Sunday Splash Page #254

 

"Hospitality," in Huntress: Cry for Blood #3, by Greg Rucka (writer), Rick Burchett (artist), Tatjana Wood and Jamison (color artists), Clem Robins (letterer)

Someone's killing members of Gotham's major crime families, and leaving crossbow bolts in their bodies. So suspicion falls on Huntress, and she has to clear her name, with a little help from a certain "no-face" guy. Along the way, she learns a few unhappy facts about her past.

This came out in 2000, not too long after No Man's Land, but I didn't pick it up until spring of 2012. At that point, what I knew about Helena Bertinelli was essentially, she used a crossbow, she used lethal force sometimes, and Batman didn't like her because of that second thing, because only Batman's prepubescent son is allowed to get away with killing criminals.

Rucka and Burchett dive into her backstory more heavily, the ways in which her origin is tied up in crime, and the way her approach is informed by the people who taught her. The flashbacks chart her progress from a traumatized, terrified little girl staring with wide eyes, to a determined, angry (traumatized) young woman, looking out at the world through a scowl.

I don't know if the idea Helena was a guest at the dinner party Batman breaks up in Batman: Year One was something previously established, or something Rucka decided to add here. I guess it's a way for Batman to act as an inspiration, but it feels like too cute of a coincidence.

Inspiration or not, Helena got her combat training from a father/son pair of Mafia assassins, the notion of trusting the police to settle wrongs done against you and yours is laughable, and you answer blood with blood. Even if Helena perhaps reaches a point where she won't kill, that doesn't mean she's opposed to someone else doing the killing.

Which rather effectively blows apart the burgeoning relationship Rucka starts to establish between her and Vic Sage halfway through this story. Rucka's Sage is in a very different place than he was when Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan left him. He's regained some of that inner peace, to where he's resumed trying to help others by investigating, digging for facts and truth, rather than just going around busting heads. Burchett often draws him with a largely unlined face. There's no anger or tension bubbling under the surface, but more often an amused smile. He's enjoying himself, and maybe trying to help Helena find something similar. It doesn't ultimately work out for them (not counting the Justice League Unlimited cartoon), but Helena gets to join the Birds of Prey later on, so she made a few connections eventually.

I'm generally neutral on Rucka's work, and my interest in Bat-family stuff is limited, but this mini-series has kept it's spot in my collection for over a decade so far, and I don't see it going away any time soon.

And with that, we're through the Hs! That means, between Sunday and Saturday Splash Page, we've covered 13 letters, so only half the alphabet to go! (Plus all the stuff I've added to the earlier letters since I finished them.)

Two Halves That Aren't Whole

Reading Huntress: Cry for Blood, I was pretty curious about the connection between Helena and Vic Sage. Vic describes her as being like looking in a mirror. Richard Dragon describes her as Vic's other half.

As Vic told her, they both have problems with anger and violence. With Vic, in the latter stages of the O'Neil/Cowan series, it caused him to lose perspective and the inner calm he'd been developing. He grew frustrated with how little of a difference he was making, with the people he couldn't save. He kept trying to fix things by hitting people. He forgot (or gave up on) being a reporter, even though he might have had more success going that route. Letting the people of Hub City know what he'd seen and learned, in the hope they'd stir themselves to action. But he was too far gone by that point.

With Helena, the anger works similarly. It makes her too stubborn to know when to back off, so even though everyone is looking for the Huntress, she still goes to try and shake down that reporter, who turns out to have been killed to help frame her. Her anger also leads to a lack of trust on her part. When Nightwing offers to help, she rejects him, because she thinks he's doing so not because he's actually concerned for her, but because he thinks there's something wrong with her that needs fixing.

For both of them, anger leads to isolation, and near destruction. It makes it that much harder for them to accomplish their goals, because they're too caught up in pain and frustration to see they're either being manipulated, or going about things in the wrong way.

But there was something about Vic's 'like looking in a mirror' line that stuck with me. What I realized was, when you look in a mirror, you see yourself, but reversed. All the same features are there, just on the opposite side. So what does that mean for the two of them?

