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Made the World’s Most Dangerous Sandwich (prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella with a hint of homemade pesto aioli)

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Any ideas what Helena Bertinelli’s favourite musical is?🎶

Robin (1993) Annual 6

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…Did Stephanie have a connection with waffles before BG 2009? Curious.

Stephanie's comfort food is actually mashed potatoes.

Robin #111

Waffles began as Crystal's way of bonding with Stephanie after she returned from war returned from her year away. However, Stephanie created a lot of space between her and her mother, which to me speaks to her previously having to be ultra independent and at times even a carer for her mother, who was struggling with addiction. She's unimpressed by her mother's waffle gambit initially but slowly warms up to it, after having a realisation about "second chances", and starts making waffles for her mother too.

Batgirl (2009) #1 & #3

Also Babs doesn't hit Stephanie with the waffle iron.

Batgirl (2009) #2

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what do you think about the ending of cry for blood?

i don't think that's helena saying she doesn't believe in god anymore, she also throws her huntress gear in the water and that doesn't mean she quits

other things i found interesting

"this was never about huntress"

after the rooftop confrontation with nightwing and batman, helena fell into the water and vic rescued her. in the ending, she throws her things into the water and doesn't rescue it. the beginning of the comic is straight up a panel of her cousin's dead body. what do you think about the motif of water here? almost symbolising... reincarnation or new chapters of lives, almost. not to mention, her burning the house in the purple flashback scene

"Never about the Huntress"

"Men make their own history, ... but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

I think the reason Helena throws her costume is not to renounce being the Huntress but instead to emphasise that this is all about Helena. The whole story, its characters have been preoccupied with the Huntress' willingness to kill, while Helena narrates a story about her, which "started in Sicily", before the Huntress and even before her birth. The other vigilantes think "killing" is this moral dilemma and question of methods, but Helena gradually tells us why and how "blood cries for blood"; why Helena kills. Put simply, the answer is so she can survive, when backed up against the wall. She chooses not to hide behind a mask when she faces that truth, and she accepts that it damns her in a religious sense.

Sleeping with the Fishes

"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

The significance of drowning in the harbour is that it plays on an old "Sicilian message" popularised by The Godfather. Mobsters were said to disposed of their victims' corpses in the harbour and "sleeping with the fishes" became a euphemism for being murdered by the mafia.

The book opens with Claudio Panessa's corpse in the harbour, foreshadowing that it was not Huntress but instead a mobster who murdered him. This is emphasised by Helena's narration; "They all think they know me. None of them knows a damn thing."

The book also ends with Helena's discarded cross sinking into the harbour, with bubbles rising from the cross as if it's actually drowning. I don't think the cross represents Helena's faith in God but instead her virtue or sanctity, from a religious point of view. The Huntress has killed before, but this is the first time Helena has, although indirectly. It could also represent religious virtue generally. The page tells us that it is this virtue and sanctity which the mafia has defiled. "Damn you," Vic tells Helena and she answers, "Happened long ago, Vic." The mafia had put her on a path of damnation a long time ago. This is her accepting that these are cards that she's been dealt and she's doing what she can to survive and do good.

"Now it's enough."

"It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past... must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content."

Cry for Blood is not a story about a killer who learns that killing is bad, although Question, Batman and Nightwing are adamant on treating Helena that way. It's a story of who Helena Bertinelli is, and her arc involves her reckoning with the history that made her in order to turn the page.

Essentially, history will repeat itself over and over unless we learn from and reckon with it. And that's what Helena does. She realises that she can't go on as she did if she wants to survive so she reflects critically about her story and those which came before it to find a way out. She uses the mafia's avarice, superstition and preoccupation with tradition against them. She lets Cassamento drop his guard by feeding his power trip, she uses Huntress' reputation to intimidate Mario into fleeing Gotham and she plays on an old Sicilian tradition to get Tomasso arrested and Cassamento killed. And NOW it's enough. She's no longer in survival mode; it would take a lot for her to kill again. She can now start anew.

It's a bittersweet and very lonely ending, but Helena won and her prize is a new beginning. How she chooses to live it is left beautifully ambiguous.

