DC Next Level starts here with the triumphant return of Greg Rucka to the character he co-created. In a hospital in Greece, Kate Kane struggles to deal with her final confrontation with her sister, the villain Alice. Kate will not know peace, as the Religion of Crime is not done with her, so Batwoman must once again fight her old foes. Batwoman #1 is written by Rucka, drawn by DaNi, colored by Matt Hollingsworth and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
Matt Lazorwitz: So, I realized something today that both made me feel old and made me shake my head about lost potential.
Will Nevin: This better not make me also feel old, Matt.
Matt: Next Wednesday will mark the 10th anniversary of the release of Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Will: Oh boy. DC had to answer Marvel’s money printing machine, so I can’t blame them for trying. But the architect’s vision was a bad one, and audiences responded in kind. I’ll say this, though, and stand by it: Ben Affleck’s world-weary Batman was a good one.
Matt: That’s what I mean by lost potential. A somewhat modernized Dark Knight Returns with Affleck as Batman should have been an easy swing after this, but instead trying to combine that with “Death of Superman” and the introduction of Wonder Woman just made a mess.
Will: For each good thing Zack Snyder did, there were about three crippling, self-aggrandizing ones. Look, we spend what, 10 hours a week reading, talking or thinking about Batman? We’re fans and critics, and we want this stuff to be good — and for the good stuff to be commercially successful so more good stuff gets made. So the relative failure of BvS — one only compounded by Justice League and its myriad controversies — is just sad.
Once more with feeling
Matt: I want to start by saying this: I liked this comic. But I want to say that up front because I think I’m going to be a little harder on it than I would be if this were written by someone who isn’t on my list of personal favorite writers. Because while this comic worked for me, I don’t know if it necessarily works for what it’s supposed to be.
Will: In terms of a jumping on point for a new series, it absolutely doesn’t work. But as a continuation and expansion of Rucka’s Batwoman? I can see where he’s going — and I’m sure as hell thankful for reading what I have, or otherwise, I’d be lost as shit.
Matt: And that’s the thing, right? These Next Level books are supposed to have the same vibe as an Absolute book, these fresh jumping on points. And Rucka does very little, if anything, to explain to new readers what is going on. The frame narrative, or the present narrative, of Kate with a therapist, would lend itself to a natural and organic exposition dump. But instead we get vague flashes that if you haven’t read “Elegy” or seen the first season of the Batwoman TV series, make little sense. This book doesn’t explain who Alice is, what the Religion of Crime is; I don’t even think her last name is used anywhere in the book.
Will: In many ways this feels like something that should have been serialized in Detective Comics or dropped as a #0 — something to whet the ol’ appetites of Rucka Batwoman stans but not necessarily something that stands alone bearing its own weight. It’s by no means a bad book — the vibes are heckin’ great and the usual excesses of Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou are mostly kept in check. But I’m fairly certain the next issue is going to be better than this one.
Matt: I will take Rucka doing trauma over certain other DC writers any day. There’s something in how Rucka treats Kate’s trauma here that feels much less formulaic than we see in Tom King’s work. I don’t know if it’s because not every story he writes is about trauma, but I can feel Kate’s sadness and loss here. How haunted she is by the cycle of life and death she and Beth are trapped in. It doesn’t hurt that DaNi’s moody chiaroscuro amplifies the difference in Kate’s blacks and reds and Alice’s whites, too.
Will: I think the art is exactly what you want out of this book, right? You mention the television series — how much is Rucka nodding toward that here?
Matt: Not much at all. Really, the first episode was a loose adaptation of “Elegy,” so if you were only familiar with Batwoman from the show, this would read pretty easily, but the show makes a lot of changes over its course.
Will: Holy hell, that’s a lot to take on in one episode.
Matt: The two-page spread from early in the issue that serves as the splash that is just a giant spotlight on Batwoman and Alice fighting is poster-caliber work. Still, DaNi’s quieter, more intimate work is just as strong. The body language and facial expressions for Kate as she talks to the therapist/psychiatrist are just as strong. We’ve read comics with DaNi’s art for this column before, specifically Arkham City: The Order of the World, but I think she’s leveled up her game from there, which is a high compliment since I liked the art so much there.
Will: Oh, that series slapped hard. What did you make of the setting here, more specifically, Greece? I presume we’re going to get monsters and gods sooner rather than later?
Matt: Possible. There’s also the possibility that Rucka just wants to tie the Religion of Crime to another ancient civilization, so he picked Greece to let us see another of their aspects. I would not complain if we did get another Wonder Woman/Batwoman crossover, but this time written by Rucka.
Now, you don’t think Alice is really dead, do you? An off-panel death from falling from a height is almost always a guarantee of a return from the dead. Although, to argue against myself, if Rucka had intended Alice to actually be dead at the end of “Elegy,” this might be him just resetting the table to how he wanted it to be.
Will: It could easily go either way, right? If she is dead, we’re set up for these cult weirdos to once again come after Kate to make her into Alice’s replacement. But if she’s still alive, seems like Alice might have a bit of a problem with that, and it could get the sisters back on the same side.
Matt: This issue didn’t answer what was one of my major questions going into this: How much of what has been done with Kate and her immediate family in the hands of W. Haden Blackman & J.H. Williams III and James Tynion IV & Marguerite Bennett is Rucka going to deal with, and how much of it is he going to retcon or ignore? Nothing in this issue really does much to tell us either way. Yes, the last time we saw Alice she had theoretically broken good (is that a thing?), but Alice is always hanging onto sanity by the thinnest of ropes, so that might be more of a continuation rather than a retcon. I think we really need to see what he does with Jacob Kane to determine how much he’s changing, since that is a character who was really altered by that Tynion ‘Tec run.
Will: And that’s ultimately a function of two things: how long this series is going to run and how long Rucka is going to stick around. You’d think with his history on the book, he’d only do this with certain assurances, right? Where would you put the over/under on Rucka’s stay?
Matt: The hopeful Matt says this will be up there with his initial runs on Detective Comics or Wonder Woman of about 30 issues. That is with, as you said, certain assurances from DC. But that is a long run by 2026 standards, and Rucka doesn’t need to put up with any interference, so I think the odds are best for a 12-18 issue run, with longer odds on him leaving sooner, and the longest on that long run.
Will: It feels like *literally* anything could happen. I would have said a shorter run was more likely as well, but Mark Waid is now the Grand Old Man of DC (TM) and about to hit 50 issues of Batman/Superman. If you would have told me those two things a couple of years ago, I would have called you insane and maybe asked for some lottery numbers. But I hope Rucka gets to do exactly what he wants here — he’s shown repeatedly that he’s got the feel for these characters, and I want to see what his unencumbered vision can lead to.
Bat-miscellany
- The BatChat podcast is keeping the Rucka train running. In this week’s episode, we’re reading three stories Rucka wrote about Renee Montoya as The Question, two of which happen to feature appearances by Batwoman. Gotta love synergy.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
