Huntress #1

[aeka]

Not sure how this works if you've already posted two pages from the preview, so just to be on the safe side, I'll just post two pages from the Huntress book that wreaked of all shades of awesome. ♥








So long story short, Helena discovered human trafficking and she's doing something about it. All in all, aeka likes. ♥

Characterisation-wise, Helena Bertinelli is still the fiery Italian we all love with a whole lot of boot to smash someone's jaw. She does however feel a bit more toned down than her post-Crisis self, though this may change later as the story progresses. I did particularly notice that Levitz blended elements of the Helena Wayne personality onto Helena B (namely her one-liners) while leaving the rest of her character in tact for the most part, but when I write a proper review of this issue on my Huntress blog, I'll be able to support this better. :P

Hope you guys pick this one up. :)

[Edit]: She's Helena Wayne. (01/13/2012)

Comments

[shadowpsykie]

i am SO glad these did not really give away spoilers (even though i am not one to shy away from them) i wanted to remain pure for this one *stop laughing!*

i THINK the toned down ness might be Levits keeping some of the development she had in birds of prey where she learned to not... you know, be so eager for the kill switch.

[aeka]

i THINK the toned down ness might be Levits keeping some of the development she had in birds of prey where she learned to not... you know, be so eager for the kill switch.

I hope that's the case, though I still wouldn't put it past her to beat the shit out of some "garbage" with a metal pipe and leave them dangling over a ten story building if they hit her berserk button.

(And given the subject matter this book touches upon, I wouldn't put that far from maybe.) :P

I do hope Helena rejoins Birds after this.

[thefiretonight]

I really enjoyed this. I came into the book never really paying much attention to Helena before. I bought it mostly because I love Marcus To's art. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it!

I wonder which way it's going to end up at the end. Is Helena from Earth 2 or DCnU? The letters page was purposely teasing! Ha.

[darkknightjrk]

"She does however feel a bit more toned down than her post-Crisis self."

Really? In the first page of the book, Helena's monologuing to herself how many bodies she's going to leave behind in Italy once she's done.

But yeah, it's pretty good. It's kinda funny that her whole plot seemed to be "get the chain to come up to my hotel so I can beat the shit out of them."

[shadowpsykie]

kill and beat to a pulp within an inch of their lives for being sadistic bastards are two different things... im cool with that... :D

[aeka]

Only DCnU Helena wears a cross on her costume. :P

Earth-2 Helena shows cleavage and wears her daddy's cape. :3

[thefiretonight]

Well, I did say that I never paid that much attention and it shows. ;)

[aeka]

True, but when differentiating between the two Helenas, it's always easier to just boil it down to:

Cleavage + Bat-cape = Helena Wayne

Religious Motif + Belly Window = Helena Bertinelli.

And if there's not belly window present, then the Italian roots substitute. ;)

[aeka]

I meant toned down in the sense that she doesn't seem as angry in this book as she did when she first started out, and that she's not as eager to kill as before.

But like I said, this may change later. :P

[mommy]

On a completely superficial level, I'm glad the artist got rid of the belly window. It made no sense for a normal human to fight organized crime without any armor over her belly, and her costume looks much better this way. Here's to hoping future artists keep her with this costume for a while.

[darkknightjrk]

Dealing with terrible folk who sell women like commodity can do that to a gal.

[darkknightjrk]

Totally--I'm fine with the revealing costumes when it's characters who are invulnerable or generally super-powered, since it allows for that suspension of disbelief a little more. But for regular humans, even ones who have super-duper martial arts skills, it's better to have some sort of protection, even if it is the super-special kind that looks like tight spandex.

I just wish that they didn't go with the shoulder-pad look. I'm sure it's because Hamner was one of the design guys. I would have preferred the one that Nicola Scott drew her in--more streamlined.

[bjornwilde]

Wait...fight scenes that don't come across as cheesecake and a reasonable costume which doesn't have cheap thrill windows? I may have to pick this up if the rest of the issue follows the pattern of these pages.

