Batwoman #22 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Batwoman and Co. do some major cramming for the big Batman test.

The Review: Batwoman is not the first person to attempt the takedown of Batman, but she is the first hero to do so.  This means a very different kind of approach to the task than that you typically get from his villains.  Their plans are usually born out of years of direct experience with the Bat, meticulously plotted and conspired, with the intent to kill.  Batwoman has the uglier task of taking in Batman alive without ever having fought him face-to-face.

With that in mind, if she’s actually going through with this, then she and her team will require a lot of prep-time to defeat the absolute master of it.  No better way to start than by cornering his enemies first, which is a challenge in itself—or, at least, it should be.  Honestly, you expect far more resistance from Bane than what you see here, even if he’s cut off from Venom on an island and facing two well-equipped* opponents.  But given how much ground Williams-Blackman have to cover in this issue, maybe they can’t afford as much of a Bane-fest as they’d like.

Batwoman #20 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Sandu Florea (inks), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: If you start thinking you can take the Batman alone, you need an intervention.

The Review: My favorite thing about this title is its willingness to allow all its characters to have a voice in the story, to make decisions and have a life that isn’t dictated by Batwoman’s actions.  That’s not to say the series doesn’t take on an additional burden with that.  The more rounded and independent characters you have, the more attention and development they demand.  By taking on a life of their own, they can shift the story in ways the writer didn’t intend.

While Williams-Blackman obviously have an interest in explaining how the D.E.O. came by Batwoman’s sister in the first place, I’m not sure that merited a six-page long, somewhat rambling narrative from Chase.  It really opens up more mysteries than it closes, as we don’t know how the Religion of Crime got their hands on Beth or even how she was revived.  Bones admits that where the sarcophagus in which she was found is concerned, “Hell, we still can’t figure out if it’s magic, or alien tech, or something else entirely.”

Batwoman #19 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Walden Wong (inks), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Chase and Kate demonstrate that every sisterhood is its own beast.

The Review: Where Batwoman really separates itself from the competition is how much effort has been put into developing the supporting cast as fully-rounded characters, with lives and problems outside of whatever Kate’s got herself up to at the moment.  At this point, you feel like you know Maggie Sawyer, Jacob Kane, Cameron Chase, and Bette Kane as intimately as you know Kate herself, which is a rare and special kind of achievement for a superhero series.

How often do you get a series where a supporting character is so compelling she can have her own series.  At one point, Chase had just that, and here, Blackman-Williams demonstrate why.  Her vendetta against “the capes and masks” is clearly a manifestation of witnessing her father die from his wannabe superhero aspirations.  There’s a genuine pathos to Chase’s bitterness that makes this otherwise ludicrous set of circumstances feel real.  In some ways, her perspective of the whole costumed capers thing (“cosplay”) is very convincing; in some ways, you can easily be swayed into viewing her as a hero in her own right.

Batwoman #18 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Batman and Batwoman squabble over who gets to take what for their trophy case.

The Review: All in all, the Medusa storyline took three arcs and eighteen months to get from start to finish.  That’s a long time for any superhero title these days to spend on a single antagonist.  While Williams-Blackman did break up the action with quite a few smaller plot threads within the overarching story (e.g. Bette’s fall and recovery, Maggie and Kate’s relationship, etc.), this doesn’t change the fact that they put our heroine into a fictional rut.

For that reason, this issue is our first chance to see Batwoman take on a new mission, giving us a sense of the kind of challenges that sets her apart from the rest of the Bat-family.  Unfortunately, she’s not exactly operating according to her own agenda now, is she?  With the D.E.O. calling the shots, Batwoman winds up tackling opponents usually under her counterpart’s domain.  By doing so, she is no longer her own woman; she becomes the redundant, derivative hero we all dread—and she knows it, too.  Thus Colonel Kane observes as she threatens Mr. Freeze, “Look at her posture…  She’s posing, play-acting.”

Batwoman #13 – Review

By: W. Haden Blackman (story), J.H. Williams III (story & art), Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Old-school monsters versus new-school warriors—guess who wins.

The Review: This has been a pretty grand week for Wonder Woman.  Not only did her critically acclaimed ongoing series release a new issue, but she got her a personal arc in Justice League and a sizable guest role here.  This gives us the rare opportunity to examine her character from three different angles at once.  Brian Azzarello’s Diana is compassionate, classy, wise.  Geoff John’s Diana vacillates between blithe naivety and hardened conviction.

