New Review: Batwoman: Elegy, By Debi Linton

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In Gotham City, a new caped crusader is prowling the rooftops; a woman in black and red, falling hard on the followers of the Religion of Crime, and looking for information about their new leader. She is Batwoman. Her name is Kate Kane, she is an officer and a lesbian, and the devotees of this religion stabbed her through the heart a few months ago.

I knew going into this story that it was going to be good. Nothing prepared me for quite how good.

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III is the first collected trade volume featuring her as the main character. Rucka is the acclaimed writer of the Queen and Country espionage series, and has a long history of writing Batman. He’s a character writer, with a proven track record of great female characters, including Tara Chace, the protagonist of Queen and Country. The artist, J. H. Williams III, had been deservedly lauded for his excellent work on Alan Moore’s Promethea.

Elegy is a story in two parts; the first, Elegy, is set in the ‘present day’ and tells of Batwoman’s encounter with the new head of the Religion of Crime, a Lewis Carroll-inspired character named Alice. While it follows on from previous stories told in DC’s Fifty Two, previous knowledge of these events is not at all required to follow the story. The actual events are used as a hook on which to hang understanding of Kate and how she operates, and to showcase Williams’s superb art.

Continue reading Batwoman: Elegy by Debi Linton.