The story involves Checkmate kidnapping, drugging, interrogating, and psychoanalyzing Helena to decide if she's a proper candidate for their Black Queen. It's kind of dumb, plays a bit on the Helena-is-crazy string so many writers like to unfortunately pluck, and inexplicably puts her in the Helena Wayne costume (though she's only in-costume during drug-induced hallucinations, so possibly justified?) which I guess is better than the alternative? In general, the Alfred-is-maybe-dying? subplot caught my attention more, and I kinda need to seek out the issues around this to see where that went.

Anyway, the only reason I'm even bothering with this story is because these things happen.


Vic's kind of a cipher here. I can't see anything here that actually connects him to the guy we know behind the mask. It's not the presence of out-of-character qualities so much as absence of in-character qualities. Like I said, complete cipher. The only reason he's here is because of a past connection to Helena.

In the next issue, Helena's escaped and headed back home, but she's not home free yet.

(you don't want to see what they say about Helena in the rest of that page, it's...egregious)

And there you have it! After this page, it's never seen or acknowledged again! And couldn't it at least have been acknowledged better? Vic just pops in to tell her he can't help? What the hell? It probably would've been better if they'd left him out of it. :(

At least in the JLU world we can pretend it went on forever!

(skip to 2:12 for Huntress parts)