Blackman-Williams offer a Diana who winds up coming across as the most human of all of them.  If she appears at first blush as somewhat remote, it has everything to do with Batwoman’s anxiety at merely being in her presence.  While Kate makes a valiant attempt to keep it cool, her nerves manifest in little ways (the plane she pilots shudders every time Wonder Woman speaks).  Well aware of her comrade’s tension, Diana keeps quiet, wisely or not, and seems distant for it.

Batwoman #0 – Review

By: W. Haden Blackman (story), J.H. Williams III (story & art), Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Who wouldn’t give up a life of luxurious playing for French torture chamber?

The Review: Of all characters, Batwoman probably needed an origin story least.  After all, she appeared on the scene all of six years ago and has enjoyed quite a bit of publicity since.  When she took over the lead in Detective Comics in 2009, we learned the major points of her life: getting kidnapped by terrorists, losing her mother and sister, the dismissal from West Point, etc.  She actually has the distinction of having a prior #0 issue just last year.

And yet Blackman-Williams still manage to produce an enlightening, engrossing story delving into Kate Kane’s pre-Batwoman days, while steering clear of already covered terrain.  Instead, they have the luxury of filling in the gaps between the aforementioned big events of Kate’s background.  Plenty of creators had this same opportunity, only to offer just one discrete moment in their characters’ lives.  Blackman-Williams lay out a whole slew of formative experiences for Kate, giving her one of the most developed histories of all characters in the current DCU.

Batwoman #12 – Review

By: W. Haden Blackman (story), J.H. Williams III (story & art), Dave Stewart (colors)

The Story: Amazon meets Marine.  It may be a match made in heaven.

The Review: I’ve spoken quite a many times on the enigmatic persona of Wonder Woman, how remote and difficult to pin down she is, but now lately, I wonder if that’s as negative a quality as I’ve made it out to be.  In a way, she can’t avoid being removed from us because of her unique nature.  As a mixture of goddess and mortal, as a member of a mythic race, as someone who prescribes to a lifestyle and ideology all her own, maybe she has no choice but to stand alone.

That may explain why, after all these years, Wonder Woman still has no one you can consider her definitive partner.  I don’t count her Trinity status, which often just feels like her getting shoehorned between the World’s Finest.  Nor do I view her relationships with Donna Troy (if indeed the character still exists in the new DCU) or Cassie Sandsmark as true partnerships; she’s more of an occasional mentor, happy to meet up every now and then to dole out a new Amazon warrior trick, but uninterested in any long-term collaboration.  And we’ve definitely never seen her get intimate with any of her peers in the superheroine community.

Batwoman #11 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy & Pere Perez (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: From woman to man to dog—the devolution of Maro.

The Review: At one point in this issue, Maggie remarks, with total affection, “Oh, Kate…you never do anything half-assed, do you?”  And while this is trademark Bat-family behavior, for Kate this seems especially true.  She has a persistence that slides well into stubbornness.  She may be resistant to change, but once she decides to, she doesn’t transition into it like most of us; she goes for it heart, mind, body, and soul.

Take this case of Gotham’s disappearing children, which Batwoman has investigated since nearly a year ago.  With each arc, the opposition gets only more formidable and the stakes bigger, yet she’s clearly committed to seeing this mystery through to the very end—whenever that may be.  Just when you thought her underground confrontation with Maro and four supernatural minions would top everything off, you learn there’s a greater battle yet to come.

Batwoman #10 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Sometimes people are so close, it’s like they share one body.  Sometimes they actually do.

The Review: This fragmented approach to storytelling that Williams-Blackman have taken on has been an interesting experiment, and a pretty successful one.  Keeping six different plotlines running at the same time in each issue and somehow delivering a coherent, unified read is no easy feat, so in that respect alone, Williams-Blackman have been wildly effective.  But up until now, there didn’t seem to be any reason to write the arc this way except for sheer novelty.

Now, however, with each plotline running closer to each other in time, all coalescing into the “Now” of the present story, you can see how each informs and plays off the others.  Imagine one of those photo-mosaics, where you have scads and scads of little pictures, each with a distinctive subject of its own, yet all coming together to form a single, focal image.  We’ve been too close to the individual pictures, and only now do we step back and see what we’re really looking at.

