What happened after Kate and Beth Kane fell off a cliff in Gotham? How did Kate wind up in a Grecian sanitarium and Beth wind up in the Batwoman costume? These questions are answered in Batwoman #6, written by Greg Rucka, drawn and colored by Jeff Spokes and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
Will Nevin: You ready for “Bad Seeds,” brah?
Matt Lazorwitz: Yes, yes I am. It’s our first Bat family crossover since, what, “Fear State” back in 2022. That’s four years in between events, a shockingly long time as these things go.
Will: Time does fly when your city is in eternal peril, doesn’t it? I don’t read the line like you do, but I’m looking forward to doing so, if only to gauge where the other Bat family books are at the moment. Oh and a tantalizing, fleeting, precious taste of Gotham General and Gotham Central.
The night before
Matt: Now that we have made it to and through this issue, I feel like we’ve gotten the answer to something we have been asking from the beginning. If there was ever going to be an issue that addressed any of the stuff from runs before Rucka’s return, it would have been here. And … he didn’t, so I am now expecting it to just not be addressed.
Will: We keep returning to the ideas of pacing, structure and overall storytelling for this book, don’t we? From the labor side, from the editorial side, I get the point of a fill-in issue. It’s a break for an artist, a buffer for deadlines, etc. It’s how the sausage gets made … at least if you want your sausage in a timely fashion. But those issues can’t feel perfunctory. I don’t know if we had *any* questions outstanding following the end of the arc (aside from the meta issues you bring up here), and yet here this issue is. It’s fine. Great to look at. But aside from giving DaNi a break, does this serve any real purpose?
Matt: I don’t think it does. There’s no real new information given. Everything that is technically new was easy to infer from what we have seen in the past five issues. It might have laid a few seeds, with the introduction of Anna, Kate’s friend who finds Beth, but if that doesn’t go anywhere?
Yes, we see Kate put Beth in the sanitarium, but that could have been referenced in one line of dialogue in the next regular issue. It’s not a bad comic; it moves, and as you said, Jeff Spokes does a very good job on the art. I just think we could have spent a fill-in issue doing something else. Maybe getting a little more into the Religion of Crime, or maybe into Jacob Kane’s head. I can’t imagine what internal turmoil he’s going through at this point.
Will: And, as you pointed out, what misdeeds of his from the past we’re most likely ignoring at this point. Yeah, I could think of all sorts of more interesting things we could have done here — how fun would it have been to actually do a Crime Bible issue? As in giving us the text? That would have been a hoot — and that could also be a thing you’d return to in future arc breaks, almost like the period issues in the legendary Brian Posehn/Gerry Duggan Deadpool run. And then you could have collected all of the Crime Bible issues into … a crime bible. Sheesh. I need to stop giving out free ideas.
Matt: I also wonder at the wisdom of leaving Beth at that sanitarium. Kate and Jacob might not know that the RoC has someone on the inside, but they know that the Convent of the Daughters of Lilith is nearby. I assume Dr. Solis is supposed to keep Beth’s presence under wraps, but shouldn’t you get Beth as far away from the RoC as possible?
Will: Which gets added to the file of “possibly interesting things” along with the fact that Bruce recommended the place to begin with.
Matt: And I’m assuming the person who told him about it was Leslie Thompkins, but the fact that it was vague allows for that to be a bigger deal in the future.
Kate’s warning to Dr. Solis about her not telling the doctor the whole truth about her past really reads like a bit of heavy foreshadowing, doesn’t it? I have a bad feeling about the good doctor’s future prospects.
Will: Doesn’t seem great, Matt! Let me ask you this: Having taken a gander at a preview for the next issue, do you think there’s juice in the public at large thinking Kate is well and truly responsible for the execution-style murder that was actually committed by Beth a few issues ago? Like, is “Batwoman, Murderer” worth exploring?
Matt: I think there is a story there, but it’s not the same as we’ve seen before. The general public might not know who was really behind it, but Question does, and as she’s the JLU’s chief of security, it means the hero community knows Kate isn’t a killer. I don’t know if Rucka has the space or juice for this, or if DC wants to build a linewide subplot around Batwoman, but in the modern landscape of the lack of trust in authority figures, a story where the JLU comes out and says, “Hey, we know you all saw Batwoman shoot some guys, but that wasn’t really her, just someone else in her costume,” and we get a whole groundswell of conspiracy theorists backing that up or, moreso, saying the JLU is covering for one of their own? There’s some strong social commentary there.
Will: Shit, I’d dig the hell out of that story, but I fear we’re going to get a much smaller, much more insignificant version of it with basically the public being afraid of Kate and not a lot else. But I’m ready to be wrong! Certainly been wrong before.
Matt: I believe I said it last time, but the test for this book is after “Bad Seeds.” After the event, with all the groundwork built in this arc, I want to see where Rucka will take Kate. If this is the story he’s been wanting to tell all along (with a little DCU mega-arc stuff added in, as the RoC worships Darkseid and we know he’s coming back, so that can’t be completely ignored), I want to see where it all goes. Rucka is still one of my favorite writers in comics, and he’s yet to let me down, so I can’t imagine he will on his signature character.
Will: Once more, we come back to the question of scope and purpose. There has to be a there there, right? I think “Bad Seeds” is going to be a good reset for Gotham — and maybe a good reset for this book, too.
Bat-miscellany
- Lanterns debuted on HBO Max this past Sunday, so the BatChat podcast is reading three stories where Batman teams up with Green Lanterns.
Buy Batwoman #6 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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.
