Batman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello, et al.

Batman/Wildcat

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 1970-98
Acquired: March 2023
Read: April 2023

Writers: Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Bob Haney

Pencillers: Sergio Cariello, Irv Novick, Bob Brown, Jim Aparo
Inkers: Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Jaime Mendoza, Tom Palmer, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo

Colorists: Jason Wright, Pat Garrahy

Letterers: Kevin Cunningham, Clem Robins

As I said when writing up Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper, the discovery of a preexisting Ted Grant–Selina Kyle relationship in JSA Classified had me curious as to its origins; one of the stories that lead me to was a 1998 miniseries called Catwoman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, and Sergio Cariello. I discovered it had been collected along with a 1997 mini from the same team, Batman/Wildcat, and five issues of The Brave and the Bold from the 1970s where Batman teams up with Wildcat. So, I picked up the whole collection.

Batman/Wildcat is fine. Like many Wildcat stories, it has to contrive some way to be about boxing. In this case, it's that old standby: the forced fight. Criminals are kidnapping people, mostly supervillains, and forcing them to fight each other on a super-secret pay-per-view channel (hey, it was the '90s). A mentee of Wildcat's get scooped up in it, though, and is forced to duke it out in a Wildcat costume, and so Batman and Wildcat run parallel investigations, then get kidnapped and forced to fight, and of course team up to dismantle the entire operation. I could probably go the rest of my life without reading another story where superheroes are forced to fight so rich people can gamble on it, to be honest; there's nothing about that premise that's ever interesting. What beggars belief is the bad guys don't even take Batman's and Wildcat's masks off to find out who they are; indeed, they put extra masks on them so they can't see who they're fighting! I think the story would have also benefited from making Ted's status quo clearer; at the end, he comes out of retirement to go back to fighting crime as Wildcat, but that was the moment I learned he was in retirement to begin with! (This would be set after the Justice Society falls apart in Zero Hour, before it reunites in Justice Be Done.)

Oracle! Ah, 1990s Birds of Prey nostalgia...
from Batman/Wildcat #2 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello and Art Thibert, Danny Miki, & Jaime Mendoza)

The follow-up, Catwoman/Wildcat, is a bit better. Catwoman travels to Las Vegas to carry out a heist where, coincidentally, Ted Grant is in some kind of exhibition match. The heist, honestly, was very confusing. Selina's competing with like two other groups of criminals and there's a lot of double-crossing, and a lot of characters I didn't care about. What was consistently fun was the flirting between Selina and Ted. Selina knows who she is dealing with right away, but it takes most of the story for Ted to figure out who she is (there's a brief flashback to Her Sister's Keeper, despite Catwoman: Year 2's implication it didn't count), and so he doesn't get why this attractive younger woman is coming on to him. Whenever the story focuses on the antics of the two of them it is fun; whenever it focuses on the other characters, I hoped it would get back to Ted and Selina. Thankfully boxing has little to do with it.

It's a very different Selina to the one who seemed shocked at what Ted Grant might ask of her for defense training!
from Catwoman/Wildcat #3 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

Both stories are pencilled by Sergio Cariello who has a... I guess I would say perfectly adequate 1990s style. It's not my jam, and I think he draws Selina/Catwoman a bit weird, but it's a good artistic fit for Chuck Dixon's over-the-top action-focused style of writing.

Cats in heat.
from Catwoman/Wildcat #1 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

The five stories from The Brave and the Bold run the gamut. Each has to have some weird reason for Batman to pull Wildcat into the case; some are more compelling than others. The first, "Count Ten... and Die!" is probably the best. Bruce Wayne is coaching the American team in the World Youth Games in fencing, while Ted Grant is coaching the boxing team. Ted is heckled by the coach of the Russian team, but then also there's a lot of stuff about a spy and needing to transfer a secret tape. Boxing is worked in pretty organically here, and it has its moments, even if it can get a bit contrived. (At one point, Ted Grant sneaks out of a boxing match he is participating in to track Batman to a river in the countryside, rescues Batman from kidnappers after a pitched battle, and returns, all while forcibly dragging his opponent with him... and no one notices this because the lights are out!) I thought the culmination of Ted being goaded was going to be him rising above it, but Batman points out that if Ted Grant doesn't wallop this Russian guy, America may as well give up the Cold War, so Ted punches his lights out for patriotism.

