Marc Andreyko’s Batwoman ends #35-40

It wouldn’t be Marc Andreyko’s Batwoman if the last chapter didn’t start with a flashforward and ended in an Annual. At this point, Jeremy Haun is off the book, to be replaced by Georges Jeanty. The veteran artist illustrates another over the top adventure featuring Kate, her sister and the oddball team alluded to in the Future’s end special.

Thus, we are treated to a second flash forward issue in a row, only this time we  are flashing towards a skirmish around a sattelite. Kate and her friends, which the book still has to introduce in a proper way, battle Morgane Le Fay and her inhuman hordes over a mystical McGuffin.

Seeing Kate and her sister in space suits is an image that intentionally breaks from the more grounded tone. Yet, despite the raised stakes, the reader accepts that contrary to the "Future’s End" Special bloodletting, all this could actually happen at some point.

It’s another thing entirely to consider if this sort of action should be happening in the Batwoman title. On the face of it, it reads almost like a team book, with Kate being a clear lead, but there is certainly not enough context to go on past the intentional controversy.

The next three issues then go back to slowly build towards this epic confrontation. The reader is thus introduced to the new incarnations of Etrigan, Ragman and Clayface, which are all fairly accessible considering that most of them are somewhat less popular characters.

More importantly, Alice is also being slowly reintroduced to the title, with a more measured approach than before. Starting out as a Joker to Kate Kane’s Bat(wo)man, the character’s return has been carefully seeded since the introduction of the idea that the two characters are twin sisters. 

It then stands to reason that once Beth is reintroduced, she would become a more balanced character. In this guise, she is an anti-hero calling herself Red Alice, but her reckless streak is severely underplayed.

This time around, Kate is portrayed as the bloodthirsty sister, with flashes of the vampiric bloodlust taking over her while in the Batwoman guise. For once these don’t read like dream sequences and actually feel directly relevant to the plot at hand.

As for the broader story, it ties to Morgan Le Fay’s return and the cult involved with resurrecting her by using the philosopher’s stone.

There are actually some interesting bits to her return, but this is still largely a character building story. Morgan’s irredeemably evil so the writer doesn’t really deal with her motivations beyond the stereotypical supervillain megalomania. She is there to draw all of these disperate characters together, and she has enough presence to fulfill that role.

Juan Jose Ryp fills in for Jeanty in the issue featuring Morgan's return, and his highly detailed work calls attention to itself. Georges Jeanty has depicted these characters a bit looser and less imposing, which fit the book’s tone, but at this point the reader should be used to the fill ins.

With the sales being what they were, it’s probable that editorial was already considering ending the run, so the artistic shifts are to be expected. 

Andreyko still goes through the motions and uses #40 as the last regular issue to reunite Kate and Alice, proceeds to dismantle the former’s toxic association with Nocturna and finally brings the conflict with Morgan Le Fey to the boil.

The Nocturna subplot had a mild outcry with some of the fans considering the villain’s actions as veering towards rape. And while the implication is certainly there, it’s a shame that this is why this run ended up being an object of discussion. As the character based subplots draw to a close, Andreyko saves the explosive finale for an oversize Annual.

The weird symmetry of his run, which begins and ends with Annuals cannot be overstated. To make matters more complicated, once again, the action picks up not from where the series' last issue ended, but from #35, the flash forward issue which introduced the readers to Kate's battle in space.

Taking all this into consideration, what to make of the Annual itself? It features Jeanty working in concert with fill-in artists, but thankfully the result isn't jarring. On the other hand, a weird story with reality reshaped to have Gotham appear as a medieval hamlet lorded over by Morgana Le Fey certainly won't be to everyone's taste.

It does at least put all of this to rest and ends with Kate reconnecting with Maggie. The smoothening out of the sore point of Kate Kane and Maggie Sawyer's relationship at this late date has more or less fell on deaf ears of the reading public. 

