Renee Montoya
34 years ago - Renee Montoya is born to Catholic Dominican parents in Gotham City
21 years ago - 13-year-old Renee Montoya begins studying kickboxing, where she meets Kate Kane.
18 years ago - 16-year-old Renee Montoya kisses Kate Kane, and ends their friendship out of fear.
16 years ago - 18-year-old Renee Montoya goes to college to study criminal justice and marries her high school sweetheart.
14 years ago - 20-year-old Renee Montoya has her marriage annulled.
12 years ago - 22-year-old Renee Montoya graduates and attends the police academy.
11 years ago - 23-year-old Renee Montoya becomes a uniformed police officer at the GCPD. She is instrumental in solving several major crime scenes, including finding Mayor Rupert Thorne's kidnapped daughter.
9 years ago - 25-year-old Renee Montoya is promoted to detective, and is singled out by Crispus Allen as his new partner in the Major Crimes . She helps catch Harvey Dent who becomes obessed with her. He has a private investigator out her as gay, and frames her for his death before kidnapping her. She manages to appeal to his original Harvey Dent identity, using it to escape and arrest him. She comes out to her family, who disown her.
6 years ago - 28-year-old Renee Montoya's partner Crispus Allen is killed by corrupt crime scene tech Jim Corrigan in mid investigation. She works with Harvey Bullock to catch her partner's killer, getting both their hands dirty but getting their man. They become partners in the GCPD Major Crimes Division.
3 years ago - 31-year-old Renee Montoya's partner Harvey Bullock is injured during No Man's Land. She tracks human traffickers from the Gotham harbor with help from Vic Sage, finding their way to an arm of the Golden Dragon headquartered in Santa Prisca. Montoya disapproves of Vic destroying their facilities rather than bringing them in.
2 years ago - 32-year-old Renee Montoya is forced by Harvey Dent to choose who dies, his ex-wife Gilda or his father. She appeals to his original Dent identity, and Harvey jumps off the roof to stop Two-Face. Batman saves him, but more importantly he now acknowledges his fractured psyche and wants to heal.
There are so many characters and ideas that have grown out of the DC Animated Universe. It's not a secret that Renee is one of them, but with characters like Harley Quinn and Mr. Freeze, it's forgivable that you might forget about the one recurring plain-clothes cop that appeared across the series. Renee has gone on to quietly become a hugely important character on the strength of the stories she's been a part of. Characters like this are a big responsibility to get right.
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Renee Montoya's Comic HistoryRenee's first episode of Batman the Animated Series was Joker's Favor, which is usually remembered as the first appearance of Harley Quinn. You really couldn't ask for a more opposite pair of characters; Renee was literally just a regularly occuring background character, because in animation it's easier to reuse art assets. Still, just by virtue of her continuously being present, the audience grew a familiarity with her. She was a trusted, consistent character we could rely on.
Renee transitioned over to the comics pretty quickly; she made her first appearance in Batman #475 in 1992, practically in tandem with her appearance in the animated series. She quickly became a regular fixture whenever Batman visited GCPD headquarters, basically serving as Moneypenny to Gordon's M. 1996 featured a book called GCPD by Chuck Dixon, a quick four-issue miniseries that featured Gotham's police. It's actually not a great series, particularly the parts featuring Montoya, but it does represent the first attempt to give the GCPD their own story, and she was right at the forefront. |
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In 2003, we got a new ongoing series with the same premise; Gotham Central. by Greg Rucka and Ed Brubacker. It was written as a police procedural, and went on to win multiple well-deserved Eisner Awards. While the entire book was excellent and all the characters are great, I don't think I'm exaggerating to say that Montoya's stories were among the best comic stories of the decade. Half a Life, the story of her unwanted outing as a gay woman and the repercussions she experiences both personally and professionally was nothing short of revolutionary.
The series continued to test the limits of what the cops of the GCPD can endure, and as it came to a close, we saw Montoya endure the murder of her partner Crispus Allen, and watched his murderer Jim Corrigan walk because he was able to manipulate evidence. At the time, the rumor was that this constant ratcheting tension would lead to Montoya brutally murdering Corrigan only to have to be stopped by Batman, and as the last issue came to a close, we watched her come VERY close, only for her to leave him, go back to the GCPD, and hand in her badge because she simply can't take the limitations of being a cop anymore. This would lead right into that year's 52, the weekly series where Renee would follow Vic Sage's Question, learning his methods. When Vic died of lung cancer, Renee picked up his mantle and became DC's new Question. |
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Renee Montoya & Kate KaneKate Kane was introduced in the weekly series 52, the same series where Renee Montoya underwent a year of training with Vic Sage before she became the Question. Given that part of the innovation of Kane was that she was going to be a gay character, one of the best ways to introduce that idea was to show that she had a long-standing complicated on-and-off relationship with one of the best-established lesbian characters in comics.
These two really are great together, but unlike some other couples in comics, I'd argue that they actually have a much more interesting relationship when it's messy and constantly in flux. Neither of these two is very good at relationships, but it's pretty well understood that when the chips are down, these two are pretty much always going to be there for each other. |
Our Renee Montoya StoryWe've made one very big choice early on in our adaptation of Renee Montoya, and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with it. We're not going to have Renee become the Question. Our reasoning is pretty simple; the innovation of her is that she's a hard boiled detective in the truest sense of the word, and that's such a unique character in this world. We already HAVE a Question. There's nothing we can do with the Renee Montoya Question that we can't do with either Montoya as a cop, or with Vic as the Question. In fact, I would point out that while Montoya looks cool as the Question, and has her share of appearances... she doesn't actually do much with the role. She's far more dynamic as the incredibly compelling detective of the GCPD.
To make this story work, we're making one small change that might seem pretty small; we're swapping the order of her partners. Rather than starting out as Harvey Bullock's put-upon partner before moving on to Crispus Allen whose death affects her so much she quits the force, we're making her Allen's long-time protégé right from when she first makes detective. Now when he's killed, she can throw in with Bullock, the slovenly but tough-as-nails old workhorse of the Major Crimes Unit, and they can find common ground in bringing Allen's killer in. This lets Montoya stay part of the GCPD, where we can keep enjoying some of the best crime stories in comics. |
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