If your story is set in Cold War Vienna, it is mandatory to have a key scene set on the Wiener Riesenrad.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #88 (script by Bob Haney, art by Irv Novick & Mike Esposito)

A couple feel like they could have been about any character, and Ted is barely even in them: in "The Smile of Choclotan!" he's mostly in a trance, in "A Very Special Spy!" Ted is for some reason an exec at an energy firm, and in "Dead Man's Quadrangle" he's running a health spa in the Caribbean. I guess post-JSA he made a run a lot of different businesses?

For some reason, everyone in Mexico calls him "Bat-Hombre." Not, say, "Murciélago Hombre"... or just, you know "Batman"!
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #97 (script by Bob Haney, art by Bob Brown & Nick Cardy)

I was able to embrace the goofiness in "May the Best Man Win Die!" In this, Wildcat does an exhibition boxing match at a Gotham prison... only the guy he fights is a potential witness against the Joker, and the Joker uses the opportunity to infect Wildcat's opponent with a rare tropical illness, and soon the whole prison is in danger. A biologist brings a dog in whose blood he's incubated antibodies to Gotham, but the dog is stolen by the Joker, then it escapes from the Joker, and so Batman, Wildcat, and the Joker are all searching Gotham for a dog who has the key to hundreds of lives. So wacky you've got to love it! I even didn't mind the obligatory Batman/Wildcat slugfest, because it's really just an opportunity for the Joker to infect them with the disease too.

Like, a page later, Batman admits that he has no idea if this is true or not.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #118 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Bob Haney is certainly a wacky writer. In "May the Best Man Die!", Batman goes to the Gotham pound to pick up the dog, but is told someone claiming to be the dog's owner already picked it up... a weird guy with green hair! Like, how could you live in Gotham and see a guy with green hair and not think, "Hmmm... is that the Joker!?" In "Dead Man's Quadrangle," Batman travels to the Caribbean via a commercial flight... in costume! There he is just chilling in first class; the guy seated next to him just casually chatting him up. In the 1970s was airport security so lax? Or does Batman get an exemption? And is a Batsuit really comfortable clothing for a long flight?

Batman has the same annoyances on a flight as us regular folks.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #127 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Some continuity notes: When these stories came out they were evidently controversial, because they feature the "regular" Batman of DC, i.e., the Earth-One Batman, but Wildcat is from Earth-Two! The explanation (given in letter columns, I guess, because it never appears in the stories themselves) was that this was the Wildcat of Earth-One, a character who only appeared in these five issues of The Brave and the Bold and one issue of Super-Team Family. Thus, we are left to infer most of his history: an older superhero, seemingly not active anymore... but in this world there was no JSA. Post-Crisis, I think we can just imagine that these events did happen (approximately) as depicted here, with the new post-Crisis Batman and the new post-Crisis Wildcat. By publication sequence these would go in the period after the JSA kind of came out of retirement for its JLA team-ups, before the JSA was revived full-time in the 1970s issues of All Star Comics, and I think this depiction of Wildcat fits well with that.

Lastly, there's a weird bit in "Dead Man's Quadrangle," where Ted thinks that on his second comeback tour he accidentally killed a man ("Kid O'Hare") in the ring, and thus gave up throwing punches ever again. He gets over it, of course, but this was never mentioned before and thus must have happened in the year since his previous Brave and the Bold appearance yet is just kind of tossed in as if we already know about it! As far as I know, it never comes up again either.

This post is forty-third in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 3 of Justice Society of America. Previous installments are listed below:

Revolutionary Reading: An Examination of the Legion of Super-Heroes Threeboot, Part III: Strange Visitor From Another Century

Comic trade paperback, 137 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06) 
Acquired February 2016
Read May 2016

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: Strange Visitor From Another Century

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Writer: Mark Waid

Pencillers: Barry Kitson, Adam DeKraker, Ken Lashley, Art Thibert, Amanda Conner
Inkers: Mick Gray, Drew Geraci, Barry Kitson, Rodney Ramos
Colorist: Nathan Eyring
Letterers: Phil Balsman, Travis Lanham

One of the clearest explanations of the Mark Waid/Barry Kitson Legion of Super-Heroes is found in the back of this book, where the Legionnaires answer mail from readers of the comic in character. This approach to the old tradition of the lettercol is a delight, and it allows the characters to sort of step outside themselves and describe the premise of the book directly to the reader:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #6 (art by Barry Kitson)

The Legion stands for color, against sterility, as embodied in the virtues of the heroes of the past.

