Bait And Switch: Batwoman #14 Review

Despite the fact that the book has been on my pull list at my local comic store, where they know me by name and threaten to ban me if I even remotely try to imply that some douchebags might use “Batwoman” as a verb, I came into Batwoman #14 nearly blind, since I rarely actually read the book anymore.

Oh sure, I always look at the book, at least when J. H. Williams III draws it, because it is one of the most beautifully drawn and laid-out monthly books you can find on the shelves these days. Williams has a unique panel layout, ways of tying panels together, and often uses small panels for storytelling that, when you rack focus backwards, hides truly gorgeous backgrounds hiding in the bleed, that you’ll just not see elsewhere. It’s an awesome looking book… problem is, I just don’t find Williams to be all that compelling a writer. His opening arc from last September was actually the long-solicited and often-delayed Batwoman mini-series that was originally solicited for February, 2011, which meant that by the time it actually debuted, it was set in the pre-New 52 universe, and just didn’t quite fit.

Further, the stories just didn’t grab me; a Bat-family hero working almost completely separately from the main Bat titles, with stories weighted heavily toward the supernatural, simply didn’t hook me in. You might notice that we’ve never reviewed an issue of Batwoman here, mostly because none of them were good – or bad – enough to really whip any of us up enough to sit down and write several hundred words about them. In general, they looked great, with stories that didn’t stick to the brain, and while there was almost always a visual in each issue to make you stop and go, “Wow!”, those visuals weren’t enough to make the stories any more memorable.

However, I decided to make an extra effort to get into Batwoman #14, mostly because of that cover, which, to someone only initiated enough into the series to know that the protagonist often battles with the supernatural, implied the promise that perhaps Batwoman and guest-star Wonder Woman might be dealing with, or perhaps fighting, Jonah Hex.

Yeah, that’s not what happened. Not that there isn’t some good stuff here, but the cover writes a promise that the story doesn’t cash.

The story opens by confirming for us that, despite the Confederate flag and All-Star Western style font on the cover (which, based on the story, doesn’t appear to have a damn thing with anything) and the apparent gunslinger who does, in fact, have a giant, gaping, Hex-style facial scar, the guy we’re talking about is not Jonah Hex, but Pegasus. Yes, that Pegasus, who bears the scars due to extended torture by his brother Falchion, who was trying to recruit Pegasus to the cause of their mother, Medusa – yes, that Medusa. Pegasus tells Wonder Woman and Batwoman that Medusa is actually preparing to attack Gotham City, and in return Wonder Woman gives Pegasus his requested “warrior’s death” via a hard chop to the neck. So apparently Marie Antoinette was a fucking badass warrior, but I digress. Anyway, while Batwoman and Wonder Woman get the news and prepare to return to Gotham, Medusa and her army of local goons, costumed villains, and apparently Killer Croc (I assume it’s Killer Croc, based on his general appearance and that Medusa calls him “Waylon,” but it isn’t explicitly stated) jacked up on some kind of magical steroids are busily stomping on Gotham cops, Batfamily members and the general public. Medusa then casts her magic, turns Croc into the Hydra, as Wonder Woman and Batwoman arrive…

So let’s start with the positive about the issue, about which there is actually quite a lot: the retelling of Pegasus’s torment via Batwoman’s forensic examination of his wounds was in-character for a Bat story, and a clever gimmick for delivering what amounts to four pages of exposition. Further, the apparently mismatched pairing of walking god Wonder Woman and regular person Batwoman is explained and solidly justified in a sequence of internal dialogue from each character: Wonder Woman marvels at Batwoman’s courage in facing all this weird shit, and Batwoman marvels that she is being treated as a peer by Wonder Woman. Granted, Wonder Woman’s confession carries a bit more weight, as Batwoman’s could very easily be switched, with only a couple of words, to, “Holy crap! I’m about to open for Foghat!”, but the sequence clarifies and solidifies the relationship between the two to an uninitiated reader like me.

The sequence, which includes Wonder Woman’s killing of Pegasus upon his request, further provided some interesting character beats for Batwoman and for Wonder Woman in how they handle the act. We see Wonder Woman fearing that, on an infinite timeline, she will become too quick to use lethal force, and Batwoman resisting against the idea that Pegasus should have been killed. Seeing characters display doubt over their actions, particularly an action as morally ambiguous as killing a dude on request, is good shit to me, and it helped humanize both characters.

Further, the attack on Gotham by Medusa and her hired goons was reasonably effective, giving at least lip-service to the idea that the police and costumed adventurers of Gotham could fight back against the incursion without being summarily turned to stone, and showing, in at least a couple of panels, that the Bat family would respond to this kind of massive attack. And the use of Killer Croc as a vessel to become the Hydra is pretty inspired… although I have no idea if Medusa and Hydra have any mythological common ground; Googling the two terms is only enlightening if you want to know how to hack into a router. And it is always fun to see Detective Bullock yank his pistol, for all intents and purposes say, “Fuck it,” and take on ridiculous odds.

So there is a lot of good stuff going on here, and it will probably satisfy anyone looking for decent character-based stuff (which either means, to me, that Williams has improved as a writer, or that the co-writing duties of W. Haden Blackman have given things a much-needed boost)… but it only works if you are willing to put everything that is happening in every other Bat title completely out of your mind. In Batman and the other Bat titles, the Batman Family is grappling with The Joker in the Death Of The Family crossover. Nobody in any of those sister titles has expended any cycles worrying about, nor even mentioning, that a mythological creature and a giant monster have laid siege to Midtown. Which, on some level, is fine; I am a firm believer that continuity shouldn’t ever get in the way of a good story, but it requires a serious mental clean-and-jerk to suspend disbelief enough to buy that this level of destruction in Gotham would only merit the attention of Nightwing and Catwoman in one panel.

But as usual, no matter what is going on in the story, Batwoman #14 is worth at least a flip-through in the comic store for Williams’s art. There is no one doing work like this in monthly comics right now. His panel layouts are inventive and interesting, moving the story ahead effectively in a way that visually, no one else can match. His figures are realistic, although his facial expression tend to go between “grim determination” and “completely in silhouette.” And his detailed backgrounds in the bleed take full advantage of his smaller, interestingly-placed panels, giving a ton a extra detail and making full use of the page. I wouldn’t necessarily give this book to a new comic reader – “interesting” panel layout doesn’t necessarily mean “easy to read,” particularly if you’re not a veteran a decoding a comic page – but it is beautiful, beautiful stuff.

Williams and Blackman got me to read this issue using a dirty trick that roped me in repeatedly when I was but a lad buying 30-cent books out of a spinner rack: a bait-and-switch cover that led me to believe I’d see Jonah Hex in the issue, that the story simply didn’t deliver upon. However, what I got was a pretty satisfying, well-rounded character story that was interesting enough to get me to actually sit down and read the next issue. The trick to reading Batwoman #14 is to not get too pissed off about what the cover seems to promise, and to pretend that, frankly, Batwoman exists in some Elseworlds universe that is completely unrelated to any existing Batman or DC continuity at large. If you can do that, you’ll probably like what you see here, even if, like me, you haven’t really read any of the prior issues leading up to it. It’s worth a look…

…but seriously, J. H.: that cover was kind of a douchy move.