Article #47
Batwoman
and Kobra in Twin Peaks!!!
OR…
Twin
Killing!!!
Before
I begin, just a note. I do enjoy Greg
Rucka’s comic writing. I’ve enjoyed his
work with Batman and he has a deft style capable of creating a strong
story. It’s one of the reasons I was (and
still am) picking up the Batbooks on a regular basis. That being said, I don’t really like the new
Batwoman whose run on Detective Comics recently came to a close. Now I know some may paint me as some sort of homophobic
Neanderthal for saying so, since Batwoman’s alter ego, Kathy Kane, is an open
lesbian (and kids, if you don’t know what a lesbian is, ask your parents cause
I’m not going to tell you). Those people
who write me off probably won’t bother reading this entry any further, and if
those people happen to be the only two who visit this site, well, then I’m
really screwed. However, if you’ll give me
the benefit of the doubt, then please read on.
Remember, I try to entertain as well as inform.
So, I’m
not a fan of the new Batwoman. First
question, why? Well, superficially,
there’s the irksome issue of her costume.
Kathy Kane looks like she has a serious pigment depletion in her skin
and sports bright red hair. And when she
goes out as Batwoman, her full costume covers ever bit of her body, except the
extremely pale skin around her mouth and her bright red hair. That just doesn’t make any sense. Comics paint your average crook as a moron,
and even a moron busted by Batwoman would be apt to think, if he ever saw Kathy
Kane, that she may have some connection to Batwoman – and that, my friend,
would cause problems. I know it’s
comics, and comics are fantasy and style, not reality, but still, it needles me
a bit. My problem, I know, and I’m
trying to deal with it.
The
second reason was a nagging issue with the “Elegy” storyline that ran not too
long ago. In it Batwoman had to deal
with, once again, the Cult of Crime, a group of fanatics who worship crime and
who needed Kathy, the “twice named daughter of Cain”, as a sacrifice in some arcane
ritual. In the original encounter in DC’s
weekly series 52, she managed to overcome the Cult’s assault with the aid of
the new Question, although she did get a knife shoved through her chest. Kathy survived and continued her good works
as Batwoman.
Now in
Elegy we’re introduced to Alice, a very pasty skinned, Wonderland dressed Queen
of the Cult of Crime. In Detective
Comics #857 Alice acts out her plan to highjack a Gotham military base… and
oddly enough gives Kathy a call to let her know they have her “pappy”.
The military man
who gets to live also happens to be Kathy Kane’s father… hmm…
I’ll
never get why villains feel compelled to let the hero in on their plans, but
what the hell. It moves the story
along. Kathy, who is attending a gala
ball or something, is obviously upset by this turn of events. Bet you can’t spot her in the crowd…
Did you spot
Kathy in the crowd?
The men talking
to Kathy are actually former Cult members, they broke off from the others after
Kathy survived their initial encounter…
You
know, looking at the last panel above, you have to wonder something. Comics, as I said, are fantasy. They’re creative endeavors that may be given
direction by one, but are actually accomplished by a team. So think about about it. A group of people decided that the best look
for Kathy would be as some sort of old school vampire. Seriously, think about it. They already made her a lesbian, why on earth
did they need to add to that by making her stick out like a female Bela Legosi
on every page? Well, I guess vampires
are hot nowadays. That, or there’s some
subtle message about lesbians and physical appearance the authors wanted to
make. I don’t know. I can’t read minds.
Anyway,
eventually Kathy and her entourage make it to the military base and they learn
the depths of Alice’s depravity…
What? Were you expecting something else? Like maybe the crime worshipper’s dumping a
load of religious literature on the unsuspecting Gothamites? Now that WOULD be scary!
Batwoman
gets on the plane and manages to stop the deadly plot. Her and Alice struggle, eventually getting
knocked out of the plane and the following happens…
OMG!!! What a twist!!! M Night Shyamalan must be rolling in his
grave over this one! What? He’s still alive? Really?
Well,
well, well. So Alice, the Queen of Crime
if you will, was actually Kathy’s never before mentioned sister. This is expanded upon in the next issue,
Detective Comics #858, where we learn that Kate actually had a TWIN
SISTER.
Whenever a mom
promises something fun for the kids, the kids would be better off staying
home. It’s like THE omen of death in
comics. Heck, look no further than Bruce
Wayne, who attended a movie with his folks the night they were killed.
Sure
enough, Kathy, her sister and their mom are kidnapped and held hostage. Kathy’s dad leads a team of commandos to
rescue them and in the attempt it seems as though Kathy’s sister and mom are
killed. In Detective Comics #859 Kathy
gets a DNA test done on some of Alice’s blood that she got from their fight the
night before and finds that the DNA matches hers exactly. So I guess Kathy’s sister survived and was
taken by the Cult of Crime and trained to become their white queen.