Their virtues are put to the test in this volume, though, which depicts one of the few direct conflicts between the Legion and the society they seek to change. When a group of Legionnaires takes down a terrorist disguised as a Science Police officer outside the home of a guy called Klar who embodies the society they're trying to reform. Klar's wife considers him not "fully clothed" when he's wearing shirt and pants but not hood and goggles, and Klar communicates with his neighbors via screen. He complains the Legionnaires lack "decorum" and "traipse out of doors like savages"!

Here we see something of the dark side of the Legion, as they bully him, stealing his goggles, and mocking his age. This riles up Klar, who comes back with his neighbors to argue with the Legion, who only mock him further:

from Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #16 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

There's some irony here, of course: the Legion has inspired Klar and other social conservatives to interact face-to-face for apparently the first time ever, and Klar's declaration that there is strength in numbers is exactly how the Legion took down Terror Firma in the previous volume. Their revolution has inspired another social movement, yet Klar doesn't recognize that he's abandoning his principles to ostensibly fight for them. Is he becoming a superhero himself? (That's what Matthew from Legion Abstract posits in this nice reading of the scene.)

This is probably the most direct conflict we see between the Legion and society, and on one level, it's pretty harmless-- the Legion shouts out some ageist insults and goes on its way. No real violence is required for them to change society.

That said, it's important to know there's been a major status quo change by this point. The events of the previous volume have shown the United Planets 1) that the Legion of Super-Heroes isn't going anywhere and 2) that the Legion has been successful whereas they have not. So the U.P. changes tactics, and gives the Legion official standing. What happens when they revolutionaries become the establishment? Well, this conflict shows that it actually makes them bullies to a certain extent. The Legionnaires flaunt their newfound authority to intimidate Klar (like I said, they steal his goggles).

It's one thing to punch up, but it's another to punch down, and the Legion is only starting to come to grips with what it means to go from underdogs to establishment, and how you much reorient your attitude appropriately. They're not exactly living up to the virtues of their role models in this sequence, even if they are making the world more colorful, and I'm glad that Kitson and Waid explore that here.

Revolutionary Reading: An Examination of the Legion of Super-Heroes Threeboot, Part II: Death of a Dream

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06) 
Acquired February 2016
Read May 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Death of a Dream

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Writer: Mark Waid

Penciller: Barry Kitson
Interlude Written by Stuart Moore
Additional Pencils: Kevin Sharpe, Georges Jeanty, Ken Lashley
Inkers: Art Thibert, Mick Gray, Drew Geraci, Prentis Rollins, Paul Neary
Letterers: Nick J. Napolitano, Travis Lanham, Phil Balsman, Jared K. Fletcher

Created to change the United Planets, the Legion of Super-Heroes now finds itself in the position of having to save it. As a result, this volume of the Mark Waid/Barry Kitson Legion of Super-Heroes is much less about revolution the first one, drifting away somewhat from the series's unique selling point. Of course, Waid and Kitson are still masters of their craft, and there's lots to enjoy here, good twists and pay-offs and genuine character drama. Loved what happened to "Atom Girl," loved that Brainiac 5 used the slingshot of the original Robin, loved the role of Dream Girl in the proceedings. And much more.

There are points where revolution is discussed, though. Sun Boy, the only Legionnaire whose parents don't disapprove of his being a member, starts to realize that it's not really about the cause they're fighting for, but rather that he's "just an opportunity for them to relive their days as young radicals. Which sucks."

