Review: Batwoman Volume 6 - The Unknowns

When a cult resurrects the sorceress Morgaine le Fey, Batwoman allies herself with an unusual group of misfits to battle the Arthurian villainess. Meanwhile, Kate’s personal life is in tatters after ending her relationship with Maggie. She’s begun seeing someone new, but neither her sister Beth nor her ex seem terribly impressed by this decision.

Batwoman Volume 6: The Unknowns collects Batwoman #35-40, Batwoman: Futures End and material from Secret Origins #3, written by Marc Andreyko and illustrated primarily by Georges Jeanty.

This collection is a bit of a headscratcher. It begins rather abruptly with a jaunty rehash of her origin story, which feels unnecessary and out of place in this volume. It does very little to actually pay respect to the layered and complex backstory that Greg Rucka, J.H. Williams III, and W. Haden Blackman crafted for Batwoman. After that, we plunge headlong into a story in medias res. Batwoman and her team of D-list allies, called the Unknowns, are battling Morgaine le Fey in space. From there, writer Andreyko traces back how we got to this point over the course of several issues. It’s a stilted way to begin this arc and isn’t effective in drawing the reader in. Instead, it invites confusion and interferes with the pacing. There’s also a subplot involving Kate dating a vampire, which is deserving of a healthy eye roll since it occurs so quickly after she put the brakes on her relationship with Maggie. While I do like the idea of using a character like Nocturna and perhaps even repurposing her as a recurring villain for Batwoman, their relationship isn’t believable and comes across as forced (which I suppose was the point).

The overall thrust of The Unknowns seems rather fabulous in theory. Morgaine le Fey is resurrected by a cult in Gotham City and she proceeds to wreak havoc wherever she does, which necessitates Batwoman partnering with Ragman, Clayface, Etrigan, and Alice in an attempt to prevent her from achieving her goal of global domination. After the diversion away from the supernatural in the third and fourth trades of this series, this would seem to be a return to form. Unfortunately, the finer points of The Unknowns are messy, questionable, and frustrating. I disagreed with the way in which Andreyko brought Alice back into the series. I rather liked her as an antagonist and her rehabilitation feels predictable. She’s used throughout as a pseudo-sidekick for Kate, which is irritating since she already had a partner in her cousin Bette. Bette was actually one of the best characters in this series, so it is maddening that Andreyko would drop her from the book’s cast in favour of replacing her with Alice. He does seem to have issues with handling a larger cast here as most of the Unknowns are underdeveloped. That said, I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy his take on Clayface. That was one of the few highlights in this collection.

The most frustrating part about Andreyko’s relatively short tenure on Batwoman is that I know he’s a capable and talented writer, but somehow that didn’t translate to dazzling and engaging arcs. There are a lot of great ideas present in this volume and I would have loved for them to be fleshed out further. The entire concept of the Unknowns is brilliant and is something I can cosign with Batwoman in lead. It just doesn’t quite get the push it needs. Even Georges Jeanty’s art doesn’t do quite enough to sell this trade, especially since he’s not on deck for every panel. By excising the Nocturna subplot, focusing more on developing the Unknowns, swapping Alice for Hawkfire, and putting more effort into mimicking the aesthetic of the Williams/Blackman issues, this could have been a mighty fine arc worthy of being the conclusion to Batwoman’s first ever solo series. As it stands, it’s a muted finale that is sure to leave most Batwoman fans disappointed. Also, the less said about the Futures End issue the better.

RATING: C