Kathy’s
not thrilled by this and shows her frustration in Detective Comics #859…
And there you go…
Ah yes,
the evil twin angle, a tried and tested plot device, particularly in soap
operas. Honestly, I’m not a fan of
it. But there was something else about
this story that nagged at me and festered in the back of my mind. Then it came to me, this whole thing was very
familiar to something I’d read many years ago… and it involved sssomeone who
talksss like thisss… KOBRA
No, no,
no!!! I said Kobra, not Cobra! Geez!!!
There you go,
the World’s Most Dangerous Man!
Back in
the mid-1970s DC introduced a character who’s still popping up today to
challenge your favorite heroes, the “World’s Most Dangerous Man” Kobra. He actually had his own series, first
appearing in Kobra #1. A unique venture,
a series that focused on a villain instead of a hero. And as most unique series go, Kobra’s lasted
about as long as expected, a whole lasted 7 issues, with the penultimate issue
#8, which was supposed to guest-star Batman, shunted into the new anthology
series DC Spcecial Series #1. This is
was called DC 5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular 1977, and was written by Martin
Pasko with art by Michael Netzer. It
starts out with Batman intercepting a letter for Bruce Wayne…
Sooo… Kobra was
separated from his twin brother by a Cult of Cobra worshippers and was raised
to be their leader… this sounds remarkably familiar, doesn’t it?
So the cult
becomes a crime cult… hmm…
I wonder if this
was also how Cobra Commander started? It’s
also funny that Tomax and Xamot have the same affliction as Jason Burr and
Kobra.
Now that I think
about it, did Hasbro knock off the idea of a cobra based terrorist group from
DC?
So, let
me see. Alice was separated from her twin
sister at a young age and raised by a cult to be its leader in criminal
endeavors. Kobra was separated from his twin
brother at a young age and raised by a cult to be its leader in criminal
endeavors.
Nope,
no similarity there at all.
Let’s
continue the story shall we...
Man,
Alfred is a wonder. What other butler
can fly a jet plane and make your whites their whitest? Batman realizes that Kobra must be using an
old base of Ra’s al Ghul with a Lazarus Pit in order to be able to raise the
dead. Upon arriving there the Dark
Knight infiltrates the base…
…and
promptly sets off every alarm in the place and gets caught. You’ve got to love Batman in the 1970s, he seemed
so much more human than he does nowadays.
Batman awakes to find himself strung up with Jason Burr and coming
face-to-face with Kobra!
As noted in
Austin Powers, the villain promptly explains his plan then leave the hero alone
in some kind of easily escapable deathtrap.
Oh, by the way, Batman
and Burr escape.
Another
point. Alice’s cult seems to have some
supernatural aspect as some members can change into were-creatures – and Kobra has
the supernatural Lazarus Pit to raise the dead.
And in
typical 1970s fashion, we have a nice, happy ending…
Ah yes, you just have to love a
happy ending… or is it???
OMG!!! Where the hell was she hiding that knife???
Man,
what a downer ending for a 1970s comic story.
Man, Batman is pissed! I’d hate
to be Kobra right about now. Batman
would go after Kobra, but oddly enough it wasn’t in Batman, Detective Comics,
Brave and the Bold or World’s Finest. He’d
next clash with Kobra in Aquaman #61 of all places. Weird.
I guess after that the Caped Crusader suffered some kind of short term
memory loss as he put the Kobra group on the back burner and let them fester as
they’re still around in the DC universe in some capacity today, though the
original Kobra leader suffered a rather grisly end in JSA #51. Of course, this being comics, there is no such
thing as “dead”. I mean, there’s a
freaking resurrection pit just sitting there!
And now,
I hope, you can see my point in this whole endeavor. There’s just way too many similarities
between Kobra’s background and Kathy’s background for my liking. Including having one twin seemingly plummet
from a ridiculous height to their death we’ve got criminal cults raising a
kidnapped twin to be their leader, the “good” twin believing the other twin
dead until very recently, the inevitable clashes with the “good” twin, the
involvement of the Batman mythos in some capacity, the use of a parent to lure
the “good” twin and so on.
I
suppose that, after it’s all said and done, the main reason I’m not a big fan
of the new Batwoman is that subconsciously, while I was reading “Elegy”, I was just
disappointed that her first solo run wasn’t more original and, well... better.
And on
that bombshell, I think I’ll call it a day.
Take care!