The book also explores the appropriate way to create social change, with both external and internal conflict. Brainiac 5 begins to chafe at Cosmic Boy's leadership of the Legion, believing that Cos is too accommodating of diverse perspectives. Cos would rather create a coalition of diverse interests united around common goals, while Brainiac favors a smaller group dedicated to his leadership of the Legion. Cos's beliefs are shown to have both pluses and minuses: the Legion is awe-inspiring in its size, but its open-door policy proves to be dangerous when it allows suicide bombers to enter into the Legion plaza without interference. I think Cos wins in the end, with his argument that "The Legion’s not twenty guys with corny names and costumes! It is everyone across the galaxy who has made any kind of sacrifice to take back the future! It is everyone who has ever worn this [the Legion symbol] knowing that it makes a difference!" The Legion followers end up fighting alongside the core group in battle, helping save the day. But Brainiac is right that diversity and acceptance comes with its own challenges, challenges that Cosmic Boy struggles to overcome in this book. (In fact, Cosmic Boy needs to be compelled into not leaving the Legion through subterfuge by Invisible Kid.)

Cos does make compromises. In the 31st century, all underagers are monitored on the communications network known as the Public Service; Cos has the opportunity to shut it down, but he ends up needing it communicate during the war against Terror Firma, when it turns out to be the only functioning communications system in the U.P. The revolution is forced to sacrifice some of its principles in order to survive, for better or for ill.

Finally, Terror Firma turns out to be a revolutionary movement itself, albeit a terrorist one (I guess the name is a clue). Made up of the descendants of U.P. citizens exiled to a now-forgotten prison planet, they want to change the corrupt society they were exiled from. But their methods and justifications, especially those of their leader, Praetor Lemnos, remind me of Ozymandias from Watchmen: Lemnos is the man who can shrug off the deaths of innocents to achieve utopia, due to his belief that rebuilding has to take place starting from a blank slate. The conflict between the Legion and Terror Firma thus reenacts an age-old philosophical dispute between revolutionaries: gradual reform vs. catastrophic restart. Perhaps even without thinking about it, the Legion throws their lot in with gradual reform. The implications of that choice will be explored in the series going forward.

Revolutionary Reading: An Examination of the Legion of Super-Heroes Threeboot, Part I: Teenage Revolution

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 2004-05) 
Acquired February 2016
Read May 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes: Teenage Revolution

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Writer: Mark Waid

Penciller: Barry Kitson
Additional Pencils: Leonard Kirk, Dave Gibbons, Scott Iwahashi
Inkers: Art Thibert, Mick Gray, Barry Kitson, James Pascoe, Drew Geraci, Scott Iwahashi
Colorists: Chris Blythe, Paul Mounts, Dave McCaig
Letterers: Phil Balsman, Jared K. Fletcher, Pat Brosseau, Rob Leigh

This is the new Legion of Super-Heroes. In the past, the Legion of Super-Heroes was a group of teenage superheroes from the future. This version, the third since the group was introduced in Adventure Comics #247 back in 1954, is something more: they are revolutionaries. They don't want to beat up bad guys (or they don't only want to beat up bad guys), they want to beat up the system itself. There are seventeen Legionnaires on the "core" team-- but they are only the vanguard of 75,000-member youth movement from dozens of planets across the galaxy.

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

The idea of superheroes as revolutionaries isn't a new one. I would argue that it goes back the genre's ur-text, Action Comics #1 in 1938. Superman in that first story doesn't fight Lex Luthor: he fights war profiteers. And in later stories he tackles other aspects of the United States' economy and social structure, like slumlords and people fixing college football games and unsafe driving conditions. (Okay, and a leaking dam.) This doesn't last, as in Action Comics #13 it starts off about a taxi driver protection racket, but ends up being about the Ultra-Humanite, introducing the first superhero to his first supervillain.

But the idea that the superhero is a revolutionary figure recurs throughout the genre's history, and various creators take it on in various ways: Dennis O'Neill and Neal Adams in Green Lantern/Green Arrow (1970-72), Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch in The Authority (1999-2000), Joe Kelly in Action Comics #775: "What’s so funny about Truth, Justice, & The American Way?" (2001), Mark Millar in Superman: Red Son (2003), and Paul Pope in Batman: Year 100 and Other Tales (1998-2006). Alan Moore has taken on the idea repeatedly in his comics work, including in Miracleman (1982-89), Watchmen (1986-87), and V for Vendetta (1982-89). More on him later, though. I wouldn't suggest that revolution is the only project of the superhero genre (Amazing Fantasy #15, the debut of Spider-Man, captures a whole different part of it), but it is an important part of it.