Thus, in a way Andreyko has completed the circle by having to wrap up his own plots in an Annual. The entirety of this run, especially in such close proximity to the work of J. H. Williams III before it, certainly makes a case that the follow-up creative teams would benefit from a proper relaunch, with some distance in between. 

Being in the position to directly continue the acclaimed work seemed to have forced the new creatives to scramble and try to make deadlines and enforce editorial edicts without being given enough time to truly consider the task at hand and really leave their mark with the character.

DC would return to Kate again a year later in the Detective comics team-up title, which ultimately spun-off a new Batwoman series. The work of Andreyko, Haun and Jeanty and the others continues to live on in collected form, tracking the development of a superhero character that was eventually given her own TV series. 

It is only when looking back at these issues that the reader will be able to appreciate how truly weird they were and the lengths these publishers go through to keep their characters in circulation and development.

Mark Andreyko’s Batwoman #32-34

Having finished with his introductory arc on “Batwoman”, featuring a back to basis approach, Marc Andreyko opts to slowly return to Batwoman’s supernatural adventures.

This is done in a three part story that starts off grounded, with the fatal seductress Nocturna being released from Arkham Asylum only to become targeted by a daughter of one of her former husbands. This being Gotham city, each of these women comes with their supervillain henchman, with Batwoman finding herself quickly caught in the crosshairs.

Likewise, the story begins with the precise art of then ongoing penciller Jeremy Haun, before the fill-ins start. The second issue has the looser and more energetic Scott Kollins filling in on some pages, while Moritat and Pia Guerra help out with the opening fight of the third and concluding chapter.

The three-parter teases a darker vampiric direction for Kate, characterised by her being drawn toward the villainous Nocturna and away from Maggie Sawyer. This kind of story would be harder to tell with a married Kate Kane, so at least DC was quick to actually utilize the protagonist’s single status.

Yet, they way they ultimately went about it is anything but conventional. 

This issue was followed up by a Future’s end tie-in special, taking place “five years from now”. At this point, Kate is a full blown vampire, bent on destroying Maggie Sawyer. We are exploring all this from her sister’s point of view, as Alice and a group of supernatural vigilantes allied with her try to put a stop to Kate’s crazed rampage.

We are told that Batwoman herself was involved with the group, patterned on Shadowpact, but that she has since given in to the vampirism. Thus, the issue works basically as a dark future for Kate, teasing some further developments in her title by taking them to their most exciting conclusion.

I will what all this ultimately amounts to tomorrow, as we finally say goodbye to Marc Andreyko's Batwoman run.

Marc Andreyko’s Batwoman begins #25-31

Once he got ahold of Batwoman, Marc Andreyko was tasked with a difficult assignment. The acclaimed creative team was leaving mid-storyline and the editorial was aiming for a change of course. The way his run ultimately ended up was anything but conventional, as can be seen from its multiple beginnings, strange interludes and several endings.

It could stand to reason to consider the Batwoman Annual as the start of Andreyko’s work. It was published just as the writer’s first storyline was drawing to a close, but it acts as the belated conclusion to the J. H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman's run. 

The Annual was collected with the beginning of Mark Andreyko’s run and placed as the first story, no doubt to try not to confuse the readers who first experienced these stories in their collected form.

Finishing the other creators’ work is obviously not an ideal situation as J. H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman had a different endpoint in mind, but Andreyko does his best to draw a complicated plot concerning the D.E.O. to a close. Thus, in the space of one issue, Batwoman’s fight with Batman and the freeing of Alice are retroactively dealt with alongside other stray plot points.

DC was able to at least get Trevor McCarthy, who illustrated the latter parts of the Williams/Blackman run to provide the majority of pencils here, but it’s clear that most fans won’t be happy with the Annual for one way or another. 

On the other hand, one could also consider Batwoman #25 as the start of Andreyko’s work, being chronologically the first issue published with his name on it. Yet, it was a tie-in to the Zero Year Batman storyline, telling an adventure of Kate Kane before she became Batwoman. Curiously for such a young character, the extensive flashbacks to her beginnings have already been featured several times at that point.

