Everything we wrote yesterday about the uncommon beauty and general amazingness of DC Comics' Batwoman #1 is true, all except one thing: the book is no longer going on sale April 6. Comics retailers were informed Tuesday that the first two issues of the series, previously solicited for April and May, respectively, will be rescheduled at a later, unspecified date. No explanation is available at this time.Written by JH Williams and W. Haden Blackman with artwork by Williams and Amy Reeder, Batwoman is the increasingly anticipated ongoing series starring Kate Kane, who was introduced several years ago in 52 but became a fan and critical favorite in 2010's Batwoman: Elegy, which featured art by Williams and writing by Greg Rucka. That story was serialized in the venerable Detective Comics, a fact that was somewhat bittersweet on account of the common knowledge that the openly gay Batwoman character was always meant to star in her own series, but had yet to do so for various production-related reasons.

That goal was finally achieved in last year's Batwoman #0, which previewed the high quality material that Williams, Blackman and Reeder would be producing for the new series. While Batwoman #1 missed its shipping date in February, Williams wrote on his blog that the rescheduling to April was the street date he wanted all along.


Neither DC nor JH Williams III have released a statement about this new delay, but we can assume the move is very necessary and very sudden given the fact that Batwoman #1 preview material advertising the April 6 on-sale date appeared in this week's new comics and on DC's The Source blog, from which we compiled our previous post.

Williams previously indicated that DC Comics had been supportive of giving he and his collaborators the time they needed to make Batwoman the true successor of his and Rucka's "Elegy," which was a career high for the pair of them. With respect to the move from February to April, he wrote the following in January:

Even though there has been issues raised in the scheduling and plans being jumped the gun on, DC acknowledges for the greater good of the project we need more time. I'm glad that they saw this was a good idea, this will help maintain a certain standard that we've already set in place. The work has been very intense on this so far. Haden and I have put a lot of time and detail into the plot to make it as strong as we can, going well beyond the first 2 arcs. We know where we want to ultimately take this, we know what we'd like to see happening in 2 years for this character, and have thought a lot about it. Things we are doing in the plot now will impact and have meaning for what is to come later. Same goes for the art, I want this to be at least as good as what came before. So in the daily grind of work, in terms of writing, the process of the script creation gets in the way of drawing quite often. I'm just sorry that solicits took place when they clearly shouldn't have. I hope this gives more clarity to what has been going on.

Let's hope this new delay is simply more of what Williams discussed back then and not something more serious or health-related. Late books are certainly frustrating, but when it comes to something as beautiful as Batwoman, we will likely not be thinking about the shipping schedule when we re-read the hardcover version ten or twenty years from now.

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