Batwoman, Volume 6: The Unknowns by Marc Andreyko

Batwoman, Volume 6: The Unknowns Reviews

• 
  Jayson

  (C+) 64% | Almost Satisfactory
  Notes: It’s sham storytelling: a puppet show parody, perfidiously phony, and not pretty enough to camouflage its stupidity.
• 
  Anne

  Really? This is it?
  This is the end to a comic that used to be such a fantastic title?
  Well. Ok, then...*bites knuckles, chokes back sob*
  Don't mind me, I'll just be over in the corner wallowing in my disappointment. On the flip side, I get to use this one for our
  Shallow Halloween Read, because it's stuffed to the gills with Creatures of the Night!
  {insert thunderous boom & evil cackling here}
  
  
  
  While not taking home the prize for Worst Comic Ever Written, it's still pretty damn painful. Especially when you've read this title for years, and eagerly anticipated each volume because of its unique look and feel. Then watched as the original creative team left, and a new one (probably through no fault of their own) took it down several notches.
  And now this. This weird finale.
  An Out-of-Nowhere team-up with Out-of-Nowhere characters!
  Red Alice, Clayface, Etrigan, & Ragman.
  
  
  
  Ragman? Who the fuck is Ragman?!
  
  
  
  Huh. Ok. Apparently, he's for real.
  He has a Rag-suit that's made out of souls, and he...
  Ah, fuck it. You don't care.
  
  
  
  Anyway, it opens, as all good DC stories do, (<--total lie) with an oversimplified origin story for Kate. Secret Origins #3, to be exact.
  
  
  
  So after the hamfisted Secret shhhh! Origin issue, the real story begins.
  IN SPACE!
  
  
  
  I know, right?
  Why is Batwoman fighting Morgan Le Fay and a horde of demons - who appear to be coming out of a satellite?
  Time for a flashback...
  
  
  
  Nope. Not that kind. The kind that tells you how Kate ended up in a space shuttle with Clayface, Etrigan, Ragman, Red Alice, and Mark Watney*.
  
  
  
  Do you want to know why these guys are a team?
  Great, then you can read this for yourself!
  And if you figure out why these guys were lumped together, you let me know, ok?
  Fine. There is an attempt to made to make this team seem plausible, but it still seemed too out there for me. I understand that Batwoman deals with the paranormal a lot, but that doesn't mean you have to pull Etrigan out of whatever rock he's been hiding under, Ragman out of obscurity, or scrape Clayface off the bottom of your shoe, in order for her to get a few partners.
  Red Alice was an...odd choice, as well. Sure, she Kate's twin sister, but wasn't she a homicidal maniac in every other volume? What? A few days & one spa treatment later, and now she's totally fine?!
  
  
  
  Maggie is still angry at Kate over their break-up and more than a little pissed that she's dating a serial killer.
  
  
  
  And speaking of Nocturna...
  Ewwww! Ewwww, to gross/awkward panels like this one!
  
  
  
  Is she a vampire or just a Black Widow?
  Dum, dum, dum!
  Who cares?! Look at these ugly panels!
  
  
  
  Sorry, I wish I could go on, but I'm too busy mourning the art & storytelling from the good old days. Remember JH Williams & W. Haden Blackman's Batwoman?
  Let's have a moment of silence...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  It's really sad when you remember what this comic used to look like.
  *shakes fist at DC*
  But this is almost as good, right?
  
  
  
  Moving on...
  Shockingly, (<--sarcasm) it ends with another of those stupid-ass Future's End stories that make no sense.
  Can someone please tell me the point of these?! Is there actually some grand plan for these shitty tag along issues they shoehorn into all these titles? Will a compilation volume be forthcoming? And will said compilation volume make more sense than each of these fucked-up single issues? What's the plan, here?!
  What's the PLAN, DC?
  
  *pant, pant*
  Whatever. Evidently, she's going to turn into a vampire at some point.
  No. You read that right. Vampire.
  
  
  
  Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds.
  
  I knew it wasn't going to be great, but I read this anyway. I just needed to finish this title out. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who feel like that, and I'm not sorry I read it. I'm mostly just sorry that the Powers That Be at DC decided to wreck this one.
  
  *Just checking to see if you were paying attention!
  