The major difference here is that this one-off heavily utilizes the socialite cousin of Bruce Wayne part of her origin that was never really the focus of previous stories. So, looking at it as the foundation of Marc Andreyko’s Batwoman, we have a story of a military trained young woman turned vigilante in the city’s darkest hour. It notably features both Kate’s father and her future fiancee Meggy Sawyer in the supporting roles, so it provides for a nice primer on the character and her motiovation. 

It also works broadly as a Zero Year tie-in, but it uses the status quo of that story so generally that it could be substituted for any other kind of Gotham city-wide blackout.

Again, this is all perfectly passable for a oneshot story, albeit one marred by several artists and apparent style shifts, which have come to plague the rest of Andreyko’s run.

Getting through with the prologue, it is in the next issue that Andreyko’s run really starts. Paired with Jeremy Haun, the writer posits a familiar version of the Batwoman, but with several key changes. 

Most notably, the title leaves the rich psychedelic trappings of J.H.Williams III and the artists who tried to fit in with his style, to be replaced by a streamlined and more functional noir aesthetic.

On the plot level, gone are the supernatural trapping to be replaced by a story of an art thief on a crime spree with ties to Gotham’s past. The new focus on Kate Kane’s socialite background helps ease the transition, but the real change comes with the cliffhanger of the storyline’s second issue. 

By calling into point the wellfare of Maggie Sawyer’s child being in close proximity to Batwoman, Andreyko creates the dynamic that would ultimately split the lesbian couple.

The proposed and ultimately vetoed marriage between the two characters was the stated reason why the previous creative team ultimately left the title. Seeing their relationship thrown into dissaray in the first couple of regular issues and even straddling Kate with a psychiatrist to deal with all this certainly showcases the editorial sticking to their decision. 

And while it could still be debated whether the real reason for stepping away from the lesbian marriage was the restrictions marital bonds put on the storytelling possibilities in the superhero medium, this story certainly treats it as such.

Reaffirming Kate’s focus on being a Batwoman comes in a story that is otherwise a lighthearted romp with the new villain Wolf Spider collecting the paintings and successfully evading capture. Thus, “Webs” features both Kate and her cousin Bette repeatedly failing to stop the art thief, as his targets get nearer and nearer to them, thanks to their high class background.

On the way, the Wolf Spider visits the Arkham Asylum and lets loose several villains that would reappear in Andreyko’s run, most notably Nocturna. 

By this time, Bette herself is also out of her role as the costumed superhero Firehawk and relegated to being Kate’s computer helper. Having the character basically take over the role Kate’s father played as Alfred to her Batman leaves Batwoman without a Robin on her side.

This by itself is nothing unusual, as Robin himself is notably absent from many of the Batman stories, but it certainly provides another way that the title has changed in such a short while. 

What we are left with by the time “Webs” ends is a much better paced action adventure comic that focuses on the title character to the exclusion of most of her former supporting cast, albeit saddled with much more prosaic plots when compared to her iconic clashes with Alice and the Medusa.

We’ll go over where the editorial and Andreyko ultimately took Batwoman tomorrow.

Captain America and Bucky #622

As it currently stands, Marvel is in a very strange place when it comes to publishing Captain America. With the advent of Joe Johnston's "Captain America: The First Avenger" movie, the main title has effectively been renumbered to appeal to potential new readers, and hew closer to the film's continuity, albeit still written by Ed ("Criminal", "Gotham Central") Brubaker, who has helmed the title since 2004. Meanwhile, the original numbering was carried over to make a new ongoing title, co-written by Brubaker, and titled "Captain America & Bucky". Seemingly little more then a spin-off book set in the past and somewhat similar in concept to "Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty", it was to be co-written by Mark ("Torso", "Manhunter") Andreyko and drawn by Chris ("Thor - The Mighty Avenger") Samnee, spotlighting the role Bucky has played in the Marvel universe - from the point of view of Brubaker's somewhat edgier and more grounded interpretation. There was a brief period of confusion pertaining to Bucky's status when it comes to the role he played in the "Fear itself" crossover, but now that Marvel have seen their summer event to its conclusion, it became clear that "Captain America" will be spinning off another new title, that of the long in development "Winter soldier", focused on Bucky's current adventures.

