Profile: Huntress 2

Helena Wayne/Bertinelli, Huntress 2
First appearance: originally during the pre-Crisis era in All-Star Comics #69 and DC Super-Stars #17 in December 1977, where she was first known as Helena Wayne, daughter of the Earth-2 Batman and Catwoman. In her daytime job then, she first worked as a lawyer. Her first post-Crisis appearance was in her own-titled series, The Huntress #1, in April 1989. This time, she was the daughter of an Italian mafia don who was murdered by a rival gang, and grew up with relatives in Sicily, later returning to the US to live and work as a high school teacher, and with her martial arts training, she took up the nighttime job as the Huntress.

Current status: member of Birds of Prey's cast.

Was subjected to the following acts of discrimination: she’d been sexually abused as a child, and later on, in Batman’s No Man’s Land crossover in the late 1990s, she did not fare very well, if at all, in combatting the villains.

What’s wrong with how this was done? Her post-Crisis origin, which told of the abuse she suffered, was well handled. However, the misuse she underwent in No Man’s Land is another matter altogether, and a distasteful one at that. Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, clearly wasn’t the only one who had problems in that weak item.

Huntress does fare a lot better now in Birds of Prey, where she’s become a leading ally to Barbara Gordon in crimefighting.