Written by Judd Winick
Illustrated by ChrisCrossAs Massacre’s bloody reign of murder continues and more heroes fall, Batwing closes in on this mad villain. But with his memories stirring, Batwing’s dark past begins to emerge… At last, the truth of his past will come to light.
As I mentioned in this week’s Comics Should Be Cheap, when we were divvying up the original 52 #1s of the DCnU, I picked to review Batwing. The reason I gave was “because I love subtle racism.” I fully expected this to be a terrible book full of stereotypes, one I would review once and then never pick up again (Hi, Men of War!).
However, then I saw Ben Oliver’s artwork.
I was so taken with Oliver’s work that I was able to look past some of the first issue’s, well, issues, and enjoy the book. And since that first issue, the story has gotten increasingly better, and the book now sits comfortably on my pull list. However, Oliver is taking a breather this month and ChrisCross (no, I didn’t forget a space) is filling in and, spoiler alert, he doesn’t quite keep up with the standard Oliver has set.
Would Judd Winick’s story and ChrisCross’s art be enough to not let Oliver’s absence hurt? Hit the jump to find out!
One can surely forgive ChrisCross for not being Ben Oliver. Oliver providing the cover here provides a small tinge of pain, reminding us that we won’t get to see his finely crafted pencils this month. Once we open the book, it becomes even more clear, as Cross greets us with a nice crotch shot of Batwing in action.
From this first panel, Batwing looks goofy, something he never managed to look in the prior three issues, despite wearing a metal batsuit. Cross simply doesn’t draw his costume very well; he specifically mangles his helmet which looks normal in one panel and then comically oversized in the next. He also makes the costume look like a homemade Iron Man costume rather than a Bruce Wayne funded piece of body armor – there is a cheapness to it that hasn’t been reflected in the first three issues.
Leaving Cross’s art aside (for now), the issue begins with Batwing finding the third member of The Kingdom, the original African superhero team, dead. From here, we are treated to a flashback of David Zavimbe’s origin story. I think this is a smart issue to have a fill-in artist on, and a good placement for an origin story – we are starting to care about the character, and some deeper understanding of his motivations are a good thing.
The series, so far, has featured a strong voice-over presence from Zavimbe, and that continues here until, for reasons I can’t really pin down, the point of view switches over to General Kieta, the warlord that a young Zavimbe and his brother Isaac fall in with. This only last a half-dozen panels or so, but seems a little silly. There is only a small amount that Kieta says here, and all could be shown otherwise. Given where Kieta’s character stands at the end of the issue, it seems even more surprising that we would be let into his head, even briefly.
This issue also brings up for the second time in as many issues that Zavimbe is an AIDS orphan. Now, I’ve found that people are often times critical of Winick for making AIDS and/or homosexuality a prominent feature of his comics. For those who are too young to remember, the first time Winick was ever in the public eye was when he was a cast member of The Real World: San Francisco. For those who don’t remember, this was still when The Real World was considered an “important” show – it wasn’t simply a drink and fuck fest, which it currently is. This season drew a ton of attention due to one of the cast members, named Pedro Zamora. Pedro was an openly gay, HIV-positive man who passed away just hours after the season finale initially aired. Winick was one of the cast members closest to Zamora and, after his death, penned/drew the graphic novel: Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned.
Continued belowObviously, Zamora’s death had a huge impact on Winick, and throughout his comics career, Winick has brought a lot of attention to the issues of HIV/AIDS and homosexual acceptance because OF COURSE HE WOULD – a good friend of his died of AIDS and was ridiculed for his sexuality on national television. The same people who praise Matt Fraction for bringing his struggles with substance abuse to his work with Tony Stark seem to give Winick shit for bringing his own experiences into comics. I have no problem with Winick bringing himself more into his comics; first of all, that is what every writer should do, but also, it works really well here. Africa is a continent still ravaged by AIDS, and to ignore that fact would be silly.
One aspect of this book that I would like to see expanded upon is The Kingdom, the aforementioned group of African superheroes. Throughout the book, these men and women are shown as this highly important group of now-retired heroes with a secret to hide. Since the DCnU takes place five years or so after the first superhero activity, there aren’t too many stories with gone but not forgotten heroes (after there were a glut of them in the old DCU). I would certainly buy a miniseries exploring the Kingdom’s past or, perhaps more realistically, like to see an issue of Batwing, between arcs, focused on a “classic” tale of the Kingdom.
A few of the problems I had initially with this book have eased – Matu Ba, basically the Alfred to Zavimbe, was given some context here, and the character seems less like a carbon copy than he was earlier. In addition, now that the world is set up a little better, we are seeing that Batwing is, mainly, guarding his city, and isn’t supposed to be patrolling all of Africa, although that is still, somewhat, implied. Winick is doing a fine job of creating a world for this character to play in, and I am a little sorry that the next arc will find him in Gotham City. Hopefully, this was an editorial decision to bring a little extra readership to the title and not a sign of things to come, in terms of pulling him out of his element.
This issue struggles mightily without Oliver’s art, but Winick manages to survive past Cross’s over-drawing (look at how he draws a beat-up Isaac if you don’t understand what I mean by over-drawing) and continue to tell one of the more unique stories of the New 52.
Final Verdict: 7.6 – Buy
