#the huntress (1989-)

[pokeberry5]

Inktober request!! Batfamily member of ur choice dressed as if they’re in a noir detective setting?

um. this ended up not being in ink bc my brain got very carried away

i was thinking about helena as a noir detective and then i was thinking about huntress '89 if helena became a noir type private eye instead of a vigilante and then.

sometimes you gotta do things for the girl you used to be.

[ghostingvampires]

The Huntress

[toomanyf4ndoms7]

Me: hey, Huntress seems pretty interesting, I should read about her.

(Nine issues of Huntress 1989 later)

[mysteriousbeetle]

huntress hold emotes!! the base is courtesy of @deven895!!

[sunsingersart]

27 for the locg ask game? :D

Miss Helena!!!!

What's she looking at? Maybe an accountant's ledger from a local crime family, maybe her students' homework...

[tbcanary]

2023 reading list: Huntress (1989)

"I've got to be bigger than the pain. Bigger than life. Bigger than whatever they can throw, shoot, fire, or punch at me."

[xevishi]

recent pull! issues #2, #4, #5, #6, #7, and #12 of the huntress (1989)

[2112023]

[fiapple]

something i love about huntress (1989) is just how succintly its opening scene builds up helena as a character & the overall themes of her narrative.

the comic opens on western society’s prototypical idea of a victim, a young white woman (that fact having its own horrid political history should be acknowledged)- fashionable for her era- walking alone at night, and being followed by a man with a knife.

Immediately, the scene visually cuts between the young woman & helena, tying them together in the eyes of the audience. it then plays out as so:

Huntress (1989) #1 by Joey Cavalier & Joe Staton

Both through the very explicit paralleling of the two women, and the lamp-shading thereof on the writer's part within the scene itself, helena is framed within the eyes of the audience as someone who herself has once been a victim. the creative team presents you with the one most archetypal examples of a victim they possibly could, though, again, the problems within the history of that fact can't be ignored either- one that for all its commonplace is still powerless and meek as ever, and said "our hero has once been her."

"I knew somebody with a name like that... a long time ago..."

By allowing the audience access information so early on, the creative team is quickly able to position helena as existent within a dichotomy of the struggle between the ongoing disempowerment of trauma, and the fight to regain one's sense of power thereafter, as seen through the lens of non-linear trauma recovery. It is planting the seeds of what will grow to be a major theme in helena's arc.

Additionally, it very quickly posits helena as a character who is, in part, motivated by the phantom of her own vicitimization. She is very quickly suggested to the audience to be a character that is doing this- doing all she can to fight, stave off, prevent acts of violence- as a form of penance both to herself and to the world for the moments in her own life in which she was unable to do so. It is put into the mind of the reader that she is followed by the wraith of her own suffering, and of knowing that the weight of trauma is one that others can also be forced to bear.

This is further reinforced by the immediate narrative focus the collaborators chose to place on helena as a figure of compassion. from her first scene in main canon, her focal point is the victim, so much so that when choosing to return to the scene to comfort the young woman, she is able to notice something as innocuous as a wallet and return it. Moreover, due to its atypical nature in the context of comics, the 'alley-way victim' being named with such a sense of gravity in this scene takes on an added layer of importance besides the aforementioned. The victim is humanized, emphasizing their centering in helena's concious motives. To further compound this, the first time we ever see helena speak on-panel is when she chooses to comfort this young woman. her words, her actions, her passion are all motivated by her own needs & wounds, yes- but the victim, the person being hurt, that is what is at the centre of them. if further evidence were required, one may even point to the fact that the first face we see at all is that of the victim's.

And, emphasizing the overall themes present within the introduction to an even more extreme extent, is the nature of the visual story-telling taking place on pages 4 & 5.

Page 4 begins with helena fighting the perp, her back turned away from the audience, but ends with her walking toward us, body language confident. This draws our attention both to helena's capacity to be imposing, to inhabit the position of the unknown in order to illicate fear, and to helena's individual power as a character.

Conversely, the first time we see helena on page 5, when her face is finally revealed to the audience, she is talking to the victim. It ends with her back to the audience, standing as if fixed in her position, taking up fairly equal panel space with her fellow as she watches helena k. walk off, and falls into a memory. this places the audience's focus on the fact that helena b. is just as, if not more so, consumed by her victimhood as her counterpart.

(this also sets up the following scene, in which we are given helena's backstory, exceedingly well btw)

Moreover, the visual choice to hide her face temporarily gives helena a sense of being quite guarded as a person, which will be expanded upon later, and shows that the dedication to character building started very early-on for Stanton & Cavalieri, which i really appreciate.

From the first breath of life given to her story, helena is deliciously presented as a byronic heroine- an unusual type of female character to see at all, let alone in comics- and it is done through focus on her agency as a character & her dominating sense of compassion for others.

Truly, I adore beyond my heart’s capacity just how much Staton & Cavalieri chose to dedicate their opening to showing just how much Helena is a character who finds the power to find personal redemption, empowerment, & rebirth- as violent and bloody as that rebirth may grow to be- in the ability she has to do good unto others, to try to allow them to retain the innocence that was taken from her by force & the closure she was denied. They put such energy into making it clear that she is a character so very deeply driven by a sense of compassion, one so consuming it may as well be keeping her heart in chains, and they portray it as equally served by her violence as tender-heartedness. it’s enrapturing, it’s enchanting. like, really, heart’s honour, i live for it.

[forever-carlyle]

What’s the story, Helena? Why are you leaving school? You’re a brilliant student. I’ve worked hard to train you to Olympic potential. You’re throwing away your whole future… not just in gymnastics, but in-

I don’t have a future! I don’t have a past, and now I don’t have a future!

[fancyfade]

Helena Bertinelli :)

I've read her 1989 solo, her much worse 4 issue chuck dixon mini (forget the year), and huntress: cry for blood. the 1989 solo is peak, it's my favorite, and cry for blood is also good. Dixon's the less said the better :P I guess the art was pretty.

my favorite appearance for her is her 1989 solo that is definitive helena for me. sorry much more popular cry-for-blood huntress :P

[misspickman]

some helenas from the huntress 1989

[toomanyf4ndoms7]

Helena being compared to a goddess while feeling guilty, there’s something to be said here but I don’t know how.

[mysteriousbeetle]

"I am no longer their quarry. I am... The Huntress"

Reference under the cut

The panel redraw is of the last page of Huntress (1989) #1

[annah-kitathryne]

Screenshots from January 1st 1991 Who's Who In The DC Universe #6

[huntressbbg]

something about helena always being consistent with using “Helena” or something close to it but being very inconsistent with her last name when coming up with a fake name.. she’s so cute i love her

i especially love it when she does it for something silly