Missing Mom / Comic Books

---

• Batman:
  • Batgirl (2000): Cassandra Cain's mother passed her to her father literally at birth, who in turn shot the midwife dead and took the infant to be trained as the ultimate assassin in isolation from spoken language. Given that said mother became known as Lady Shiva, it is hard to imagine that her influence would have helped...and the kid seemed to have turned out emotionally together enough to run away from home rather than kill again... at least until she's forced to kill Shiva herself.
  • Batwoman lost her mother in a hostage situation when she was a kid. She also lost her twin sister...or so she thought.
  • A Death in the Family: Jason is trying to find his biological mother. There are three women in this story who potentially fit in the profile, and the third one is his mom. Her name is Sheila Haywood, she's an aid worker in Magdala, Ethiopia... and she turns out to have massive issues.
  • Both of Tim Drake's parents spent a lot of time traveling the world while he stayed at home in Gotham and eventually both of them were murdered but his mother died first by about a year leaving just him and his dad as the surviving Drakes by the time Robin (1993) started.
  • Talia Al-Ghul's mother, Melisande, is dead by the present (just how she died has varied).
• Cardboard: Cam's mom and Mike's wife, Carol, died before the story begins.
• Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil, was raised entirely by his father (this turned into Parental Abandonment when the guy was murdered in the first issue of Matt's series). His mother went completely unmentioned for over twenty years before finally showing up out of the blue; turns out that she abandoned her child to become a nun. Original Sin later revealed that she abandoned him because she was hit with a major case of Post-Natal Depression that drove her to nearly kill him. She was so horrified of the actions that she ran away. Darkdevil, Daredevil's Legacy Character in Spider-Girl, also has a missing mom and a dead dad. It's implied that Mom is still in jail for killing her abusive father. At least, that's what Darkdevil hopes.
• Disney Kingdoms: In the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad series, Abigail moves to the town of Big Thunder after her mother dies.
• Elfquest:
  • Dewshine's mother died in part due to a falling tree branch (she was deaf from a fever and couldn't hear it breaking).
  • Kahvi dies off-page as related by her lover Tyldak, though she hadn't seen her daughter Venka for sometime already due to constantly being off on adventures. She previously abandoned Teir too and was distant at best to her daughter Vaya.
• The Flash: During the New 52, Wally West was reintroduced as a troubled, biracial delinquent whose father was the criminal Daniel West and his mother disappeared during Forever Evil. Even after the original Wally was made into a separate character and his New 52 counterpart retconned into his younger cousin Wallace, the status of Wallace's mother still hasn't been clarified. It's even subtly implied she might not actually exist due to Wallace later discovering he was created by a Cosmic Retcon thanks to Doctor Manhattan meddling with the DCU.
• Green Arrow: Roy Harper once broke an illusory world by asking about his mother — she's so comprehensively missing that the illusion couldn't summon anything from his mind to fill in the details. (Note that this is in addition to being an orphan; his dad's dead, his mom just isn't part of the story.)
• Ghostopolis: Garth's mom ran away before the beginning of the story.
• In Gotham City Garage, Barbara and Kara Gordon's mother died when they were very young. Kara barely remembers her.
• Jessica Jones' parents and little brother were killed in the car crash that gave Jessica her powers. She was adopted into a loving family (the mother had been adopted herself at a similar age), but except for flashbacks, she isn't seen in Alias. Her adoptive parents both finally make a real-time appearance in The Pulse.
• Gloria Mosely of Mosely left the family after the AI started getting more popular. She left to join an Anti AI community.
• Quantum and Woody: Quantum's parents went through a divorce after an auto accident, and she happily left after securing a huge alimony payment. Woody's mother divorced out of an abusive relationship and became an impoverished drug addict, emotionally absent as she left Woody to fend for himself.
• In the first issue of The Sandman (1989), "Sleep of the Just", Alex Burgess's mother is absent from his life for unknown reasons.
• In Seconds, Katie talks to her father on the phone, but her mom is never mentioned. It's implied she died from an unspecified illness.
• Spider-Man: Peter Parker has full-on Parental Abandonment, being raised by his aunt and uncle. Meanwhile, best friend Harry's mom also died when he was quite young (at least, that's what everyone thought), which is a pity since his father Norman isn't exactly "Father of the Year" material.
• Superman:
  • Superman's biological mother Lara died when he was a baby/toddler. In Pre-Crisis continuity, his adoptive mother Martha passed away right prior to his coming of age.
  • In most of origin stories, Supergirl's mother Allura dies when her daughter is barely fifteen.
  • In The Untold Story of Argo City, Dar-Lin's mother Rena disappeared three years ago while accompanying her husband on an expedition to the caves of Kandor.
  • The Girl with the X-Ray Mind: Arlene Luthor died in a car crash when her daughter Lena was a toddler. Lena barely remembers her.
• In Violine, Violine's mom turns out to be missing and Marushka, the woman who adopted her, turns out to have lied about being her mother.
• Brian Fies' Whatever happened to the World of Tomorrow is more about the world at large than the unnamed main characters, but the fact that the son's mother is never ever mentioned stands out like a sore thumb when it's heavily implied his father is serving in WWII - so who is taking care of the teenaged or pre-teen kid?
• Kenton's mother in White Sand is absent, presumably having returned to the Darkside after bearing Praxton a child.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1987): Natasha Teranova is a missing mom, and it breaks her heart that her daughter will likely never know what has happened to her and regrets that she didn't spend more time with her before the mission that went haywire and ended with her lost in space. She makes daily recordings for her daughter just in case the messages can eventually be given to her.
  • Prior to getting hit with a Continuity Snarl so bad she has her own page Wonder Girl Donna Troy always wondered about her birth mother, only knowing she'd been rescued from a fire by Wonder Woman as a toddler and raised on Themyscira with only the vaguest of memories to go on. In Who Is Donna Troy? Dick Grayson was able to help track down Donna's past and discovered Donna's birth mother Dorothy Hinckley gave Donna up to an orphanage when she learned her terminal cancer would not let her be a parent to her little girl for much longer.
  • Wonder Woman: Warbringer: While Theo's dad shows up at the kind of event you'd expect him to bring his significant other to and is talked about quite a bit his mother doesn't even get a mention.
• Since there are many characters in X-Men, the following are only a few examples.
  • Elizabeth Howlett committed suicide after her son killed Thomas Logan.
  • Scott Summers' mother Katherine was killed by D'ken of the Shi'ar empire.
  • Rogue's biological mother would Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence when Rogue was a small child, leaving her traumatized and in the care of her strict aunt.
  • Edie Eisenhardt would be killed in a concentration camp, leading to Magneto's Start of Darkness. His wife Magda fled into the wilderness after giving birth, continuing the pattern.
  • Nightcrawler was probably better off not being raised by his real mother, Mystique.
  • N'Dare Munroe and her husband David were killed when terrorists bombed the building they lived in, orphaning their daughter Ororo.
• Kate Bishop's mother died sometime before Young Avengers started. So did Teddy's, though he didn't know it for years, and then the woman who raised him burned to death in front of him.
• In Zodiac Starforce, Emma's mother is implied to be one of the casualties of the girls' battles with Cimmeria.

---