I was happy to hear about this because another boring socialite who dresses for vengeance to kick ass at night would be – well – boring. 52 seemed to explore a sort of matrix of dual identities, as Kate is a closeted lesbian (one secret identity) and Batwoman (the other). It probably would have been a pretty refreshing take on that trope.

Devin Grayson is a pretty good writer, and I think that if the book had been given a chance it probably would have continued past the controversy and maybe become a solid book with a solid fanbase. I would have bought it. It disappoints me that it was taken away just because the media called them gay.