May it be the first of many - Batwoman Elegy

As you may have noticed, I'm not really an art person, as comic fans go. I'll follow good writing anywhere as long as the art isn't nightmare-fuel bad. (You know which run of Runaways I'm glaring at right now, don't you?) It takes a lot to get me enthusing about the art before I get around to the writing. So you know that J.H. Williams' work on Batwoman Elegy is probably just that good.

For the record, it's just that good.

Instead of the usual murky blob of brown, umber and black with a little navy blue thrown in for spice, the night here is a palette of teal and white and black, splashed with crimson whenever Batwoman appears. Every page is a marvel of design and style. The whole thing feels, there's not another word for it, mythic. Every panel is so infused with this particular comic's personality that you could never mistake it for anything else. This is what big name superhero comics can look like when they're a labor of love.

Lampshading the costume issue. Oh, silly fathers. Yes, Dad, red boots are way more important than flat ones.True, I'm not in love with all of the character design. While Batwoman is a joy to the eye and conjures to mind some sort of dark efficient goddess of fire and death, in her civilian dress, Kate Kane looks like a strung out hipster on a heroin and mascara binge, not the trained soldier she is - not even in posture or mannerism. If that were a character detail revealing the state of her health or the crowd she runs with, I'd be all for it, but I have the sneaking suspicion that the creators just thought it looked cool and trendy. Still, that's a small and very personal complaint.

The story is absorbing too, as you'd of course expect of the redoubtable Mr. Rucka. Suitably epic, it involves a strange criminal cult ruled by a mad through the looking glass Queen named Alice, midnight chases, secret origins, ex-girlfriends and long lost siblings.

Reading Batwoman Elegy, it makes perfect sense that Kate's Batwoman, not Batgirl, even though the title was open when she started. She was an adult when she started heroing and she's no one's girl. It would never occur to her to call herself anything-girl, frankly. And that's Batwoman all over.

Her origin story is satisfyingly organic and solid - unlike many, it isn't the sort of cardboard routine that reads as if it were cribbed from a book called "Ten Backstories for the Successful Superhero". Interestingly, Batwoman isn't Batwoman out of a need for revenge or an obsession with superheroes. After she lost her mother and sister and nearly died in a kidnapping when she was little, Kate Kane desperately wanted nothing more than to follow in her parents' footsteps and serve in the military. Don't ask, don't tell put an end to that (someone asked), so masked vigilante was something in the nature of a Plan B for living a life of violent public service. Frankly, when gays and lesbians are allowed to serve openly, whoever is writing Batwoman will have a hell of a time explaining why she doesn't ditch the cape and sign right back up.

What's more, for all her losses, Batwoman has a family that's there for her. Her father, a retired Colonel, supports her vigilante career 100%, helping her train, assembling her gear and costumes for her and generally serving as her behind the scenes sidekick as well as beloved parent.

Sometimes it does get a little silly. Renee Montoya makes sense, they're both from Gotham and Renee is Kate's ex-girlfriend. But Maggie Sawyer? What, does Batwoman have a magical Sapphic-magnet ray that brings every lesbian in DC Continuity into her comic? We're only one storyline in! At this rate, I think we can expect Scandal Savage to appear on page three of the upcoming Batwoman ongoing series. Also (beware! spoilers!) a certain character is actually Kate's long lost identical twin sister under a layer of goth makeup and hair dye. How she manages to go about a hundred pages without recognizing the face she sees in the mirror daily, makeup or no makeup, is a mystery to me. Ah, comics magic. I suppose if no one can see through Clark's glasses, it makes sense?

This is what a labor of love looks like.

Comments

[Gull D. Craig]

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Very good! I like it very much,but If you can add more video and pictures can be much better, I have never read such a lovely article and I am coming back tomorrow to continue reading.

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