COVERGIRL: Nice angle, positioning readers close to the bad guy’s face, smashed into the glass floor of a submarine. Like my kids making pig noses on car windows. But violent.
Can almost hear the “oof” leaking out from between his thuggish lips.
Also, Batwoman’s orange isn’t Batwoman Orange anymore. Amy Reeder Hadley joined the team a few issues back; maybe she’s responsible? Or perhaps its simply because the colors pale when viewed through seawater? In any case, I miss Batwoman Orange, on fierce display on the cover of issue #1, to your right.
INSIDE STORY: 7 repeats the organizational concept of 6, divvying the book up by character. And for each character, a bullet:
• Jake Kane continues his bedside vigil, talking to his coma-swaddled niece Bette about his twin girls Beth and Kate, the former full of energy, the latter possessing marked determination. Beth is now dead. Kate is now a superhero.
• Batwoman’s daytime persona Kate is enjoying a chi-chi sushi date with Detective Maggie Sawyer when, mid-maki, she spots Abbott the Werebeast skulking outside the restaurant. (Aside: Abbot bears a passing resemblance to Fables’ Bigby.) Villain cartel Medusa is trying to run him out of town. Abbott offers to help Kate run Medusa out of town, but Kate calls him “freaky” and returns to Sawyer. Not sure of the backstory, but Kate’s being a rudey. At our house we keep a “positive points” chart, and Ms. Kane will NOT be earning any today.
• A week after her fancy Kate-date, Detective Sawyer swat-teams into a Medusa-den and captures Sune, sister of Maro, Medusa’s second in command.
• A minute later, Agent Chase (who I view as Sawyer-competition, though she has yet to reveal a fondness for Kate or, for that matter, humanity) orders Batwoman to retrieve Sune for the DEO.
• Batwoman does not pursue Sune, but instead takes on Medusa kingpin Falchion and his army of horror-movie freaks, including a fiercely goofy killer crocodile with the most awesome name of Waylon Jones. Bloody Mary also is especially striking, having crawled off the set of Carrie and arrived in Gotham with fiercely manicured red claws, all the better to pierce you with, my dear.
RAMBLE: Visually creative, especially the opening pages where Batwoman physically addresses the clawed thug who gutted her cousin Bette. Each character’s section features a distinct set of colors and presentation style: “Chase’s story” looks very clinical, while “Kate’s Story” presents our heroine as a bright spot in an otherwise drab daytime Gotham.
Whenever Chase appears, I worry for Kate’s relationship with Maggie Sawyer, though neither Kate nor Chase has given me any reason to fret. However, Chase beats Maggie in the hots department; she’s a sharp-dressed drag-ging Madonna to Sawyer’s middle-aged state senator. Not suggesting Kate go for the looker, just wondering what the creators are saying about each character. This is a visual medium, and I’m paying attention.
Favorite sequence comes at comic’s end. Supremely cinematic – all the horror-show freaks zombie-stepping towards Batwoman and Batwoman verbally tossing them aside:
“This is just getting ridiculous. Falchion! Let’s get on with it!”