Taking all this into account, and seeing that with the end of the original five part arc of "Captain America and Bucky" Andreyko and Samnee are already replaced with new talent, it seems unlikely that Marvel will be keeping the book around for too long. Yet, for all of the original arc's focus in providing some continuity to the many retcons that make up Bucky's current continuity, it can be said that Andreyko's narration is the chief link that connects the five stories, all set at different points in Bucky's career as Captain America's sidekick. It can be hard to infer to what extent Brubaker has worked on the title (and will continue to work with the new co-writer), it can safely be said that his role must have been in extending the context of his earliest issues of the title, and probably co-plotting the books with Andreyko, who seems to be in charge with the actual dialogue and breaking the script down to panel descriptions.

In any event, ever since the original Joe Simon and Jack Kirby original issues of the title, Bucky's role has been retconned. First it was Stan Lee that dismissed with the character in order to provide the reintroduced Captain America with a somewhat more poignant origin, and paving the way for Brubaker's eventual return of James Barnes as a much more jaded and realistic character (in the context of the Marvel universe). This is not to say that Bucky was entirely missing from since the early days of Silver Age, as Lee's Marvel successor, editor and writer Roy Thomas featured the character in his "Invaders" ongoing series, which #622 of "Captain America and Bucky" draws back on, highlighting the role of a non-superpowered combatant in a World War 2 allied commando unit.

And while flashback scenes featuring teenage Bucky ruthlessly paving the way threw German forces featured quite heavily in Brubaker's early issues, they were still in service of setting up the wider story including Red Skull and his allies, that is nowhere to be seen in this stand alone issue. As a rule, today's Marvel is very conscious of providing new readers with accessible stories wherever possible, making "Captain America and Bucky" completely accessible to a reader that has a basic understanding of the Captain America concept, therefore eventually making an ideal trade paperback to go with the purchase of the DVD, if historically the launch of a new ongoing title to coincide with the film mostly works on carrying over the existing audience that has likewise been hyped with the attention the character has enjoyed this year.

In addition to a full page recap recapping the previous two issues, Andreyko goes on to spend three of the story's twenty pages summing up the Invaders by using a familiar new reel presentation further elaborated by Bucky's narration. This kind of heavy exposition somewhat slows down the story, as it's naive to believe that many of the readers will find it useful, yet it fulfills the aforementioned role of introducing the central players in the story that could hardly be considered one without it. Samnee struggles a bit to integrate the different designs into functional layouts, as each of the characters feels pasted in from a different image, with the prologue's gray tones actually sapping some of the energy and flow of the drawings.

 Thankfully, once Bettie Breitweiser comes to support Samnee's inks with a carefully chosen palette, most of the clarity problems disappear. Yet, Brubaker and Andreyko's decision to cut the provide a lengthy flashback just two pages into the actual story contributes to the jumpy feeling of the narrative, as the reader comes to doubt that Bucky's telling a story within a story won't entirely add up to a fulfilling reading experience. Thankfully, any doubt is quickly assailed as the flashback to three weeks earlier proves integral to the theme of the story despite consisting mainly of a well coreographed fight scene. By the time the conflict between Bucky and Namor is established, the reader has already seen these heroes launching twice into battle, yet the real suspense is saved for the story's third act.