One thing I hit on was their pasts, namely that Helena knows hers, and Vic doesn't. Sure there are certain things about herself Helena didn't know (which she learned over the course of the mini-series), but she knows a lot. That her family was killed, and she wasn't. That her family was part of a mob, that the men who took her in afterward were killers, who taught her how as well. Vic, conversely, knows none of that. He was an orphan, no knowledge of his parents, origins, any of that. Helena is driven forward by what she does know about her past, while Vic was driven by what he didn't. Helena needs to avenge her family, and that fuels the anger. Vic needs to learn things, uncover truths and expose them to light, but the frustration that mounts with not being able to answer questions about his past continued to build as his series progressed. The fact he couldn't see if he was making a difference just contributed to the problem.

And They Could Have Fought Crime, If It Wasn't For That Meddling Batman

I picked up a copy of Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood a couple weeks ago. I might get around to a formal review eventually, but there's something sort of related I felt like discussing today. I'll mention I'm discussing Batman in the present tense in this post, even though it's referencing the continuity pre-relaunch. I have no idea what he acts like in the current DCU.

I recall reading someone talking about why they liked Kate Kane, the current Batwoman. One of the reasons was she was a rare Gotham-related character that isn't striving for Batman's approval. This was in contrast to other female vigilantes in Gotham, like Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Helena Bertinelli.

I don't know if it's really fair, since Kate had been fighting crime for about five minutes before she got the Bat Seal of Approval. OK, it was like 22 weeks, if we figure she made her initial appearance in 52 #11, and received that Batarang Christmas gift from Nightwing (which seems like a pretty obvious thumbs up to me) in 52 #33. Still, that's not very long at all compared to the amount of time Steph, Cass, and Helena had to deal with Batman being this scowling, meddling authority figure.

Because that's the thing I realized reading Cry for Blood. Early on he comes to Helena's apartment to basically accuse her of killing a mobster, and it's the same as when he interrogates regular thugs, except for not dangling her by an ankle over a rooftop. If Batman isn't OK with you fighting crime in his city, it isn't as simple as his not hooking you up with cool Bat-gadgets. He's going to harass you in an attempt to make you either do things his way, or quit. He's not going to give you much benefit of the doubt, you're going to be kept out of the loop, and he'll likely actively encourage his proteges to treat you the same way (like when he tells Cass to stay away from Steph). It's much easier to be unconcerned with whether someone approves of you or not if you never experience what it's like not having their approval.

If Gotham City was a high school, Batsy would be the leader of the popular kids, but not one that's content to simply ignore those he deems unpopular. He's the kid that makes the cutting remark about someone's clothes just loudly enough for them to hear when they walk past. Or the jerk who "accidentally" knocks their books off their desk every time he walks past. He's Flash Thompson, and Steph/Helena/Cass are Peter Parker, pre-spider bite. You know those stories where the popular kids pretend to befriend the outsider as part of a plan to humiliate said outsider later on? That's pretty much Stephanie Brown's first fifteen years as a character. Or maybe Bats is Lucy with the football. Take your pick.

And he can do it because he has the money, the resources, the support of all the other vigilantes in town and the police commissioner. He knows all your secrets, and you know none of his. Between the condescension, the ostracism, the suspicion, he can make a vigilante's life miserable, and apparently is willing to take time out of his busy schedule of punching clowns to do so. I suppose the determined vigilante could try and turn the tables, step away from fighting crime to make Batman's life difficult, or to at least find some useful information on him. But it would take them away from what they're really trying to accomplish, and it would likely play into Batman's preconceived notions about why they aren't cut out for vigilante work.

Really, if you want to fight crime in a costume in Gotham, and do it yuor way, with your interests, rather than being an offshoot of the Bat, you have two choices. A) he decides you aren't worth noticing and leaves you to it, or b) he gives you the OK and leaves you to it. "A" seemed to work for Six-Pack and Section Eight, but there wasn't much of a blind eye in effect when it came to Batgirl, Huntress, or Spoiler. Given that situation, where they aren't going to be able to fight crime without Batjerk looming just over their shoulder, getting his approval could be rather helpful.

Whether they really crave that approval, as Vic suggests Helena does, or simply recognize it as an occupational necessity, would seem to depend on the writer and the reader. I tend to think Helena, Cassandra, and Stephanie all would have gone on doing what they were doing with or without his approval, as long as he wasn't interfering. He did help serve as the impetus for all of them, to varying degrees, but I think once each of them got into crimefighting, it took up its own momentum in their lives independent of him.