If you know anything about the comics I listed, it's that they're excellent, but mostly dark, bloody, and dour. Teenage Revolution shows that a revolutionary superhero comic does not have to be like that. The Legion is bright and fun, rebelling against a future that's forgotten how to enjoy itself, where people communicate only via screens (even when in the same room), everyone goes outside completely bundled up, and children's locations are monitored at all times for their safety.

from Teen Titans/Legion Special #1 (art by Barry Kitson)

The teens in the Legion stand for a brighter, more exciting time, and they access this through-- in a sort of metatextual twist that's never really explained-- comic books published by DC Comics. They have spinner racks in Legion HQ:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

...quiz each other on their DC Comics trivia:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #6 (art by Barry Kitson & Art Thibert)

...and even use them as a guide to what "dates" used to be like:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #3 (art by Barry Kitson & Art Thibert)

The superheroes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are a key part of the inspirations of the Legionnaires, as is reflected in their code names:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

But the parameters of the Legion's conflict with the wider society of the United Planets is often defined vaguely. The Legion doesn't want kids (or "underagers," as they are called) to have their locations monitored, but other than that, what are they fighting for? And how are they fighting for it? The comic skirts around these issues, not always willing to show the violence that comes with revolution. Often throughout the series, an external threat ends up diverting the Legion's attention, and their violence is directed against that.

How revolutionaries articulate violence against their own society is a key question in stories of revolution, I think. In his book From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe (2010), Peter Y. Paik argues that most would-be revolutionaries, and fiction about revolutionaries, flinches from these issues. But Paik praises Alan Moore's works (Miracleman, Watchmen, and V for Vendetta are all discussed) as being among those that examine this difficulty thoroughly. Revolutionary change requires violence, he says, and though the moral cost is too high to bear, but "The grievous price of achieving utopia thus ceases to be terrible once Homo sapiens reaches the stage at which it feels free to shrug off as unduly burdensome the moral reservations entailed by the sacrifices that have been committed for the sake of advancing the progress of history."

How does one become able to "shrug"? How do you reach the point where you can say, "Killing all these people was okay because it advanced the progress of history"? Paik's analysis of Watchmen shows how the superhero Ozymandias is one such shrugger.

For the most part, Mark Waid and Barry Kitson's Legion of Super-Heroes avoids these issues. Things rarely get violent between them and the United Planets. (The first panel above refers to one such moment, where the Science Police tried to bulldoze Legion HQ. But the Legion's followers surrounded it and stopped it from happening with their bodies, and no one was hurt: there were no sacrifices.) I'll talk about one such moment when I get to the third volume.

But for now, the very first issue actually has one of the series' most protracted engagements with the idea of revolutionary violence. In this issue, the Legion is summoned to the planet Lallor, which is outside the United Planets, but allied to it. The Legion has been organizing underagers on Lallor into a political majority. It's a little unclear to me exactly what the backstory is. At one point, the leader of the Legion, Cosmic Boy, describes it as an "armed adult rebellion," implying the adults are rebelling against the underagers, but here, a dying Lallor underager tells Invisible Kid:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

...implying that the adults were in control. Either way, there's some kind of armed conflict between the adults on Lallor and the Legion-affiliated underagers. Because the alliance between the United Planets and the government of Lallor, the U.P. government asks the Legion not to intervene against the Lallor government.

The Legionnaires, of course, ignore this edict. They justify their intervention-- they shrug-- in terms of preventing a larger outbreak of violence. Cosmic Boy argues that a number of planets are edging toward war:

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

...and in a war, it's the young who will fight it on behalf of their elders. That it's the young who pay for decisions made by adults in which they have no say is a recurrent social criticism raised by the Legionnaires throughout the series. Here, the Legion engages in violence to prevent the larger violence of a full-scale war, knowing that the young, the disenfranchised will pay the most if there is one.

