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Prior to this gorgeous incarnation, Batwoman has always seemed to me to be a weak character. One that nobody seemed to write well and in turn made the fans care very little. She was little else but a spin-off of the Batman mythos, just another Robin, and nothing so interesting as to warrant an in-depth analysis of her character or her stories. Batwoman and Batgirl both seem to harken back to that time before the Frank Miller 80's revamp of the caped crusader, candy colored clowns that were comic relief or filler in a brightly colored world that should have been written in black and white.

But here we have something altogether new. A new start to the Batwoman character that is most assuredly worthy of her own stories and her own mythos with little to no help from the Bat himself. A character that is deserving of being seen solo in the pages of Detective Comics. A character I am craving more of.

I've just finished reading this only minutes ago. It was mesmerizing. Mainly because of the expert art. I'm a man who is a fan of confident lines. And the highly stylized art in this book made me think at times of Alphonse Mucha, father of graphic design from the early 1900s. It was reminiscent of fin de siècle Vienna with all of it's handbills and gorgeously designed announcements. It spoke to a higher form of art in it's paneling and in it's confident style, almost breezy in places, at times possibly narcissistic. And I loved it's arrogance and sense of bravado. Because it matched the character and the writing.

The greatest part of the writing, of the story, is that Rucka did not hand her Batman's leftovers, but instead gave her her very own antagonist. A new and very deadly villain, so intriguing to me for the likeness to the Mad Hatter and the Joker, but that it could stand out so sharply and not simply be a simulacrum of those characters.

And the same is said for the Batwoman in these books. She is nor just an effigy, nor is she wholly a mirror of Batman. She is something altogether her own and I thank Greg Rucka for giving me something I could never have expected.