Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Huntress #2 (January, 2012)



Between the garbage strike and the general Italian permissivo atteggiamento, the Huntress had an easy time sneaking into a polizia station to access their computers. While eating a stale (but still delicious and vastly superior to stateside) sfogliatelle, Huntress learned that the men she'd beaten had been murdered. This limited her ability to connect them to the head of the sex trafficking ring, but they happened to be picked up by the same undertaker. A (dubiously uniformed) female officer caught the Huntress and chased her off with several gunshots.

Mr. Moretti relieved some tension with one of his recent acquisitions, then assured a mafia representative on the phone that the violent "pervert... leather type..." wouldn't interfere with any more business.

Huntress pinned the sleeves of the undertaker to an upright coffin, a pretty questionable feat for a crossbow, then extracted information from him by threatening his genitalia (with just the one bolt this time.)

Helena met with those newspaper people, who I guess were named Alessandro and Christina, over coffee and pastries. How does she keep her figure? Probably by keeping her human contact down to two pages of exposition about Moretti's gun running and sex trafficking. "...We need to break the connections... Before all the refugees from the Arab revolutions get caught up in them, and trade life under dictatorships for lives in brothels."



On a ship at the docks, Huntress beat up two whole guards, one of whom was beating on a human slave first, then drove all the girls off in a schoolbus while blowing up the ship with an explosive arrow.

The next day, Helena spied on Moretti as he traveled from his villa to a small boat. She fired a tracer crossbow bolt at the ship, then tracked it with a handheld GPS. "I really don't like men who use little girls... See you soon, Moretti. This hunt isn't over."

"Crossbow at the Crossroads: Part Two" was by Paul Levitz, Marcus To and John Dell. I liked it better when it was called "Crossbow at the Crossroads: Part One." It's like they just rearranged the pages. It still looks good, and I'd like to give a shout out to Andrew Dalhouse for managing softer, feminine coloring suited for a purple-clad vigilante without undermining the darker aspects of the story. However, that story has not progressed in the slightest, and reads like a silly '80s action movie without a sense of stakes or accomplishment for the protagonist. There's even a mild, halfhearted exploitation vibe. The Guillem March cover is this comic in a nutshell: an otherwise attractive image marred by an incompetently positioned bo staff obscuring the heroine's face. I want to like it, but it undermines itself in obvious ways.

New 52's Day featuring Wildstorm

4 comments:

The Irredeemable Shag said...

I'm really hoping this book takes place on the New 52 version of Earth-2. I know it was hinted at, but hasn't been confirmed just yet. We know the new JSA book will take place on Earth-2.

I need my JSA fix, so fingers crossed!

The Irredeemable Shag
http://firestormfan.com

Diabolu Frank said...

Agreed. If there must be an Earth-Two, the Huntress has a far greater presence there than as a Batgirl alternative on Earth-One.

karl said...

Ive heard something about DC bringing back a version of World's Finest with an Earth-2 team-up between Huntress and Power Girl. I enjoyed their bried team-up in the old Wonder Woman comic in the early 80s.
To me, Helena Wayne [not Bertinelli] has always held more potential as an Earth-2 heroine.

Diabolu Frank said...

My understanding is that the new World's Finest will see Huntress and Power Girl stranded on Earth-One, and will be written by Paul Levitz with rotating art by George Perez and Kevin Maguire.

The previous overlong sentence fills me with ambivalence, in part because of points you mention. Helena Wayne has a greater capacity for breaking out as a character among general audiences as the daughter of Bruce and Selena on Earth-Two. However, the Huntress we've seen so far is very much the Post-Crisis model, and she'll be on Earth-One, which is right where she's been for over twenty years. Further, that character shares little common ground with Power Girl as we know her today, so the pairing doesn't make as much sense as it could. Finally, I like the art on Huntress' book, but the announced team is stellar. The problem is that I really don't care for any of Paul Levitz writing of recent years, including the Huntress series, so why would he work for me under more contrived circumstances? Want to buy-- probably will not.