Batwing’s series is proving to be more of an excuse to see Batman in a 9th book each month rather than a comic in its own right. Issue #10 isn’t a bad read, but it shows that the whole superhero of Africa premise is a misnomer.
- We see David Zavimbe in the offices of a police department every once in a while but we’ve never seen him do real police work.
- This issue was to be a return to Africa but it takes place out on the ocean for the first half, then in China for the 2nd half. Shouldn’t there be a Batman Inc. representative in China to take care of that sort of investigation? Wasn’t that kind of the point of establishing a network? And Batwing is in charge of a whole damn continent, not just a city or a country, he’s the Batman of AFRICA. You can’t ask somebody else to go look into this? What happened to Black Bat? She was supposed to be in Hong Kong. SpoilerAnd I feel that there are so many real world problems in Africa that there should be no shortage of stories to tell with Batwing, yet in this issue we fly to China and confront a man who transforms into a dragon? And if you think that a tech-based super hero fighting a dragon of all things is an original idea– it’s not.
- Batwing has proven incapable of handling a problem on his own. He only wrapped up his first story arc when he went to Gotham and got assistance from Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Batman. His first appearance in “Justice League International” was to rescue Booster Gold, but he ended up getting his butt kicked and Booster had to save Batwing instead! In this issue, he sends all of his evidence to Batman for the Dark Knight and Boy Wonder to take time out from their busy schedule to do all of the detective work for Batwing which in the end points them toward China. And then Batwing asks for Nightwing to tag along and help out.
The book promised to deliver the reader a return to the African setting and a battle with pirates out on the high seas, but the pirates takes up about 5 pages (most of which you can read in the free preview online) and we never see anything of the mainland but offices that could’ve just as easily passed for offices in Detroit, Luxembourg, or Seoul–and that’s not me slagging off the art, the art is great and Marcus To is a great fit for this series– but what’s the point of having a book in the Congo when you’re only going to show the interior of a modern building and nothing else. It’s a well drawn book and it’s only artistic draw-back is that the dramatic page reveals could’ve been paced better and the main character’s design looks ridiculous when you consider that the pirate wearing an animal pelt on his head is doing a far better job protecting his cranium.
This isn’t a bad book, but it’s far from being a must-buy. Sure, you’ll get a bit of action and some witty banter between all the heroes, but on such an eventful comic day as June 6th is, I can’t recommend that you waste your time and money with this when you could be reading something like “Sweet Tooth” or giving the $1 book “Extermination” a shot. “Batwing” should be the most original of all the bat-titles, but it lacks the confidence to do so. I’ve been trying to support Batwing, but more and more it looks like he is a character that cannot carry his own book or at least doesn’t deserve to when you consider Shazam doesn’t even have his own series and there are already like a dozen other bat-titles to choose from. This series has a lot of potential, but as of right now, I’m thinking Man-of-Bats would’ve been more interesting…but then again I’m sure Batman and his rogues
SCORE: 5/10
