Batwing #1

Another book from the first week of DC's "New 52".

Title: Batwing
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Judd Winick
Artist: Ben Oliver
Colorist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
Editor: Mike Marts, Rickey Purdin
Cover: Ben Oliver, Brian Reber

The "Batman of Africa" is David Zavimbe, an police officer in the city of Tinasha in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He's a by-the-books detective who prefers to solve crimes from behind his desk, but of course, that's a front for his activities as Batwing.

We open in the midst of a fight scene between Batwing and a guy named Massacre. Because the name "Genocide" was apparently already taken. One of these days, DC Comics are going to run out of synonyms for "mass murder", and then they're probably just start assigning numbers to their villains. Or maybe use the Greek alphabet or something.

We leave the fight scene for an extended flashback that takes up most of the issue. The Batman makes a guest appearance, and some of the other supporting cast is introduced. A mystery involving the original African superhero team (The Kingdom) begins to unravel, just in time for Zavimbe to find Massacre (at the site of a... wait for it... massacre!).

This was good in terms of pacing, and action, and the establishment of Zavimbe as a new apprentice to the Batman was interesting.

But I found the overall flavor of the book to be disappointing. I learned nothing about African society and culture reading this. I realize that this is an action comic book, not a sociology text, and I also realize that there is an attempt here to be realistic about a part of the world that really is recovering from an extended period of horrible internal warfare. I realize that corruption in government and law enforcement is a huge issue.

But depicting an entire police force that cares only about where the next bribe is coming from (except for the hero and one female officer/potential-love-interest who is beginning to see the light), is not being realistic. It's playing to stereotypes. Couple that with the fact that all the characters who appear in this issue are either 1) part of the hero's team, 2) the aforementioned "female-cop-with-potential-heart-of-gold", 3) murderous thugs, or 4) The Batman, and you've got a book that is failing to do justice to its setting. And when you set a book in Africa, doing justice to the setting should be a top priority.

I think I need to see what it was that Zavimbe felt was worth fighting for.

What I didn't need to see was an ending the loaded up on the gore just for the sake of convincing us that the villain was a bad guy, before getting to a "shocking" finish that was mostly shocking in the sense that it left me wondering how the writer intends to write out of the corner he wrote himself into.

As a generic (violent) superhero story, this was not bad. As with the new Batgirl (my review is here), I expected a lot more out of this book, given what it is attempting to do.

The first issue failed to live up to those expectations.

Rating: 4.5/10