Batwoman #9 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (story), Trevor McCarthy (art), Guy Major (colors)

The Story: Kate Kane has it all—the good life, the love life, and definitely the night life.

The Review: I know I’m a bit late to the party in saying this, but I think it’s pretty amazing how naturally people have taken to this title as an ongoing series considering how its lead is an openly lesbian character living an openly lesbian life.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this makes Batwoman the first mainstream comic of its kind, and beyond even that remarkable achievement, it’s impressive how few people have given it a second thought.

And why should they?  Certainly Kate and her supporting cast do not.  Perhaps the complete lack of discrimination shown in Kate’s world thus far seems a tad idyllic—fictionally so—but it also emphasizes that Kate’s sexuality is irrelevant to the demands of her story, except insofar it determines where her relationships with certain characters will proceed.  In many ways, this situation represents the way things might be, or ought to be, in the future.

Batwoman #8 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (writers), Amy Reeder (penciller), Rob Hunter (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Kate demonstrates she’s not exactly girlfriend material.

The Review: A black friend of mine once told me that to make it in this world, “you can’t work as hard as a white man; you have to work harder.”  A dim outlook, but one no less wise for it.  I think the same philosophy applies to women as well, perhaps even more so, and perhaps especially to women in the superhero business.  One of the long-running, subtle themes of this series is Batwoman’s struggle to craft a heroic identity beyond “the female Batman.”

The first step in that struggle involves her lack of resources.  Though independently wealthy, she doesn’t have the technological connections and inventiveness to be as well-equipped as the Dark Knight.  Working for the D.E.O. has clearly caught her up some.  Here, she gets to put her voice-controlled throwing dart (with the bit of alien A.I. inside) to use against Medusa’s monster minions.  As cool as the dart’s versatility is, it takes away from Batwoman’s abilities to a certain extent as it takes down all her enemies for her, all in a row.

Still, considering she’s outnumbered by supernatural foes, the extra help is warranted.  Besides, she proves her chops later in the issue (but earlier in the story) by singlehandedly executing a breakout at sea, clearing two boats full of GCPD cops, including her girlfriend, in the process.  The scene plays out yet another complication in Batwoman’s life: the overlap between her civilian identity and her night job.  Batman’s had a long time to separate his personas, but now that Kate’s dating Batwoman’s direct competition, such divisions don’t seem feasible now.

Batwoman #7 – Review

By: J.H. Williams III & W. Haden Blackman (writers), Amy Reeder (penciller), Rob Hunter (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Don’t be too hard on him, Kate—everyone needs a hook to get by in this world.

The Review: Last issue marked something of a turning point for this title.  The first story arc, appropriately enough, focused entirely on delivering a knockout tale that would get you to fall in love with its tone, its sophistication, and its star—check, check, and check.  Now that you’re hooked, it’s time to expand the scope of the series and get you to sympathize with its world and supporting cast.

With that in mind, Williams-Blackman’s “six story” format works very well, especially in this issue, now that most of the light setup is out of the way and they can really focus on knitting the various perspectives together.  It’s clear that a lot of thought went into deciding which scenes go where, as despite the lack of chronological order, you can still see the plot develop in a fairly clear fashion.

The best example starts in Kate’s story, where she encounters Abbott (a werebeast from the Religion of Crime), who worries Medusa might “run us out of Gotham.”  We cut to Maro, and see Killer Croc complain that the occultist promised to make me big time…to give me the juice I need to eat Gotham alive.”  Both these scenes intersect in the following chapter from Maggie’s POV, where we see Croc, now buffed out and feral, tearing into various werebeasts.  A Medusa agent soon after states, “…the Gator’s gut is full of acolytes and Abbott has gone to ground,” proving Abbott’s concerns from earlier.  This is a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too; the story feels lively from the constant cuts, but you can follow along quite easily.

All this is the more plotty sort of stuff, but Williams-Blackman also take the opportunity to do some necessary character work.  So far, they haven’t quite managed to pin down Maggie nor Chase, both having assertive, wry voices which just happen to echo Batwoman’s herself.  It’s a case where we have three strong women, each with strikingly similar backgrounds, so it’ll take some doing to define Chase and Maggie’s personalities and make them more distinguishable.