Name Spotlight: Harriet Cooper

Many people believe that Aunt Harriet is a creation of the Batman (1966) tv show. It's not true, but it's not surprising. After all, with only around 25 appearances until recently, and with most of those appearances being from an era that isn't often collected in trades, television is the only place fans have seen her.

Before I go further, I should probably explain who she is. Harriet is Dick Grayson's aunt, who came to live at Wayne Manor after Alfred died. This occurred in the last couple pages of Detective Comics #328 (April 1964). At this point, you may have the same concern I always have: if Dick has a living aunt that knows where he is, why is he living with Bruce? To my knowledge, this is never explained. This came up a lot in the Pre-Crisis world - basically, there's no reason for Bruce and Dick to grow up the way they did because they have family members coming out of the woodwork all the time.

So now we get to the point of the post: although the character herself was not a creation of the show, her name is! See, in her first appearance - and for most of her appearances afterward - she was simply "Aunt Harriet". Maybe the presumption was that her last name was Grayson, who knows. But the show gave her the last name "Cooper".

It's not a change that happened right away, but in Detective Comics #373 (January 1968), the comics address her by her full name for the first time, and we see that her last name is, in fact, Cooper. This particular issue also changed Mr. Zero's name to Mr. Freeze, so it's clear they had the show on their mind.