‘BLAM’ - Thoughts on Batwoman #16

Written by Marguerite Bennet

Illustrated by Fernando Blanco

Colored by John Rauch

Lettered by Deron Bennett

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I’ve been a mixture of depressed and busy which makes for working through things critically a chore. Originally this was just going to be about the ‘BLAM’ page and why it’s such an effective piece of comics craft and storytelling, however, that quality only comes out due to the context of the issue use of a chase sequence. Which is why I’ve tried to condense the overall chase into the photo gallery above. So here are some overall thoughts on one of the better issues this run of the series has put forth.

‘The Fall of the House of Kane’ has been a homecoming for Kate Kane as it closes the chapter that started with ‘The Many Arms of Death.’ Her travels have articulated her mission statement as Batwoman, to be the breaker of cyclical trauma, and enlightened her to move past her wanderlust for lost time. Stopping Alice and the Many Arms of Death’s plot to poison Gotham City with a colony of plagued bats in Batwoman #15 was a very superheroic and clean means of this self actualization. Batwoman #16 presents a much tougher task, a choice between interlocking families and cycles that puts her in conflict with the symbol that sobered her up and changed her life, the Batman. Coming home always involves some measure of measuring against what you were previously, and the Batman can be a harsh mirror. In Batwoman #16, Marguerite Bennett, Fernando Blanco, and John Rauch, create a dialectic between Batwoman and Batman that allows for the expression of Kate’s growth in contrast to strict Bat-ideology.

With the Many Arms defeated, the question becomes what to do with Beth Kane. For Batman, it is simple, she belongs in Arkham Asylum. Bruce’s obsessive need to preform actively reenact and punish his parents killers has blinded him from seeing how his actions as Batman and the institutions he employs have become a self-perpetuating traumatic cycle. Arkham Asylum hasn’t been a place for functional mental health work in ages, if it ever was one. Kate, now that she has stopped the Many Arms and actualized, sees things from a different perspective. Throughout the issues, Fernando Blanco draws Batwoman and Batman in ways that emphasize their differing physical position to represent their disconnect on how to proceed. The design in the opening pages emphasizes how they both look at the problem(Beth) from different angles, with panels often showing them to be mirrored. Staging this issue and their conflict as a chase sequence further emphasizes the dialog, or lack thereof, between them as they both run to solve the problem.

Bennett and Blanco make good use of Batman as a guest star in this issue by trading on the characters built in symbolic value, both provided by the reader and from the Batwoman book overall. As a guest star, the narrative isn’t about him allowing him to act more as a reflection of what Kate could be and has acted like as she tries to save Beth from him. Batman speaks maybe 100-150 words in the entire issue, their dialectic is expressed as much by their actions as dialog. Blanco does an excellent job recontextualizing normally heroic iconography of the Dark Knight flying through the air with his grapnel or stalking in the shadows as he hunts for Beth and makes these actions appear monstrous. Or maybe this just reveals what was inherent to these images from the start and it’s.

The problem of what to do with Beth Kane is presented as a complicated. Her decision isn’t a complicated one, revealed by page 6. Kate Kane chooses family, just like she did in issue #14 or in Detective Comics #974. But there’s the rub, which family does she choose? With Batman’s involvement it isn’t a binary choice between blood and found families. Marguerite Bennett has given Batwoman one of those Bat-Choices™, the “hard-call” only Batman is allowed to make that results in some ethically dubious action and often ends with him angering his family (be it Bat or League) by prioritizing the mission and his code over understanding and healthy communication. Unlike Batman, however, she is trying to make him understand and listen to her reason, and maybe respect it.

Fighting is like dancing, a conversation between bodies, put in sequence to tell their own story or enrich the one currently being told. Which is why staging Batwoman and Batman’s dispute as a chase is an effective means of representing their conversation, or lack thereof. If it takes two to tango, a chase is a one sided conversation as Kate shifts between pleading with Batman and fleeing from him with Beth. Blanco makes the most of the chase sequence in terms of design crafting pages that effortlessly flow panel to panel following a mixture of Kate on a bike and Batman toed behind her. Colorist John Rauch deserves recognition for how they use the color palette to enhance the storytelling. Once they go down the rabbit hole, backgrounds become dominated by two primary each associated with either Batwoman(red) or Batman(blue) – yes his suit is primarily grey now but the blue bat was a thing for a good while. This emphasis on color dominance helps to narrate who is “winning” this family feud in a given moment. As Batman stalks Beth through the interior of the Kane Industries building, everything becomes dominated by the pale blue. Only after breaking through into the foyer and playing her trap card does red come to take prominence. Eventually as their quarrel subsides, the background becomes a balance of blue and red as the cousins come to something of an understanding.

Family fights suck. Nobody wins if such a thing state really exists. You weaponize personal knowledge and in the end it’s all M.A.D.. Kate may declare victory and she achieved her goal of halting her cousin, but it wasn’t pretty. She triggered her cousin with the sound of that gun shot. The person who’s supposed to stop repetition weaponized the sound of the thing that started this eternal cycle. Of course she feels bad about it, that she’s disgraced both her family and the bat symbol she wears. Interestingly the textual and their visual signifiers aren’t paired together and instead mismatches in another moment recognizing the complicated, interlocking, nature of this dispute. The tone of Bennett’s writing also changes, this isn’t the knowingly sadomasochistic streak in Kate coming out, but something more mournful. This issue does a good job of working within its own emotional silo while adding extra-emotional weight to Kate’s decision to join the Colony in Detective #974.

Fernando Blanco and John Rauch’s work on the BLAM page itself is beautiful. I wish Bennett and letterer Deron Bennett had reworked the script or changed the placement of the monologue boxes once they saw how the page design had gone. The boxes get in the way of the BLAM, a beautiful moment of graphic pop art, and to a degree overstate what’s going. The BLAM and Batman’s shocked response is all you really need to understand what just occurred.

With Batman stopped, Kate changes tactic and tries speaking to Bruce for a change. She finally gets him to stop and listen to her reason for stopping him from taking Beth. Alice’s return is in part due to her own misplaced priorities; the search for lost time and her mission stopped her from visiting her sister. In an issue that uses Batman as a dark mirror of what Kate could be come, alone, driven, and monstrous in their desire to enforce their justice upon the world. This sequence does a good job of emphasizing the best of Batman, the family, and how Kate has grown. Kate’s plea for family is a recognition of Morrison’s first truth of Batman: He was Never Alone.

I’ve seen some interesting takes on the “you’ll never be Batwoman again” line. It’s a blustery melodramatic line that fits the tenor of cape comics and rings kind of hollow at first blush. As Detective #975 and Kate’s general presence has shown, Bruce can’t just strip that from her. She isn’t one of his Robins. She is in line with the various Batgirls of the family that take up the symbol due to and modify it to mean something more. There is a reading, that feels more right in the context of this series and Tynion’s final arc on Detective, that these actions will eventually cause some sort of transformation into something more/different from Batwoman. She does choose to join the Colony shortly after. Of course that idea of evolution into something more is incompatible within this realm of comics, Batwoman as a design and Kate as probably the most recognizable LGBTQ character in DC comics makes that kind of permanent change untenable.(Although the idea of a Nomad inspired Batwoman makes me chuckle.)

So yeah, some thoughts on Batwoman #16. Curious to see where and how this final two shot with Renee Montoya.