[jeyl]

No belly window, no 50 sentences per monologue box and taking on thugs with guns like a real pro. *bought*

[thatnickguy]

Whoa, I didn't even know Marcus To was doing the art for this. Consider me sold, now!

[halloweenjack]

John Byrne actually came up with a decent reason for a superhero to wear a skin-tight costume, at least for post-Crisis Superman: he ditched the whole my-mom-made-my-costume-out-of-the-blankets-in-the-spaceship origin for Clark's costume, and decided that Clark's invulnerability stemmed from a sort of force-field that extended a fraction of an inch beyond his skin. (This led to an instant cliche of Byrne's Superman run, in which his cape would quickly be reduced to shreds in almost every battle, but the costume was intact.)

Personally, I like the shoulder pads, but that may just be from playing a lot of fantasy MMORPGs.

[nezchan]

"But for regular humans, even ones who have super-duper martial arts skills, it's better to have some sort of protection, even if it is the super-special kind that looks like tight spandex."

Fat Cobra being the obvious exception of course. You simply do NOT cover that physique.

[darkknightjrk]

Fat Cobra's too sexy for a shirt.

[fifthie]

Huntress in her good costume owning bad guys.

Holy shit. There's a DC comic book I want to buy.

Fuck

[fifthie]

LEVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITZ

[lieut_kettch]

New! Helena's gone a bit soft. She wouldn't have killed those thugs, but she wouldn't be above impaling their wrists to the wall with a well-placed bolt.

[richardak]

Too toned down for my taste. Much too toned down. I want her leaving a trail of bodies a mile wide. Otherwise, I'm enjoying this one quite a bit so far.

[aeka]

I want her leaving a trail of bodies a mile wide.

Except it's already been done for the 20+ years that she's been active. I actually find it refreshing that Levitz didn't bring her back to square one and have her retrogress in character development like some of the other DC heroes have undergone. I was worried about this at first, but after reading the full issue I think Levitz succeeded in blending the best of both incarnations of the character without drastically changing what this version of the character is about.

Personally I'll take the badass, but self-confident Helena B over the post-Crisis "angry-mafia-princess-desperate-for-Batman's approval" Helena for being able standout as her own character, and not serve as a female version of Batman, if not for anything else.

[whitesycamore]

So long story short, Helena discovered human trafficking and she's doing something about it.

But isn't that the story that all female heroes always get? Isn't that the same one she had in Pipeline, in fact?

At least tell me there's no scenes of helpless doe-eyed victims standing around in tattered clothes looking all cute and scared.

I mean, I'm all for comics denouncing human trafficking, but it does seem that woman-heroes get the woman-stories, and that the dynamics of the sex trade are covered in only the shallowest way.

If there was a female-led comic book that actually aimed to say something meaningful about the sex industry *and* the art didn't objectify the victims in a gross way, I'd be all over that.

[richardak]

It wouldn't be retrogression. I don't see it as progress for her character to stop being a ruthless killer, any more than I would see it as progress if, say, Batman started killing people. It would just be an abandonment of what made the character different and special. Huntress is different from almost every other superhero in the DCU, and, in particular, different from Batman, precisely because she has no qualms about killing.

Her willingness to kill has never had anything to do, at least not directly, with her anger or some absurd desire for approval. It is fundamental to her character, because, unlike, say, Batman, she does not believe in the system. Batman, for all that he's a vigilante, turns criminals over to the police. Huntress was raised to believe in omerta: the police, the courts, the system, are all the enemy, and if you want justice, you get it yourself. That was the whole point of Cry for Blood. If she starts turning bad guys over to the authorities, that betrays her entire character concept.

I do agree that she should have no interest either way in Batman's approval. That never made much sense and was always just an idiotic holdover from the pre-Crisis Huntress, and one that only got introduced as a motivation many years after the post-Crisis version premiered.