![]() That's a simple way to solve the problem of having two Helenas running around. She is a super-spy and not a superheroine in their series. ![]() Of course, the creators of Grayson are keeping Helena Bertinelli out of the Huntress garb. Imagine the different stories that can be told with these two! Imagine how confounding it would be for a new reader to see two Huntresses now, as both Helenas apparently exist in the New 52 mainstream universe! One Helena comes from a stable if adventurous home the other comes from the same dark place as Bruce Wayne's Caped Crusader. vows revenge, and makes a name for herself in Gotham City through the use of brutal and often murderous tactics. While Batman vowed to pursue justice in the wake of his parents' murder, Helena B. So, if she wasn't Batman's daughter, who could she be? In the mainline DC comics, she became the daughter of a mafia family, whose parents were gunned down before her eyes. Helena Bertinelli was ALSO introduced as Huntress, but in the mainstream DC Universe, where Batman and Catwoman are nowhere close, and likely never will be close, to putting a ring on it. Here's where a cool and confusing wrinkle sets in. Known on that Earth as Helena Wayne, she was the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, and she fought crime under the name Huntress. ![]() She began as a what-if on DC's Earth 2, where heroes are allowed to get married (pre-New 52, of course). Helena started out as an intriguing extension of Batman. Clearly, continuity is still a problem for DC, and the reintroduction of Helena Bertinelli only highlights this for me. You'd end up just as confused as in a pre-New 52 world, with multiple timelines thrashing you about. So even if you were reading one book, its story would continue in another. This is certainly a wiser decision than throwing immediate crossovers across all the Superman books, but crossovers invaded anyway, fairly early on in the new continuity. For example, Superman told present-day stories about Superman, but Action Comics told the story of his early career. Perhaps more puzzling was DC's insistence that different books be set in different time periods. Add to that Barbara Gordon finding time to be both Oracle and Batgirl, and it doesn't feel like DC wants you to ignore its previous continuity. Most of what had happened in the Green Lantern and Batman books had still happened, including that one big zombie nightmare, and Batman having five Robins somehow in five years. Except there was a lot of abandoned history tugging its way back into the DC Universe from the reboot's beginning. A lot of great things were lost when continuity was thrown out the window, but a lot of cool potential could have remained. DC had a point in rebooting their continuity, much as I decried the loss of fun legacy characters and marriages and decades-old histories at the start of the New 52. Them's been the breaks, I suppose, as readership gets older and plots get darker, and a body can't figure out what caused Superman to lose his powers for the billionth time. Serialized storytelling is a tough nut to crack, and years of back stories can bog down an ongoing plot, and keep new readers from understanding the hero being championed within a superhero comic. I think the answer lies in history, or, using the more dreaded term, continuity. Why is that? And why haven't I bought or really celebrated the return of any of the other characters I love? But with my DC boycott running strong, give or take an issue of Astro City, I doubt I'll be persuaded to pick up Grayson later this year. This should be cause for rejoicing, and indeed, I am pleased to learn Helena will be a super-spy who's better at her job than former Robin/Nightwing Dick Grayson. Well, now they're back, and my third favorite vanished character will walk back into comics soon: Helena Bertinelli. In light of recent reappearances, I am no longer so sure I buy the company's line, if I ever did to begin with I wailed and moaned about the disappearance of characters I loved - among them Wally West and Stephanie Brown. As I initially understood it, The New 52 was created to streamline years of confusing history, to feature only the iconic versions of DC characters, and to give new readers a fresh starting point for their heroes' adventures.
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