Still, she did have access to all of Mom and Dad's toys. Not only did she get the wealth of the Wayne Estate, the benefit of an incredibly well-rounded education, and a genetic predisposition for athletic perfection--but she also got the best of the two coolest utility belts in the DCU. She was undoubtedly most famous, however, for creating a special tool for her own use. This Huntress carried a crossbow.

Weaknesses:
Plenty. She was only human, you know.

Bio:
Helena Wayne was the offspring of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, the Batman and Catwoman of Earth 2. Despite her heroic heritage, she didn't seem particularly destined to protect Gotham by night. Instead, the heiress to one of the world's largest fortunes seemed as if she was going to fight crime from behind a lawyer's desk. After a youth of training and the best education money could buy, she joined the law firm of Cranston and Grayson--as in Dick Grayson (Robin).

While in her first days at the firm, however, her mother was blackmailed into breaking out the whip again. After a number of years as plain, simple "Selina", the Catwoman was back. But not for long. She was murdered soon after coming out of retirement.

Like other members of the extended "bat family", the traumatic death of a parent would send Helena on a hunt for revenge in a cape and cowl. She emerged as "the Huntress".

After a few solo adventures, mostly having to do with following up leads on her mother's death, she soon came to join the Justice Society of America, where she remained until the Crisis hit. At the JSA she met--and soon became best friends with--Power Girl. The two were a reflection of the friendliest versions of the Batman/Superman relationship, and served as a kind of prototype for other "gal pal" team-ups, such as Birds of Prey. Their relationship was rendered strongly, as the logical, centered, deductive Huntress naturally compliments the emotionally vulnerable, impulsive, meta-gifted Power Girl. Testament to the iconic strength of the duo is given by the fact that the duo appeared on the cover of issue 3 of 2005's JSA Classified. It is not an exaggeration to say they are the "poster girls" of Earth 2.

They were, sadly, also the victims of Earth 2. During the later events of the Crisis, Huntress was attempting to rescue some children when she was seriously injured by the Anti-Monitor's henchmen, then buried while still (barely) alive.

Notes:
The Huntress' experience of Crisis on Infinite Earths serves as an example of what the Crisis was like to those on the non-surviving side. As the parallel worlds collapsed into a single universe, parts of Helena's life simply disappeared, even though the Huntress remained alive. Indeed, the Huntress lived long enough to actually see the graves of Bruce and Selina Wayne vanish, and to have her memories of her secret identity's past hijacked.

The fact of her physical death was, in the end, a mere technicality. Had the sequence of events in motion at the time of her death been allowed to continue to their conclusion, she would have merely winked out of existence.

On an unrelated note, it's interesting that her father never knew she was the Huntress. She didn't take the identity until he was already in failing health, so the failure of the "World's Greatest Detective" to know that his own daughter was a caped crime fighter is perhaps excusable. She kept her alter-ego a secret because Bruce explicitly forbade her from "joining the family business"--especially after that lifestyle got his wife murdered.

First Appearance: All-Star Comics (1940) #69

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View a chronological listing of this character's appearances

Issue Appearances:
Adventure Comics (1938)