  
• 
  Chad

  This book is an absolute mess. It starts off with a disjointed throw-away secret origin. Then it goes directly into the regular book with Batwoman in space and teamed up with the Demon and Clayface among others. First of all sending Batwoman to space is just dumb. The whole issue is this big battle with Morgan Le Fay and her demons. There's no narration to clue you in that this is what's to come in the future. The issue ends with her blacking out. The next issue picks up where the last volume left off. As the story presents itself, it really feels like they printed the story out of order and just said "Screw it! It'll cost too much to reprint. The book's ending anyway so screw the fans." Anyway now Kate is in this abusive relationship with Nocturna. It really goes against the strong character that Williams and Blackmon created in Kate. And makes for a terrible role model for young women. After the nonsensical Morgan Le Fay wraps up, it finishes off with an odd Future's End story where Batwoman is a vampire and the team from the last story hunts her down and kills her.
• 
  Sam Quixote

  Remember the (one of many) short-lived New 52 series, Demon Knights? Well, some of that cast has been folded into Batwoman for no reason. And DC have dropped the “New 52” logo (it's officially dead, hooray!) on the cover though the storyline is still carrying on from when it was part of that range.
  
  Morgan le Fay is pursuing power for the sake of power (always a compelling motivation… zzz…) and it’s up to Batwoman to stop her. Along for the ride are a motley crew: Etrigan (sans Jason Blood), Alice (now calling herself “Red Alice”, also for no reason), Clayface and Ragman. They call themselves The Unknowns - unknown to whom? Who knows. Maybe that’s the point?
  
  Writer Marc Andreyko is just throwing whatever into Batwoman and hoping it’ll stick. It doesn't work - this storyline was rubbish! When did “Red” Alice become good? Or Etrigan for that matter? Clayface is written as good because he’s got amnesia (god, this really is like a soap opera…!). Ragman - where did he come from? He’s not Ragdoll from Secret Six if that’s what you’re thinking. And why are they all working together? It doesn’t make sense!
  
  Kate is still seeing Natalia Mitternacht and hasn’t figured out yet that she’s a vampire who’s slowly turning her into a vampire. That’s resolved in this volume but not in a very imaginative way - it's still the only interesting storyline in this book. Also included is an unnecessary origin story from Secret Origins #3 and a pointless issue, Batwoman: Future’s End #1. I don’t really know what Future’s End is (DC characters become evil cyborgs in the future, I think - pass!) and what happens in that issue is so stupid as to continue to keep me away from that series.
  
  I didn’t mind Georges Jeanty’s art which isn't amazing but also isn't that bad, though I hated his Etrigan who looks like he’s moulded out of Play-Doh - and this is a comic that also features Mr Play-Doh himself, Clayface! Also Morgan le Fay looks identical to Ex Nihilo from Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers. Not sure who’s ripping off who here, just clocking the similarity.
  
  The last Batwoman book wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad either - I thought Andreyko might be shaping up the series to take Kate in a potentially enthralling direction. But no, he drops the ball with this very poor quality volume full of awful storylines, poor characterisations, and weak art. The Unknowns is unfortunately yet another terrible Batwoman book.
• 
  Shannon

  Quite a drop in quality from the usual 5 and rarely 4 stars given to previous books when Williams was one of the writers. I could go into the details but the other reviews have covered the salient points.
  
  I'm sorry they ruined you, Batwoman.
  
  OVERALL GRADE: C minus to C.
• 
  Luce

  This is a hot mess. Batwoman was always a smart series, about bigger issues than the latest baddies assaulting Gotham. Kate Kane was not a 20 year old with delusions of grandeur. She was an adult; a soldier who wore the suit to serve her country in the only way she could after being thrown out of West Point. She was in a healthy relationship that was not always easy, but she and Maggie valued each other enough to keep working at it.
  
  Now we have Kate and Maggie at each other throats like petty teenagers instead of talking out their issues like the adults they are, Kate in an awful abusive relationship that is being presented as normal (including some lovely rape victim-blaming, and was Nocturna's little speech about her abusive stepfather supposed to justify her behaviour? :/), and a bunch of completely random new characters who showed up out of nowhere and have no connection to any previous story arc.
  
  Also for the love of god I just want SOMEONE to explain how Kate's sister survived and became Alice. If you're going to reuse her more times than Moffat reuses Daleks, I'll need a goddamn origin story. And I understand that quoting Alice in Wonderland is this character's thing, but half of those quotes were taken from Tim Burton's film, not Lewis Carroll's book. Not only were the quotes lazy but the whole shtick was poorly executed and was annoying instead of clever. Let's not even talk about the totally random Harry Potter and Hunger Games references.
  
  And what the FUCK was that ending?!
  
