001: Kate Kane
May. 8th, 2012 12:30 pm
From: Detective Comics #859 (collected in Batwoman: Elegy)
"Sir, all I've ever wanted since my mother and sister were murdered is to serve."
So Kate Kane's aka Batwoman's origin is pretty frickin' sad (when isn't an origin of a superhero sad, I guess?); her mother and twin sister are murdered when she's young and when she's a cadet, she's facing some "allegations" (basically she was charged with homosexual conduct) that would get her discharged from the military. (Kate's mother and father were both in the military and she looks up to both her parents very much.) She has a chance to say the allegations are false and it's a simple misunderstanding. Of course Kate could do that, but that would be lying about who she was. What she does here speaks VOLUMES about what kind of character Kate is - that faced with either lying or being true to herself, she picks being true to herself even if it gets her kicked out of the one place she felt she belonged and the one place she wanted to be in her whole life.
(The next few scenes with her father when she comes home after being discharged from the military are pretty heartwarming too and are one of my favorite father/daughter scenes.)