*headdesk*

[ratcreature]

So, I'm kind of researching the main Batverse characters I don't know very well, because I (intermittently a.k.a. the crazy person in that corner over there, banging her head against the wall) am still in the middle of my Batverse summary draft. Though unfortunately not "in the middle" as in "half done" yet. (And just what was I thinking, when writing that seemed like the thing to do?!?)

And I have a question for the Huntress fans. As I understand it there are at least two post-Crisis origin stories for her. One from the 1989 Huntress series, and a different version from the Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood mini-series by Rucka from 19922000. I have read neither myself, just summaries, so it's hard for me to evaluate stuff. Anyway, they contradict each other.

In version one (from 1989), she's kidnapped and molested with six by the Smiling Man who's employed by a rival crime family, and her family is murdered while she is in college by an assassin called Omerta. As a result of that she leaves for Sicily to train to become the Huntress.

In Rucka's origin story her parents are murdered when she's very young, and she's sent to Sicily for protection. There she learns martial arts, the crossbow handling and such, finds out eventually that her family is mafia, starts to despise them and decides to fight crime.

I guess Rucka's version is the one that's in continuity right now, at least I've seen that version referred to in comics I read. The entries in the official DC SF&O are a bit vague and non-committal, like the BOP SF&O only says that her parents were killed "in her youth" which could fit both versions. And besides the dating of her parents murder, I'm wondering whether bits of the kidnapping and molestation are still canon? Help?

ETA: I misread something, somewhere and Batman/Huntress Cry For Blood is actually from 2000 not 1992, making one version post-, the other pre-ZH, so that explains the change.

Comments

[iamza.livejournal.com]

Take this with a pinch of salt, as I'm no expert, but if Rucka's origin for the Huntress is a reboot, then the kidnapping and molestation are no longer part of the story. And Helena lost her parents at 8 (like Bruce Wayne).

In this retelling, Helena is eight years old when her family is gunned down before her at dinner. Word came that the entire Bertinelli family around the country was being killed, so Helena Rosa Bertinelli was sent away by her Uncle Tomaso Panessa to live with his brother in Sicily, where his family had a good deal of power. Helena’s care was entrusted to her older cousin: Salvatore Asaro (aka Sal) who taught her how to fight at a young age.

She was sent off to boarding school, where she had no inkling that her family were criminals until she read of her cousin and uncle’s arrest as Mafia Assassins in the paper. After that, she began to despise her family who she saw as parasites living off the weak… and of course there was the fact that someone in the organization had to have been responsible for the hit on her family. She became inspired after Batman attacked a Christmas party her relatives were throwing. She devoted herself, much like Bruce Wayne, to the study of crime (specifically, the Mafia) and continued to train herself to become a crimefighter, returning home to Gotham after she felt she could wait no longer.

From: http://www.411mania.com/comics/columns/article.php?columns_id=2111

If it helps any, most of the sites I ran across seemed to indicate that Rucka's origin was the correct origin for the Huntress.

[ratcreature]

If it helps any, most of the sites I ran across seemed to indicate that Rucka's origin was the correct origin for the Huntress.

Ok, thanks for the info, and the link to the column. Those I found were kind of divided. The Huntress bio at dcuguide seems to go mostly with the 1989 version:
http://www.dcuguide.com/Who/Huntress2_Bio.htm

which seems mostly the same as the bio in the Lair of the Huntress site (I have no idea who wrote it first):
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/6742/huntress_now.html

while the one at Women of Gotham mentions both:
http://www.geocities.com/womenofgotham/Huntress.htm

and the Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe goes with the newer, Rucka version, while pointing out, when it mentions the death of Helena's parents as part of the timeline here:
http://dcu.smartmemes.com/DCTL_4_TL.html

Actually now that I look at that, it seems that I misread something, somewhere and Huntress Cry For BLood is from 2000 making one post, the other pre-ZH, so that explains the change.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it's, um, quite the (herculean) task you've set yourself, organizing the Batverse. How many footnotes are you up to now? :-)

[ratcreature]

I try hard to reign in my geekier, footnote-prone tendencies. The thing is, when I first got into the Batverse, and read all those summaries, I was annoyed with quite a lot of them because they weren't *transparent*. I knew that continuity changes and evolves and that therefore different summaries would differ, but most of the summaries (with the commendable exception of the DCU Chronology, which I love for that) didn't bother to mention their sources, whether they were primary (and then which issue(s) things happened), or DCU SF&O profiles, info from other fan sites etc. It made it incredibly hard to see for myself, or to really "trust" any of it. At most a few comics got mentioned, like a recommended reading list for a character. It made them less useful. The ideal summary I would have *liked* to read would have contained all the relevant information to make it transparent for me, and would have had all those footnotes, but I realize that that is probably not what the average crack_van reader wants for a Batverse summary. So I'm kind of conflicted. I might end up writing a long one with footnotes, and get a ruthless editor for the crack_van version who cuts it down to the essentials, and then link to the expanded version, or something like that.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

Please do post the longer version, footnotes and all! It sounds like it will be *exactly* what I need to get up to speed on the Batverse. And, darn it, I ended up buying "A Lonely Place of Dying" because of you. *grin* Next thing you know, I'll be filing for Batman, and Detective Comics, and Batgirl subscriptions...