Warning: contains minor spoilers for DC Pride #1
For DC Comics, Kate Kane, aka Batwoman, and Renee Montoya, aka The Question, can’t seem to escape each other’s gravitational pulls, a fact that DC loves to remind readers of.
Renee Montoya slipped into DC’s universe as a Gotham Police Detective whose life was turned on its head when an unstable and obsessive Two-Face framed her for murder and outed her as a lesbian. Frustrated with the justice system and the city’s corruption, she began taking justice into her own hands which eventually led her to meet and take on The Question’s identity and fall back into her ex-girlfriend, Kate Kane’s, orbit.
In DC Pride #1, readers catch a glimpse of Kate Kane looking back on a lonely childhood where she felt different and imperfect compared to other, more feminine peers. 'The Wrong Side of the Looking Glass' by James Tynion IV and Trung Le Nguyen, has Kate noting that once someone meets others who are like them, they find themselves. While the comic shows images of familiar LGBT characters—including Kate’s former girlfriend, Renee Montoya. A later short comic in DC Pride’s collection shows Renee chasing down a kidnapped political candidate and flirting with the woman who appears as capable and bold as her. The two characters are not seen together, instead, they dance on each other’s periphery.
While Kate and Renee’s relationship originally ended because Renee was not officially out of the closet, now that both women are out and both doing vigilante work on the mean streets of Gotham, it would seem that the two should have more than enough opportunity to reconnect. The two have paired up on a few occasions, including working together to fight clockwork robots and stop a new drug from flooding the city in a 2018 Batwoman run that flirted with a relationship the way the two women flirt with each other.
It’s clear from Kate’s comment about learning to love herself by meeting others who shared similar experiences that her and Renee’s relationship was an important and valuable part of her personal history. The two may have met at a less-than-ideal time in their lives, but are continuously drawn back towards each other. The little references in DC Pride manage to touch gently on the complexity of the relationship without feeling heavy-handed. The comment that someone Kate found herself in Renee and—by extension—Renee may have found something of herself in Kate bakes a lot of tenderness and layers into a relationship that is never truly over, even if the two characters can’t be together.
The fact that both women have their own comics means there’s plenty of time and opportunity not only to explore them as a couple, but also as individuals—expanding on their hopes, desires, and flaws. The on-again, off-again relationship between Batwoman and The Question is a perfect fit for comic book storytelling, echoing the stories of classic heroes’ relationships, and giving DC the perfect opportunity to write a relationship to .
