BATWOMAN #1 (DC Comics)
By J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman and Dave Stewart

Synopsis: One of the most gorgeous comic books in recent memory returns!  Also, a Latina ghost kidnaps children using tears.

01. IT’S BACK!

If you had that reaction, you were probably going to buy this comic anyway.  Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III‘s initial Batwoman arc in the pages of Detective Comics turned heads as a smart, chilling and above all else visually inventive and astounding comic.  It made believers out of the people who thought only Batman could headline DC‘s namesake series, an opinion I openly shared.  I was happy to be proved wrong and I have championed the series, collected as Batwoman: Elegy ceaselessly ever since.

To those like-minded people, all I can say besides WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING READING THIS YOU SHOULD BE READING BATWOMAN RIGHT NOW is something simple:

It’s worth the long wait.

02. To everyone else, the people being frantically told by people like me that you need to buy this, all I can do is agree with myself and say that you should totally buy this.  Don’t be afraid of not knowing what’s going on – Kate Kane didn’t have a lot of history going into the series, and an ingeniously-designed double-page spread during Issue #1 should catch up the reader with what little there was quite nicely.  All you need to know is right there, trust me.

03. What’s there is a spooky, creepy-as-all-hell story.  A mysterious woman – or creature – is kidnapping children throughout Gotham.  Batwoman makes a promise to a family to rescue their children, even as she’s busy dealing with personal issues like training her young cousin as a sidekick and avoiding contact with her estranged father.  Kate’s dedication to save a family is a nice counterpart to her emphatic efforts to stay away from her father, and as a result there’s a raw emotional core of fear and hurt that flows through the pages.

04. And my oh my, do they flow.  How gorgeous is J.H. Williams and Dave Stewart‘s art?  Gorgeous enough that I stopped more than once while reading the comic to hold up pages for Brandon to look at, because I couldn’t not share them.

His response?  “Goddamn.”

Williams does some of the most inventive and beautiful page layouts in the business and Stewart gives a murky, chilling watorcolour atmosphere.  The comic is like a beautiful cross between a ghost story and the superhero stories most of us are familiar with, and I think the art alone could please people from many different walks of comic fandom.

05. A note: with all the gorgeous double-page spreads, Batwoman is a comic that will be perfectly fine on a computer screen or a tablet, but will really shine on paper, with no reduction in page size.  Either way, I hope you’ll check out what is easily one of my favourite series in the New 52 so far.

Recommended if you like: Greg Rucka, ghost stories, bad-ass women in comics, and good, beautiful comics.