The United Planets' dithering is often portrayed as the biggest threat to peace. Because the United Planets is so big and so socially conservative, it is not quick to act. Because the Legion exists outside the government, they can act quickly and decisively to cut situations off before they escalate into larger outbreaks of violence. Thus, Cosmic Boy authorizes Legion involvement on Lallor.

from Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 5 #1 (art by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray)

But this is a rare moment in the series. The youth movement that is the Legion of Super-Heroes never has direct, violent confrontations with the social order of the United Planets, something that's hard to imagine would be the case if this comic had been written ten years later, after Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Most of the time, the Legion doesn't have to shrug at all, and it feels like some of the potential of this version of the Legion has been left on the table as a result.

That's not to say there isn't a lot to like about the "threeboot" Legion, but this essay is focused on one particular aspect, not leaving me with much room to mention how much I liked Barry Kitson's clean art, the pervasive feeling of optimism, the clever sci-fi ideas, and especially the character of Dream Girl, who is definitely my favorite in this incarnation. Like the best reboots, Waid and Kitson's take is at least as interesting as what it's replacing, and the differences are more than interesting enough to justify the undertaking.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXVII: Huntress: Year One

Comic trade paperback, 143 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 2008)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2015

Huntress: Year One

Writer: Ivory Madison
Penciller: Cliff Richards
Inkers: Art Thibert, Norm Rapmund, Rebecca Buchman
Colorist: Jason Wright
Letterer: Sal Cipriano

Year Eleven, February
Retcons are a weird thing, but they're a constant of the superhero comic book world. Helena Bertinelli was introduced as the Huntress in the 1989-90 ongoing series The Huntress, a dark, sort of moody noir series that stood on its own, though she did meet Batman once and was also a member of the Justice League International's American branch (since she lived in New York City). She faded away, but in 1992, Chuck Dixon brought her back for a two-issue story in Detective Comics, and then a key role in Robin III: Cry of the Huntress (1992-93), and finally her own miniseries (1994). Each of these tweaked her origin a little bit: soon she was from Gotham, not New York, and the exact details of how her family had been murdered fluctuated with each new story. Her origin got a wholesale retelling in 2000 with Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood (the only one of these I haven't actually read), and then another one in 2008 with this series, Huntress: Year One.

As you read new versions, it's sometimes hard to judge them on their own merits. The original Huntress series by Joey Cavalieri and Joe Staton isn't perfect, but it is distinctive, with dark, moody artwork and a heroine who's not always attractive, physically or elsewise. Though later takes on the Huntress would be darker and more violent, and though the plots of the ongoing sometimes got silly, there's a real sense of the series trying something not because it's tried and true, but because it's new and distinctive. The 1990s would take "dark and gritty" in bad directions sometimes, but I enjoyed what The Huntress seemed to be striving towards, even if it didn't always hit it.

I guess this explains why Batman doesn't like the Huntress.
from Huntress: Year One #5 (art by Cliff Richards and Norm Rapmund & Rebecca Buchman)

So, my problems with Huntress: Year One aren't really its own fault. Its Huntress is a different character than the one created by Cavalieri and Staton, and she has a somewhat different history. I'm not sure what I think of her being raised in Sicily, or having a lost love: I liked the damaged, lonely warrior of the original series that didn't have anyone to support her. But the story Madison Ivory and Cliff Richards tell here is not bad, just different, and on its own merits, it's pretty good-- if nothing exceptional.

Instead of the gritty urban vigilante aspects of the character, this really focuses on mafia princess components, as Helena untangles a conspiracy to deprive her of her inheritance, and much worse, that runs from Sicily to the Vatican to Gotham, and leads to her meeting Batman, Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, Bruce Wayne, and Catwoman, among others. Like a lot of conspiracy stories, some of it went over my head, and there's a lot of characters to keep track of, but Ivory keeps things pretty interesting, and I enjoyed the clean linework of Cliff Richards, Art Thibert, and Norm Rapmund, especially their regal, statuesque Helena.

