Eventually, sisters will do it for themselves

Huntress- Spider-Woman

Sometimes, DC and Marvel introduce female characters that are wholly and somewhat cynically based on marquee male heroes. And sometimes, female characters of that sort can gain a measure of self-defined dignity…

The Huntress character was initially conceived to as Batman’s daughter —namely, the Batman from Earth 2, who had debuted in 1939, married Catwoman and sired Helena Wayne.

But along came the Crisis, and the Huntress was reconceived as a Italian-American Mafia Princess evidently possessed by rather a lot of Catholic guilt. Helena Bertinelli would now exculpate the sins of her family by combatting the criminal element a la certain Dark Knight. I’m only slightly familiar with this version, but I like the way she was portrayed in Grant Morrison’s JLA.

As for Spider-Woman: the Jessica Drew character was created to secure a copyright for Marvel and to launch an animated program in the late 1970s. She has been depowered a number of times to see the Spider-Woman name go to other characters, which suggests that she was not beloved of the Marvel PTB of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

But Brian Bendis, a writer who dominates the Marvel line and who writes sub-Mamet style dialogue that I don’t much like, has restored the Drew character (as well as Ms Marvel) to prominence. Strong women in the MU: how novel!

Commonalities:
Both characters’ histories have been ret-conned significantly, but the status quo for both currently is that both grew among and then rebelled against criminal organizations.

Differences:
Huntress is a female iteration of Batman and thus has no powers, whereas Spider-Woman is a female iteration of Spider-Man and has almost identical abilities.

Alternate histories:

HU: Helena Bertinelli is born in Europe but is orphaned at a very young age, is adopted by members of the terrorist organization KOBRA and is trained in various deadly martial arts disciplines. She becomes disaffected with the organization in her early ‘20s, moves to the United States and assumes the heroic guise of the Huntress. She is periodically debilitated, but has recently joined the Justice League— said membership, however, is said to have been assumed by an impostor.

SW: Jessica Drew is born into a family that’s deeply immersed in the criminal underground. After her parents are killed by rival gangsters, Drew resolves to destroy organized crime and trains herself to her physical pinnacle. Taking the codename Spider-Woman, Drew enters the orbit of an often disapproving Captain America and eventually joins the Avengers. But while Spider-Woman resigns from that organization in disgrace, she has has since worked with the Defenders and with a group of female operatives.