  When Andreyko's run started to tank DC should have brought Williams and Blackman back and just let Kate and Maggie get married on the page. Maybe then one of their most promising titles wouldn't have ended up down the toilet. I'm almost glad this got axed before it could get any worse, but mostly I'm just angry at DC for being so careless with such an important diverse title.
• 
  Nicola Carter

  Before I say anything , Batwoman is my favourite superhero and before I read this I knew how bad it was supposed to be and that this was a major reason Batwoman was cancelled , I still bought the trade knowing this and went in with a really open mind and a need to love it and I saw some positive reviews on here ( maybe got my hopes up a bit)
  I don't really do reviews but I needed this out of my system.
  Semi spoilers below but at this point who cares.
  
  Well....
  
  The artwork was ok?
  Like 80 percent fine with 20 percent added googly eyes.
  
  The writing of this arc was just one massive clusterfuck , maybe they were trying to go into a completely different direction to gain new readers or try to stop this series from getting cancelled I don't know.
  I do know that it didn't feel like a Batwoman story .
  Bette wasn't in this which was a shame , neither was her father which seemed very odd as he is usually such a big part of Kate's missions and support team but then I guess she didn't really do anything to warrant it.
  
  What I just read wasn't Kate Kane it was a empty shell in a batsuit that was a pseudo vampire ?
  Vampire?
  Vampire???????
  I genuinely don't know .
  The adding of the team of Etrigan , Clayface , Red Alice and Ragman literally came out of nowhere , made no sense and had no point , it flitted between times and the last issue was medieval time travel thing (I could have dreamt that or spaced out , who knows anymore) .
  Red Alice was surprisingly ok , like she was probably the most agreeable thing with these issues for me , but I was trying to find some positive.
  However all of that went down the drain with a unnecessary rape scene half way through which was later glossed over later on in another issue and tried to cover itself up after backlash by saying (no it totally wasn't rape because your brain actually wanted me ,soooooo totally not rape )
  Major eyeroll
  
  The only saving grace to this trade was the first unconnected issue of secret origins which was thankfully written and drawn by people who seemed to actually know what Batwoman was about.
  Like seriously thank you Jeremy Haun . Write Kate whenever you want .
  
  I feel like I'm being really mean but it's sad.
  
  It's just we have had a really good Batwoman run overall up until volume 5 when J.H Williams had completely left the series so it's kind of dissapointing that the last we get is this and I'm sure Marc Andreyko had a plan for more issues and maybe this plot was going somewhere but for me it just really didn't work .
  If you want to complete the run then read it , if not just stick with volumes 1 through 4 and save yourself the dissapointment.
  
  
• 
  Eli

  1.5 stars
  
  This is such a weird volume. This series started strong enough to make Batwoman a favorite hero of mine, but then the writer changed and it just dropped off down to this.
  
  This isn't really a spoiler, but how did Batwoman, Ragman, Etrigan, and Clayface all end up on a ragtag team of do-gooders who follow a fight with Morgaine Le Fay into space and an alternate dimension? That being said, it was so far out of what I expected that it wasn't the worst thing I've ever read just for how ridiculous it got at times.
  
  Overall, I'm only glad I read this to get closure on this series and because I guess it starts tying into Future's End. The writing was poorly executed and I find it hard to believe they published this under the impression this run wasn't over. Still, they could have given a last hurrah better than this.
• 
  Ivy

  5 🌟
  
  Kate deals with the return of Beth and Nocturna. She also forms a team with Clayface, Ragman, Etrigan, and Red Alice to fight Morgaine le Fey.
• 
  Linda

  If you enjoyed the first 5 volumes, don't read this one. I've never dropped acid, but I imagine this is what a bad acid trip is like. The storyline and newly-introduced characters make no sense. Like literally no sense at all in any part of the entire history of bat-anything within the DC Comics universe. Very poorly written. Complete character assassination of Batwoman. This is a horrible end to what started out as a very good story full of possibilities. I really can't imagine how it could have ended much worse. As I made my way through this tortuous read, it appeared that despite the completely bad writing, they were at least pulling it together enough to eek out a happy ending and some semblance of closure on the last few pages, but no. They just had to go and add that very last part, and complete the cycle of destruction of everything that was ever good about this story. Shame on the writers for doing this to Batwoman and the readers who followed along for all this time.
  
  BIG, BIG SPOILER ALERT:
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  Apparently the "Kill your gays" trope is alive and well at DC Comics. And I mean not just kill her dead, but before they kill her dead, they destroy her character first.
  
