Vicki Vale
36 years ago - Vicki Vale is born, the daughter of two cops.
18 years ago - 18-year-old Vicki Vale begins college, studying journalism.
17 years ago - 19-year-old Vicki Vale spends a year traveling, meeting fellow journalism student Clark Kent.
14 years ago - 22-year-old Vicki Vale graduates. Rather than take an internship she begins taking foreign correspondance work, regularly reporting from active warzones.
12 years ago - 24-year-old Vicki Vale, interested in more investigative journalism, moves to Gotham City and joins the Gotham Gazette, regularly fighting with Gotham's corrupt entrenched new media. She first meets Bruce Wayne.
10 years ago - 26-year-old Vicki Vale begins an affair with Bruce Wayne. She is suspicious that he is Batman.
8 years ago - 28-year-old Vicki Vale finally confronts Bruce Wayne with her evidence that he is Batman. He is able to disprove it all.
7 years ago - 29-year-old Vicki Vale begins her own branded news segment the Vale Report.
5 years ago - 31-year-old Vicki Vale briefly rekindles her romance with Bruce Wayne, despite them both knowing it's not going to last.
3 years ago - 33-year-old Vicki Vale stays in Gotham during the Quake, assisting the police and the Bat-Family.
now - 36-year-old Vicki Vale after years of assisting the Bat-Family and knowing their identities, finally has them confirmed by Dick Grayson.
Generally speaking, you can track the overall development of love interests in comic book heroes by comparing them to Lois Lane. That's probably never been more obvious than the introduction of Vicki Vale, who arrived fully formed in Batman's world as though she'd been ordered from the same catalog as Superman's girlfriend. While she might have never really been in the running as Batman's MAIN love interest, she is certainly a contender for the longest running one, with really no one by Catwoman even coming close.
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Vicki Vale's Comic HistoryVicki Vale's first appearance is in Batman #49 in 1948. Superman's Radio Show in the early 40's had redefined Lois Lane's character, making her a quick-talking reporter (modeled, I meantain, after Rosalind Russel's Hildy from the movie His Girl Friday), and by this time she had clearly established herself as a proven-to-work part of Superman's aresenal of characters. Since Batman's original love interest Julie Madison was more of a holdover from the comic's horror roots, Bill Finger clearly saw the opportunity in giving Batman a Lois Lane of his own. Vicki absolutely hit the ground running, scheming to prove that Bruce and Batman were the same person in her very first story. (It's probably also worth pointing out that she is so obviously meant to look like Rita Hayworth that it's actually distracting.)
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While Vicki had plenty of appearances in the fifties and early sixties, allways operating with that old-fashioned children's comic idea of what a girlfriend is, she was eventually largely expunged from continuity in the mid sixties along with most of Batman's Golden Age supporting cast to bring him more in line with the Silver Age comics of the era. She made a brief (and editorially forgotten) return in the mid seventies, but her true return to cannon came in the early eighties as she became a far more regularly recurring character. In this return, we learn that she had been working in Paris, was now back, and was just as sure as ever that Bruce and Batman were the same person, and that she was just as game as ever to be romantic challenger to Catwoman.
Wildly, she was removed from continuity AGAIN in the Post-Crisis era, but was right back again in the late 80's/early 90s, this time fueled by Kim Bassinger's turn as the character in Tim Burton's movie. She's gone on to regularly occur as part of the wider world of Batman, perhaps no longer necessarily considered his main love interest, but now more as a regular ally to the wider Bat Family. |
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Our Vicki Vale StoryIn the same way that a lot of Batman's love interests, by virtue of them having been switched out so regularly, all seem to be archeological relics representing the role of this type of character at different times in comic history, Vicki is clearly an artifact of the fifties and sixties, where she was almost more of a foil to Batman than his girlfriend, always trying to outthink and outdo him, presenting a challenge to him that, if he was SMART, he would stay the hell away from.
Just the fact, then, that Vicki continues to be in his life is a clear indication that she kind of has his number from the very beginning. Much like Selena, she is always forcing her way into his life, always seeing more of him than he wants her to see. The fact that there are cannonical references to the idea that she does, in fact, eventually prove that he is Batman but chooses to not just keep it to herself but to assist the Bat Family feels like such a natural evolution for her. We chose to do this by having Dick reach out to her, because at some point, getting his approval is the actual indication that you're a part of the family. |
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