A mass of Bat books
I lost some posts from Wednesday due to a foolish decision to do server maintenance. This is one of the articles that went missing.
This week has seen the release of four major Bat books, the heart and soul of my comic collection.
We start today with Catwoman, the book which I had to run all across London to get my hands on. This book, along with Batwing, have proven to be extremely strong book, Winick’s writing seems to be some of the strongest in DCnU. While we all know Selina to be the ultimate vixen, a femme fatale with the whole world at her feet, we also see her with a vulnerable side in this book. A little glimpse into her past leaves a lot open for future story-lines and character progression, but gives the entire series a great jumping off point. Some say that the ending of the issue was overly pornographic, and while I have to agree to an extent, I’m glad that most of the clothing was left on, and that it was actually Bruce’s flesh that ended up in show. A very welcome departure from the norm indeed. To the right we see my favourite panel from the comic, reminding me of Stinky from the Powergirl books; possibly the biggest smile I’ve had on my face during the new 52.
Nightwing, a comic I have been looking forward to for a while, opens dramatically with three amazingly drawn double page spreads, with the paneling sucking you into the action, emphasising the speed and grace with which Dick moves. Interestingly, this book doesn’t linger on Dick’s history through flashbacks, but helps lay out his story by bringing the Haly’s Circus to town, and dealing with his troubled past. While little insight is given as to why Dick is no longer Batman (I’d like to see more on this), I’m glad to finally have a Nightwing book to add to my collection; I came into comics just after Batman’s death. Starting afresh with him may bring a new audience, especially now that his costume is more “in tune” with the bat theme. The blue has been dropped and red is in fashion, just like the rest of the family. It’s nice to see that, while Dick was Batman for a while, they are still very different people, as the panel shows; I think it’s these core differences that made DC switch Dick back into the Nightwing role.
A brand new book to the DC Universe appeared this week in the form of Red Hood and the Outlaws. This is a book that, once again, I have been looking forward to for quite a while. It seems that Red Hood has gone from being an enemy of Batman, to someone that appears (on the surface) to be a colleague. Jason Todd is wearing the Bat logo on his shirt in an upgrade to his costume which suggests some kind of connection. We all know that Bruce doesn’t agree with Jason’s methods, but who knows, maybe there is some backing. I feel that the reader is left feeling a little bit out of the loop with this comic with the story behind a couple of the secondary characters being left out. I have no idea who it is that informed Jason of the mission at hand, and I have no idea who he’s supposed to be saving, though I’m sure this is deliberate to keep the reader wanting more. There’s little back story to these characters that cannot be described in the few lines they are given, so a lot more emphasis was put on the action. Starfire’s costume continues to be a hot topic as once again it appears not to exist, and this is compounded with her apparent lack of morals too. On an aesthetic note, Jason’s hair is short and black again after a brief spell being long and red, I guess so not to confuse him with Arsenal.
Finally, we come to Batman. This book is strong from start to finish, setting itself up as what can only be considered an early story-line in the Batman canon. Dick and Tim certainly don’t appear to be much older than Damian, and they are near enough a foot shorter than Bruce himself. This isn’t unheard of in the new 52, we already know that Action Comics is set before Superman and Justice League, so it’s not unreasonable to think the same of Batman.We start off with a double page spread, giving is a visual clue of what Batman’s foes are going to look like in the near future, removing the surprise maybe, but new readers might wish to know the who’s who of Gotham villains. We get a nice few panels of both Bullock and Gordon, which do well to set up the relationship between Batman and the GCPD. Finally, we are reminded how much of a philanthropist Bruce is, hitting all the bases for anyone who hasn’t heard of Batman before. I think you have to be under 5 for that to happen. The ending of this book is a little dark, though nothing on Detective comics.
In all, I’m genuinely excited about the future of the Bat universe and how it fits into the DCnU as a whole, and there is a lot of teasing about future stories about Nightwing, though I don’t want to commit my theories to the web just yet!
In all, I’m genuinely excited about the future of the Bat universe and how it fits into the DCnU as a whole, and there is a lot of teasing about future stories about Nightwing, though I don’t want to commit my theories to the web just yet!