  "Hey, I know! Let's have lesbian Batwoman dump her longtime partner, fall in love with an evil woman, turn her into a vampire murderer, send her into outer space (outer space? really?) to fight characters from Camelot, have her be unable to win without the help of two ugly ridiculous male counterparts we've never heard of, then have her appear to come to her senses and reconcile with her ex, then jump 5 years into the future where she's still a vampire after all, turns on her longtime partner again, and make her demented evil sister become the hero who saves the world from Batwoman by staking her like Buffy!"
  
  Who in the fuck thought any of this was a good idea?!?!?! I'm going to assume Andreyko, Jeanety, Story, and Major are not only bad writers, but that they also really hate lesbians, and be vigilant to never read anything with their names on it again.
  
  Hard to believe the same comics operation that brought us this garbage is now producing Bombshells. Hopefully they don't screw that up too, though it would be difficult to top Batwoman V6 in utter atrociousness.
  
• 
  Allie

  Hisssss!!
  
  Boooooooo!!!!!
  
  You gotta be kidding me!
• 
  The Sapphic Nerd

  Well. That's it then, huh? I'm... umm... *heavy sigh*
  
  The "Secret Origin" issue is a waste of time and turns Kate's emotional backstory into a disjointed, emotionless summary that you shouldn't even bother reading. Read the actual beginning of the Batwoman series instead (if you haven't already) and you'll fall in love with Kate Kane.
  
  So, where does our hero find herself when the story begins? In space. With a bunch of characters I either don't know or don't care about, and Kate's sister, Beth AKA Red Alice. I had no idea what was going on and that's a bad thing here. Instead of showing us the present and then going back in time, revealing the story chronologically would have made things smoother (because Batwoman in space, allied with villains, is way too weird to introduce without context with this writer).
  
  Then we go back in time to Batwoman getting vamprire-y, having drama with Maggie, and being manipulated by her current girlfriend, Nocturna (a bad vampire lady who kills all her husbands). Why Kate even lets her get near her in the first place is a mystery... But hey, it's not like much in this book makes sense (I mean, I understand what happens, I just don't understand why Andreyko saw fit to write it).
  
  I'm not gonna write about Batwoman's new squad because I honestly don't care about them, except for Red Alice. I'm a sucker for sister things, so I did want to see Beth get better - but I did not expect her to come back so quickly or to seem so psychologically stable (compared to before). It doesn't feel right. She definitely needs more time and we need to see her progress through madness into a relatively "normal" state.
  
  Is it just me, or are other people also wondering how Red Alice would get on with Harley Quinn?
  
  More weird stuff happens, more fighting, more character introductions, and more drama with Maggie (it sounds like the Maggie parts are a drag, but those are my favourite parts, along with the Kate/Beth personal moments), more creepy and manipulative Nocturna stuff (okay, this stuff I really don't like), the Kane twins reunite (with a perfectly sane Alice who Kate accepts immediately, without suspicion, and invites on a patrol), some confrontations happen...
  
  OH, and then we finally catch up to the Batwoman in space situation, which gets weirder when the team time-travels to Medieval Gotham (???) where the final confrontation happens.
  
  With that all sorted out, the team gets home and Kate, thank goodness, does the best thing she's done the entire volume: she goes to Maggie's house with her puppy-dog eyes and asks to talk.
  
  That would have been a bearable way to end the volume, and the series for me... But then the "Future's End" issue arrives. Even though it "deals" with one of the issues that needs dealing with, it's... Let's just say DC needs to pick up Batwoman again and fix whatever it is Andreyko did. Preferably with Greg Rucka at the helm (because, along with his other unparalleled work starring Kate Kane and Renee Montoya, oh my gosh Convergence: The Question is absolutely, unquestionably perfect and no one can convince me otherwise! Here, click
  here and
  here to see me fangirl). I'm more than ready for another Batwoman series, a Question series, or a team title with Batwoman, The Question, and Huntress.
• 
  Chris Lemmerman

  After the last volume, I wasn't that thrilled with where Marc Andreyko was taking Batwoman, especially since he spent a lot of time on a storyline that didn't go anywhere. He showed that he could add drama to Kate Kane's social life without being too forced with it, but the actual Batwoman side of things was lacking.
  
  This (sadly) final volume of the series shows that he learned from his mistakes. Aside from Gotham By Midnight, most of the Bat titles have stayed away from the supernatural side of Gotham - except Batwoman, in her J. H. Williams III/W. Haden Blackman run. Andreyko re-embraces that aspect, throwing Batwoman into a makeshift team of Ragman, Etrigan, Clayface, and her returning sister, now reformed and calling herself Red Alice in a battle against Morgan/Morgaine Le Fay.
  
