Everything you need to know about TV's new 'Batwoman'

"Batwoman" has ar­rived on the CW, fill­ing the bat-shaped hole in our hearts left by the can­cel­la­tion of "Goth­am." And not a mo­ment too soon.

Pre­mier­ing earli­er this month, "Batwoman" stars Ruby Rose as Kate Kane, aka the e­pon­y­mous crime fight­er, tak­ing the place of Bat­man, who has been miss­ing for three years. Goth­am has gotten even worse in the in­ter­im, so the city has hired the Crows, a pri­vate se­curi­ty firm, to help po­lice the city.

Kate's tran­si­tion to vig­i­lan­te is made pos­si­ble by the dis­cov­er­y of one of Bruce's Batcaves, com­plete with u­ni­form and e­quip­ment. She also has some fric­tion/sparks with form­er flame So­phie, who is ap­par­ent­ly not strict­ly les­bian, as she is mar­ried to a man. What? Oh, yes, Kate's ex is a she. I guess I bur­ied the lede: Kate is o­pen­ly gay, just as is the ac­tress por­tray­ing her. So that's some TV his­to­ry be­ing made right there.

That's freak­ing out some peo­ple, who re­view-bombed "Batwoman" on Rot­ten To­ma­toes in what ap­pears to be a de­lib­er­ate cam­paign.

Per­son­al­ly, the char­ac­ter's sex­u­al­i­ty mer­its little more than a shrug from me — af­ter all, I've been read­ing Batwoman since her 2006 de­but, where be­ing gay was al­ways just part of who she is. And who she was in those early com­ics was pret­ty cool, giv­en the stor­ies by the a­ward-win­ning team of writer Greg Rucka and artist J.H. Wil­liams III.

And speak­ing of the com­ics, there re­mains some con­fu­sion a­bout who Batwoman is. And the an­swer is: Ex­act­ly who she is on TV. But the wa­ter is mud­died by a host of oth­er women with "Bat" in their name. So here's a prim­er:

The first Batwoman ap­peared in 1956, a fe­male ver­sion of Bat­man that turned out to be Kath­y Kane (no re­la­tion), a form­er tra­peze art­ist and mo­tor­cy­cle stunt rid­er. Some specu­late that Batwoman was intro­duced to tamp down crit­i­cism of the Bat­man strip as la­tent­ly homo­sex­ual (three men liv­ing in a man­sion).

Bar­ba­ra has had a tem­pes­tu­ous time as Bat­girl — at one time be­com­ing a par­a­ple­gic and using her men­tal skills as the su­per­hero in­for­ma­tion bro­ker Or­a­cle — but has prov­ed en­dur­ing to this day, where she once a­gain wears a Bat-suit. She was in­stru­men­tal in launch­ing the su­per­hero team Birds of Prey, rep­li­cat­ing that role in the 2002 show of the same name.