Once again, it seems DC’s editorial meddling has driven away some of their best talent. On Wednesday evening, J.H. Williams III, the jaw-droppingly good artist and writer on Batwoman alongside co-writer W. Haden Blackman, has announced they are leaving the title as of issue #26, citing last-minute editorial edicts torpedoing months of careful story planning.
“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,” Williams said on his blog. “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,” he continued, “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,” he noted. “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.”
This is very saddening, because Williams is absolutely amazing with his artwork, and the team’s approach made for some very bold and interesting story choices. Williams will still be working on the new Sandman stuff with Neil Gaiman, but his Batwoman will be sorely missed. One hopes that DC can eventually figure out a way to hammer out their editorial shenanigans and keep their creators happy, though, so we don’t lose talent like this on books we love. Of course, eventually, that won’t be a problem if they run out of both of those things.