Here's a weird fact: people would write into the letter column of the Cavalieri/Staton Huntress complaining Helena was too ugly. As a result, the editor asked people to write in about whether they thought that mattered! But I'm pretty sure Staton didn't intend Helena to be unattractive; that was just the way he drew everybody. Anyway, seems unlikely anyone wrote in complaining about that this time out.
from Huntress: Year One #2 (art by Cliff Richards and Art Thibert)

But I just couldn't shake the versions I'd read before from my head. Usually, I feel like I'm better at this. Oh, well.

Next Week: It's Year One again again as Nightwing makes his debut on the Gotham stage!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XL: The Death of the New Gods

Comic trade paperback, 246 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007-08) 
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2015

The Death of the New Gods

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Writer and penciller: Jim Starlin 
Inkers: Matt Banning, Art Thibert, Mark McKenna
Colorist: Jeromy Cox
Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Travis Lanham, Randy Gentile, Steve Wands

Whether this book should even exist is pretty debatable: it's supposed to tie into Final Crisis, but like most Final Crisis tie-ins, it would ultimately do so in a way not very consistent with that book. To wit: all the New Gods die here, in front of Superman, but no one seems to know about this when Final Crisis rolls around.

The book has bigger crimes, though, and those are that it takes Jack Kirby's amazing cosmic epic and crams it into a procedural. The Death of the New Gods should be an operatic tragedy... instead it's a murder mystery? It's a weird misjudging of genre that transforms something mythic into something ordinary. These characters don't feel like gods, but squabbling aliens from any number of mid-range science fiction television shows. Plus, it's not even a good mystery; ten minutes after reading it, and I couldn't have explained to you what had happened exactly, and the revelation of the "villain" is beyond silly. Jack Kirby knew characters had to be reinvented to keep them vital, but this was not the way to reinvent the New Gods-- and I'm surprised that after his runs on cosmic titles for both Marvel and DC, Jim Starlin couldn't do better than this.

Next Week: We reach zero, both issue-wise and quality-wise, in the final volume of Countdown to Final Crisis!

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Houses of Mystery and Secrets, Part VIII: The Witching Hour

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2000 (contents: 1999-2000)
Borrowed from the library
Read November 2013

The Witching Hour

Storytellers: Chris Bachalo and Jeph Loeb

Inker: Art Thibert
Colorist: Grant Goleash
Letterer: Richard Starkings

With The Witching Hour, I jump from the classic DC horror titles of the 1970s to their modern revivals. Beyond the presence of the title and some witches, this bears no relation to the classic The Witching Hour!; Mildred, Mordred, and Cynthia do not put in an appearance. This is a different group of witches, with a different modus operandi, migrating through the world to both sate their own desires and help those in need of it.

It's a complex tale, with flashbacks nestled within flashbacks, out-of-order storytelling, and seemingly unconnected plots. In a way, it feels like what James Robinson's WitchCraft aspired to be and failed at-- a magical tale of mystery and revenge, of the immortal entering mortal affairs. The dialogue is great, full of obscurities and digressions, rarely on point, mysterious in the way that people both real and unreal often are.

What makes it all worth it is Chris Bachalo's amazing art; there's some gorgeous stuff here, and I'm not just talking about how he draws women. I don't know who's responsible for the use of dots in key scenes, but it really works. Add to that Grant Goleash's judicious use of color, and you have a visual feast. It would be easy to get lost in the world of The Witching Hour, but Bachalo keeps you anchored all the way through. In all honesty, this book has very little to do with the classic Witching Hour! and nothing to do with The Sandman, but my time spent decoding it was well spent indeed.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXIII: JSA: Mixed Signals

Comic trade paperback, 136 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2012

JSA: Mixed Signals

Writers: Geoff Johns, Keith Champagne

Pencillers: Don Kramer, Dale Eaglesham, Jim Fern, David Lopez
Inkers: Keith Champagne, Art Thibert, Mick Gray, Fernando Blanco

Colorist: John Kalisz
Letterer: Rob Leigh

This is the last JSA collection with a Sandman connection, taking place amidst the chaos of the Infinite Crisis. Apparently, in the previous volume (Black Vengeance, which I skipped) my favorites Hector and Lyta Hall, parents of the second Dream of the Endless, were transported into Hell for defying Nabu, the Lord of Order.

