Oh, Zinda....

[bluefall]

Four pages from this week's BATMAN: CONFIDENTIAL, and the continuing saga of Batman vs old Blackhawk enemies.




Brief recap: some majorly high-tech plane engines have been stolen by an old enemy of the Blackhawks. Blackhawk's body is also missing. Zinda actually gets a sort of nice moment here when Bruce says "he'll use the engines to make superplanes" and Zinda rattles off all the other high tech stuff he'd also need, proving she does inded know her stuff as a pilot, but it's a bit irrelevant since obviously Bruce has already figured all this out and has them en route to the old Blackhawk Island. (With Zinda flying, and yet she seems surprised when they get there.)

At the island, Bruce tells Zinda to circle the plane. Zinda, for some reason, makes a halfhearted, pretty childish protest, calls him "worse than Huntress" (not Helena, mind) as he jumps down onto the island, and then quietly follows him on her own, hoping he won't be mad.





Jesus, this guy. Look, again, DC, that is not how evil!Zinda worked. She was not Shark's loyal half-mindless devoted lover. She was a conniving badass supervillain who actually took over Shark's operation for herself on at least one occasion. Do some fucking research and stop trying to retcon Zinda into a passive traumatized victim.



Aaaaand that's the full extent of their fight.

Meanwhile Batman finds the supposed corpse of Blackhawk, finds out it's... not Blackhawk, and has a video chat with the bad guy.



.... you stay classy, DC.

Oh, and the bad guy is, predictably, apparently Blackhawk himself. Wait, I'm wrong, the scene just reads that way at first because the writing is shitty and Bruce raids Blackhawk's house and beats up on and extorts information out of his employees as to his whereabouts. Whatever, McGraw. At this point I don't even care.

Comments

[From: jaybee3]

Is that Greg Land-ish porn-face I see in that one panel. Ugh. Not on Lady Blackhawk, please. No. Just no.

And what's worse a Zinda/BruceBatman team-up could have been a very good. Two more opposing personalities you're not likely to see elsewhere in DC.

[From: foxhack]

LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND?

Seriously what the hell is up with this art. BLARGH.

[From: sailorlibra]

The worst part is that in some panels it looks okay and then in the next one, it's serious bleck. Like Land, but not as good at tracing, so the faces look deformed. Especially the mouths, which do not seem to fit with the rest of the face at all.

[From: thebigapricot]

You know the only research they did was flipping through the issues of BoP where Shark came back. If they even did that. Probably just googled Zinda and King Shark and took what showed up.

She's still pretty cute though.

[From: scottyquick]

I really, really fucking miss Birds of Prey.

[From: sailorlibra]

This. Though mostly I miss Simone's BoP.

[From: bluefall]

Zinda was the last holdout, too. Every single one of them has now been regressed or chickified.

If I were Kate, I'd be thanking my lucky stars to have that backup.

(Though I'm beginning to be cautiously positive about Babs again, now that BQM seems done with the Vanhook bullshit.)

[From: mad]

Yup.

[From: gargoylekitty]

Motto.

[From: kingrockwell]

Definitely.

[From: weezus]

oh god same. i swear i'm noticing withdrawal symptoms.

[From: foxhack]

I'm going to pretend that's Red Lantern Zinda in the preview image.

Yeah. That's the ticket.

[From: superfangirl1]

Denial table for two?

[From: tsunamiwombat]

So much for the hope of seeing Zinda being badass...

[From: mad]

Hahaha, you beat me to posting this.

[From: bluefall]

I AM A NINJA.

Besides, shouldn't you be working on that Oracle: the Fail Cure post instead?

[From: majingojira]

I need an Icon of Uncle from Jackie Chan Adventures saying "MUST DO RESEARCH!"

Because that's what he'd say to this!

AIIYA! MUST DO RESEARCH!.

[From: alcimines.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the writers at DC seem to make just about everyone into an idiot and/or loser whenever they are in the presence of the Bat God.

I liked Bruce a lot more back when he was mortal.

[From: cleome45]

Thank You. Just... yeah. I was never a huge cheerleader of Bats but when they do that... [headdesk]

[From: ladymirth]

Why did I even expect anything different? *groan*

I noticed that Didio's to-do list in the last page of one of last month's Batman comics included "kill Lady Blackhawk". I wonder what that's about.

[From: theanswer]

Seemed like a cool story to me.

[From: bluefall]

Well, I'm very happy for you.

[From: ceebee_eebee]

Oh. no no NO. This is...no.

[From: kingrockwell]

Sigh...

And the only reason I even bothered with this arc was because she was in it. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find some better way to spend the money that would've gone to this series next month (though Sam Kieth's on story and art in January! so excited!)

Also this art is beyond awful. I should've seen that coming from that story Marz did in the Infinite Christmas Special.

oh, and i don't think Blackhawk was supposed to be the villain, he was just watching from the sidelines for some reason? it look like they're till teaming Bats up with a hawk, just not the one we actually bought the title for :(

[From: bluefall]

Eh, on second read, you're right. He approaches Blackhawk with the narration "[Gaynor] has stolen from me one ally, he's revealed to me another." (Zinda, I guess, just gets to hang with Gaynor for another issue until she's rescued? Batman's astoundingly indifferent to her fate.) I was thrown by him treating Blackhawk's valet like a suspect and implicating him in the theft. Bruce's behavior in this ish, I gotta say, is not a whole lot better, more coherent, or all that more in-character than Zinda's.

[From: booklover81.livejournal.com]

So wrong on so many levels. Time to reread BOP.

[From: jarodrussell]

It's like the Blackhawk villains never heard of duct tape.

[From: bluefall]

Well, given Zinda's performance here, it's not like they need it. A good long length of cooked noodle could probably effectively restrain her at this rate.

[From: nevermore999]

This...is such shit.

I can't even articulate.