It’s 2009 and I’m reading Greg Rucka and a distinct artist begin their run on a character-defining run for Batwoman. It’s 2026 and I’m reading Greg Rucka and a distinct artist begin their run for Batwoman. Sometimes things exist in cycles and sometimes time finds a way to rhyme across nearly two decades. It was that run on Detective Comics from Rucka that did spark some of my early college interests in the medium, so it would be a disservice to skip out on the new launch of Batwoman by Greg Rucka, DaNi, Matt Hollingsworth, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

Prophecy can only dictate so much before it becomes its own inevitability. Kate and Beth have been entangled in their own prophecy for much of their lives—a cult of crime and the inevitable and constant return of Darkseid shepherded by one of the sisters. But Beth has died. Or had died. Or is this her second time dying? It’s unclear as Kate is in a recovery center and appears to be suffering from the effects of having potentially killer her sister. But the last time we see the two of them, they’re grappling one another as they fall over a cliff. And if Kate is in this recovery center in Greece, why does Batwoman appear elsewhere to confront the people who are looking to groom her to take her sister’s place in the prophecy?

The idea of the cycle appears all over this first issue. Metatextually, we know that what’s being presented as Beth’s death isn’t the death that we had seen in Batwoman: Elegy all those years ago. The shades of that story exist here, though. Or maybe they don’t. What’s unclear here is when all of these moments are taking place—Kate in the recovery center, her fight with Beth, her confronting another shadowy cabal—and that only contributes to the idea that this is all either happening again or hasn’t happened at all just yet. Has Beth actually died once we’ve come to this part of the story? Or are we seeing Kate recovering from watching her sister die before Beth’s inevitable return to fulfill her end of the prophecy? It’s unclear from only the first issue, but it does bring to mind the idea that this will be the endless fight between the siblings: one will try to bring about the end of the world and the other has to stop them by killing them.

Violence is an inevitability in cape comics—a fist will be thrown at some point or another. But for a character like Batwoman, that violence seems to permeate her stories more intensely than others. Maybe it’s her connection to a religion that worships crime and a coming darkness. Or maybe it’s just the blood reg wig that compels the story to take those violent turns. Either way, it is an inevitability for Kate, but it feels as though this story may be trying to break her from it. 

Get excited. Get spiraling.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.