I didn't understand much of what was happening in this book; heroes and locations are thrown at you like mad, and no one takes the time to explain who they are. Hal Jordan and Alan Scott chase Air Wave (a superhero who is apparently Hal's cousin), being driven mad by strange transmissions, into space, and end up at the source of the signals. "New Cronus," exclaims Air Wave upon seeing a planet, as though it explains everything. But what's New Cronus? Then Wonder Girl appears, and takes Air Wave with her. Why? Much of the book is just as confusing.

But since I was there for just Hector and Lyta, that was all right: they had no more idea what was going on than I did. Every chapter of Mixed Signals gives a couple more pages to them, as they travel through a desolate mountain range, under assault by demons for reasons they don't understand. In the end, Lyta has a dream that she's talked to their son, and they travel through a portal into the Dreaming, finally safe.

Awww. It's a great moment, and a great ending for these long-suffering characters, though to my knowledge they don't pop up in the Dreaming in any later stories. Their corpses lie on the ground after they travel through the portal-- was it all just a dream of Lyta's? But even if it was, would that matter in the Dreaming? From the Silver Scarab to Brute and Glob to the Furies to Nabu, Hector and Lyta have always lost control of their lives to supernatural entities, and it's fantastic for them to finally get some peace. Thanks, Keith Champagne.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Jessica Jones, Part II: Alias: Ultimate Collection, Book 2

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2010 (contents: 2003)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2012

Alias: Ultimate Collection, Book 2

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Art: Michael Gaydos (with Mark Bagley, Al Vey & Art Thibert and Rick Mays)

Colors: Matt Hollingsworth (with Dean White)
Letters: Cory Petit (with Richard Starkings & Wes Abbott and Jason Levine)

The second volume of Alias continues the excellence of the first. It continues Jessica Jones's investigations of the dark underbelly of the Marvel Universe, as she looks into the disappearance of one of the many superheroes known as Spider-Woman... who just happens to be the adopted daughter of J. Jonah Jameson. Jameson is always a great character, and he's even greater when he's legitimately worried about something. I would say that this story is my favorite of Alias's "cases," except that it's tied with the Rick Jones and runaway mutant cases in the first volume. (I do love those moments where we see Jessica's very awkward way of flying.)

As good as the first half of the book is, the second is even better. Intending to read just one chapter before I went to bed, I read all of them-- and when she read the book, my wife did the same thing! Here, we finally learn the "secret origin" of Jessica Jones. She went to Midtown High with Peter Parker, which maybe stretched credulity a bit, but as always I like the way that Bendis and Gaydos juxtapose Jessica's miserable life against superheroics. Part of the story is drawn in the style of Steve Ditko, and Bendis's naturalistic dialogue is put right alongside all-caps Stan Lee proclamatory stuff. Jessica says things like "I can't believe how badly I screwed that up" at the same time that a Midtown student says, "SAY, GANG! WE NEED ONE MORE GUY FOR THE DANCE! HOW ABOUT PETER PARKER OVER THERE?" I especially like it when Jessica calls Flash Thompson "a fucking repressed dickhead retard" and Peter replies, "I wouldn't put it in those words exactly."

As always, putting Jessica's life next to these other ones shows how terrible her life is. The secret origin starts with her getting a car crash, and things only get worse from there, as we explore Jessica's past and see how what's happened then relates to her present. It's great, terrifying stuff. Poor, poor Jessica.

As good as it is, though, there are three things I don't like about the ending. (YES, THIS PARAGRAPH HAS SPOILERS IN IT.) The first is that Jessica's "archnemesis," the Purple Man, thinks that he's a character in a comic book. It's too knowing, and I don't think it adds anything to the story. We already get when Bendis and Gaydos are doing if we're paying attention. The second is that when Jessica defeats the Purple Man because Jean Grey installed a psychic trigger in her all those years ago. That's it? Lame. Too easy. The third is Jessica's sudden decision that she loves Luke Cage, who we've seen on a total of three previous occasions this entire series. Really? Why? I just don't see what exists between them.

Aside from that stuff, though, Alias's second book is just as good, if not better, than the first. Good dialogue from Bendis and great art from Gaydos give us a gripping examination of what it means to be powerless-- and the lengths to which people will go to overcome that feeling.