Gotham City Sirens: Union (2010)

"... I was livin' it up as personal court jester to the Clown Prince of Crime!"

 "You know he hates being called that."

"I'm sure he prefers it to "Puddin'"!"

This book collects the first seven issues of this new series - one of a few started in the aftermath of the Batman R.I.P. storyline. It was written by Paul Dini who of course is no stranger to the Batman world having written Batman comics and been heavily involved with some of the Batman animated series. He is also the co-creator of Harley Quinn who is one of the lead characters in the book. The art is by a newcomer to DC, the Spanish artist Guillem March.

Gotham City is a strange place in wake of Batman's death. Dick Grayson takes over as Batman with Bruce Wayne's son as Robin. The Riddler gives up a life of crime. And Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn become BFF and move into Selina's soon to be converted animal shelter. The story outlines how the girls run into each other and end up with Selina, a plot by Hush, posing as Bruce Wayne, to get revenge on Catwoman through Harley and a jealous Joker's attempts to kill Harley for associating with Wayne.

I really wanted to love this book but it ended up being just OK.  The action is a bit slow in getting going and is not helped by the third chapter, called Riddle Me This, that inexplicably only features our heroines on one page and details a story featuring a team-up between the Riddler and Batman to try and prevent a crime that has a puzzle element to it. The second half of the book is much better with Poison Ivy and Catwoman tracking down Hush and rescuing Harley before becoming targets of the Joker's apparently insane jealousy. The final chapter in the book is another filler story. So it was disappointing that a new series had two seemingly filler stories in its first seven issues and that the whole did not really hang together as a storyline as much as it should have. The fact that the story improved in issues 4 - 6 is enough to give me hope that a second volume is worth investigating but the writing needs to be a lot more focussed on the central characters and have a stronger plotline.

First published on RevolutionSF on Thursday Apr 28, 2011