What animates these typical genre scenes then is Samnee's art, depicting actual human beings with believable and even understated emotion. Invaders are by the definition garish characters, as they were grouped together years after their debut, having been designed by different artists to star in a variety of different Golden Age comic books, thus their grouping always seems random and visually contradictory. That Samnee manages to depict them as something resembling the team, aided by Breitweiser's blues, reds and greens, and actually have them seem just fantastic enough to provoke Bucky's response, and yet still somewhat fit in with the actual soldiers in Poland, speaks of his talent and the level of profession applied to what is little more then an origin mini-series.

And if the new reader picks up on Brubaker and Andreyko's "Captain America and Bucky" arc before getting to read the Simon/Kirby originals, or any of the related material, it can hardly be said that they are getting a workmanlike effort, slap dashed to fulfill a small niche in the bloated market. Seeing Namor's sneer and Captain America acting almost completely with his steel chin, makes clear the intelligence and subtlety behind the project. More importantly, Bucky comes over as a completely realized character, one moment seeming like a hurt child, and the other jumping into fray with the overjoyed boy's face, while all the while maintaining the unease and genuine surprise that comes with his lack of experience, and the plain unreality of coming of age in a grisly conflict, further complicated by the addition of superpowered soldiers.

 

Again, it's the attention paid to the details, such as Toro flying Bucky into action (with the Human Torch's sidekick's arms being the only part of his body that is not on fire), or the great care taken to ensure that Captain America's shield is highlighted just enough making the reader both surprised and delighted when it acts a turning point in the climatic battle. Bucky's bravery and respect for his mentor turn out as adequate substitution for his lack of super powers, but getting to such a common sense morale ending could easily have inspired a lesser story.

Where Andreyko and Samnee actually make the set piece worth reading is in their craft and commitment to the assignment. After all of the exposition and set up, actually reading the final eleven pages of the story feels flawless in execution and pacing. Gone are the expositions and character development expressed in nuanced dialogue, at the face replaced by a typical "Hellboy"-like Nazi castle with a customary mad scientist. Seeing the movie-inspired dr. Arnim Zola redesign could tip off readers that they are potentially reading a restrained, designed for children episode that merely clashes the notable characters into a familiar cliche, but Andreyko and Samnee are poised to prove more ambitious than that.

For a start, Zola's plan perfectly dovetails into Bucky's insecurities based around his place on the team, while at the same time providing him for a clear goal by which to prove himself. And while the Ubermensch he sets off against seems once again purposefully generic, designed to instantly recall Steve Rogers and proceed to establish himself as a physical threat for Bucky, the clever use of his powers, countered by Bucky's smart thinking leads to a very satisfying action sequence, that makes the only possible ending feel both earned and poignant.

Fitting for a story focused on James, even Captain America's contribution to Zola's defeat doesn't steal the scene, and merely continues their relationship in a believable way. Rogers is a stronger and more experienced fighter, and in this way he helps Bucky's plan, but doesn't work to undermine the closure Bucky's dialogue with Namor brings to the story.

Simply put, in Andreyko and Samnee's hands (and no doubt under close supervision and collaboration with Ed Brubaker) "Captain America and Bucky" was a very adequate read that justified the reader's trust in the quality behind Marvel's longstanding direction of Captain America. #622 serves as a prime example of this, as it recalls the impact of Mike Mignola's "BPRD" and assorted art centered Hellboy spin-off titles, that provide very fulfilling genre reads cognizant of the importance that pacing and careful attention paid to details can lend to a short story that substitutes shocking reversals of the status quo for commendable style, endearing the reader with classical comics entertainment.

Bucky's adventure with the Invaders leads to him coming to terms with the worst horrors of war in the very next issue, yet #622 shouldn't be looked down for it's lack of focus on Holocaust and the unspeakable cruelties committed by the Axis. In a weird way, "Captain America" had a genuine impression on the mind of American boys during the war, making for recalibration of real world events into this issue's pulpy fantastic completely justified, especially when produced with as much professionalism as displayed by Brubaker, Andreyko and Samnee.