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birds of prey: manhunt is a masterpiece. in #4: helena bertinelli and barbara gordon work as one to defeat archer braun. helena leaves his sexist pig ass to die in the fire. selina and dinah fight against shiva, but ultimately, they "beat her" by running away from her. shiva smiles ominously from the fires. WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN ❤️

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people acting like discowing was a big deal. no it wasn’t. nobody gaf about it. just another day in the 80s superhero genre

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The King speaks🇵🇸

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I love that while most of the bat vigilantes have very STEM-oriented expertise, Helena Bertinelli is unequivocally a Social Studies girl. Criminology, Literature, History, Religion, Politics, Pedagogy, … the lot.

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Huntress (Helena Bertinelli) - Batman vs. Predator II #3

Helena fighting Song Sung. What I like about this fight, aside from the fact that here we have Helena defeating one of the top assassins that no one else defeated before, is that Helena doesn’t end the fight by killing Song. And this is early Huntress, like 1993, way before BoP and modern day comics where Helena is just a snarky bitter person. This is a prime example of how Helena operates, even from the very beginning of her career, where she’s at her angriest, most violent, unpolished state. She’s not just going around taking lives, she never did that. I don’t know where that idea came from and why it’s a thing people associate with Helena, but it’s so far from how her character actually is. 

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“Buonasera Signore Mandragora.”

Redrawing of JLU Helena Bertinelli in her Huntress: Year One costume.

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There are a handful of post-Crisis Batman (the series, not the genre) comics in which the hero under the cowl isn't Bruce Wayne (the AzBats + Prodigal eras, reasonably). But Batman #574 is the only issue in which neither Batman nor Bruce Wayne appear in any way, shape, or form.* It means the world to me that the single cape in the entire issue is Huntress.

Spoilers below the cut

Caught in the crossfire of Pettit's and Joker's madness, Helena's resolve is clear. She knows her purpose. It's why she stayed in the No Man's Land in the first place, and it has nothing to do with earning Batman's approval.

People do die here: Pettit kills all his own men, including Foley. Joker kills Pettit. It's one of the most desperate scenes in the entire saga, and Helena is completely alone in it. Everything has unraveled. The snow is littered with bodies. Huntress has no backup, no way of sending a warning or calling for help.

It's important to me that you can plainly see that's not hope in her eyes. It's will, determination. She knows she doesn't have a prayer of surviving this. She also knows she's the only person standing between Joker and the terrified people behind the door. She stands her ground. Against Batman's legendary arch-nemesis, no less. She takes three bullets in later panels, after she's taken out all twenty of Joker's armed goons. "Bite me," she'll say in the arc's next issue, Detective #741, as he gloats over her, before Batman and Nightwing save her in the absolute nick of time. It's important to me that Batman never catches up to Joker, who flees the scene. Readers waited all of NML for the expected Batman vs. Joker showdown. It's important to me that that fight went to Helena: the cast out Batgirl, the one who "failed." But also the woman who had been The Bat, who had kept the city's hope alive, who who been the only cape on the ground for months before Batman returned.

It's very important to me that in nearly 300 issues, the one time Batman doesn't appear in his own title (not even the shadow of his ears!), it's not one of his kids or chosen successors in the spotlight.

It's Helena Bertinelli.

*Until Bruce's Final Crisis disappearance in 2009, after which there's the infamous Battle for the Cowl, and then Dick wears the mantle until the reboot in 20111. Very few issues in which someone is not wearing bat-ears in there.

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Stephanie Brown is a Nirvana fan

Batgirl (2009) #1

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another steph brown painting, water colour this time. im pretty proud of this one tbh

our resident stargazer and canonical Metallica fan, Stephanie brown!

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Nothing makes me think of Liverpool quite like "There She Goes" by The La's.

For me, it's not a song about a girl that got away, it's a song about the greatest city on Earth. There she goes. Racing through my brain. Pulsing through my veins. She calls my name, pulls my train. No one else could heal my pain. Chasing down my lane. And I just can't contain, this feelin' that remains...

There she goes. Empire. Community. Rise. Decline. Triumph. Tragedy. Division. Unity. Adversity. Solidarity. There she goes again...

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Fun fact about me, I’ve got very “light footsteps”, or at least that’s what my old roommate called it. No one seems to realise I’m there if they can’t see me. I keep scaring people by unintentionally sneaking around when I’m just walking normally. People always look at me as if I’ve teleported or they’ve seen a ghost. I scare like 2-3 people a week, possibly more for all I know.

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adventures of eepy loverboycat and exhausted hatercatlady

meme redraw for helena bertinelli and her cat doug 🩵

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them... :(