Lady Shiva makes her DC Comics The New 52 debut going up against Dick Grayson this week. Legendary creator Tom DeFalco unleashes the assassin on Gotham City during this two-part story in Nightwing #13 and #14.
DeFalco told The Bat Signal on Comic Book Resources how he got to be the writer to bring back the martial arts master.
“You know, I’m not really sure. I think we had a big discussion — the people I was talking with were Brian Cunningham and Katie Kubert, and the three of us sat around and tossed out all sorts of possibilities and discussed different characters, what would be interesting, which character should we use, this or that. I remembered Brian said at one point, “You know, the character I always loved was Lady Shiva.” And then Katie talked of a different character with a ponytailed weapon. She described it to me and I said, “Wow, that is a really cool weapon!” [Laughs] So Brian made the call to give Shiva that other character’s weapon to make her more a visual threat. Then, I guess Brian discussed it with Mike Marts and the other Bat people and we decided to go with Lady Shiva.”
Lady Shiva was part of Dick’s past. The femme fatale appeared briefly in last month’s origin story in Nightwing #0 and “this Lady Shiva is very different, but has the same traits in this completely new version of the character.”
Artist Andres Guinaldo will join DeFalco on the story.
By Editor