  It definitely hits all the right buttons for someone who always loves these supernatural stories, but it never forgets that it is a Batwoman story - Nocturna's plotline and Kate's civilian life are still front and centre, and Andreyko even manages to wrap Etrigan's convoluted New 52 history into the story and make it work. The story is six issues and an annual, which would have felt like too much if Andreyko didn't balance the superheroics with the civilian stuff so well this time around.
  
  
  There's also Batwoman's Futures End one-shot, which reads kind of like an Elseworlds in which Red Alice isn't able to save Batwoman from Nocturna in the main story, so it's a nice inclusion but could potentially give readers the wrong impression since it's included right at the end of the volume and gives Batwoman a more permanent end than we'd like.
  
  Artistically, this volume sees Georges Jeanty of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame join the title, and his work on Buffy has prepared him for a lot of the facial expressions needed in this story. Some of his more supernatural creatures tend to get a bit lumpy, and Etrigan looks a bit like yellow pudding in some scenes, but he's mostly a good fit for the title, and only needs a fill-in once in six issues which makes a change from previous artist Jeremy Haun. The annual also features four pencillers, but there's so similar in tone that it's hard to tell when one ends and another begins, which is the best way of having that many artists on one issue.
  
  Batwoman's future looked bleak when Williams III and Blackman left, and the previous volume didn't do much to sway that opinion, but of course just when Batwoman seems to have carved out a new team and place in the Gotham universe for herself, her title comes to an end. Sigh.
• 
  Lucas Lima

  And then, we got the finish of this run, which is was better than i could ever expected. Ended in a bit of a rush, but being positively fun.
  
  On this volume, we got a chapter of Kate's origin of Batwoman (why?), then the main plot on this. A dark cult is trying to bring a big villain to our world with a stone. So, a group is assembled by accident to end this threat (i believe the Justice League Dark wasn't available). And between it, we have this awful Nocturna woman and her relation with Kate.
  
  It's just a really average plot, but Andreyko writes in a very fast pace, being incredibly fun. All the chracters shine, with this "Unknown" group coming to shine in the New 52. The art is ok and we kind of have a close story in this book. Very good. And in the last chapter, we have a Future's End tie in that really doesn't make sense at all. Great run, great creative teams, for a character that really brought a new light to the super heroes.
• 
  Stronglysalty

  Well, that was a disappointing mess. At least we have volumes 1-4...
• 
  Sara

  I didn't expect to enjoy this as much as I did. It was a nice campy turn, with Batwoman teaming up with demons to battle Morgan Le Fay--in space!--while fighting off a gold digging vampiress in the bedroom. There's even a Hammer reference. Bring this book back, DC.
• 
  Sean Kennedy

  This went from being one of the best New 52 comics to being a shadow of its former self. Note to DC bigwigs: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You screwed the pooch here.
• 
  Dan

  Such a shit end to such a brilliant character and great series. WTF DC??? WTF.
• 
  karenbee

  My favorite part of this volume was that the subtitle for of a bunch of the collected issues was "How in the Hell Did We Get Here?" It's funny because it's true. What a mess. It starts with a pointless abridged origin story that's been covered already -- and even I remember it, so it was probably covered pretty well -- and then dumps us into Point C of the volume's main story, then just when you think that you must have missed some sort of crossover in another title, it zips back to Point A, but it's not really CLEAR that it's Point A at first. What else? There were a bunch of characters I knew nothing about heavily featured throughout the whole volume, the relationship plot was weird, and the art was confusing and... not beautiful. And the issue tucked at the end, wow. That is not an admiring "wow."
  
  I've grown to love Batwoman, and I'm a little pissed that I read this, and honestly I'm just going to try to forget that it exists. I haven't read Volumes 4 and 5 yet since my library never picked them up; maybe I can read them and replace any memory of this collection with those.
• 
  Will Brown

  I almost don’t want to believe this was written by the same writer as the previous volume. The book is *that bad* and such a departure from last volume. We’re back to rushed plots, sloppy character introductions, and a sexual assault of Batwoman with the villain *GASLIGHTING THE MAIN CHARACTER* into believing it was consensual. What an awful book.
• 
  Colleen

  This totally made no sense & was a really disappointing end to the series.
• 
  Mohamed Ahmed

  Where the Hell is Batwoman ?? What Have you Done to Her ??
• 
  Miranda Bahr

  I love Batwoman, but... A VAMPIRE? Are you serious? I won't talk about the lack of creativity on the subject, not even the out of the blue partners Clayface, Etrigan, Ragman and Mark Watney (who the hell are them??? And where did they come from????). Red Alice, the maniac sociopathic sister of Batwoman, came from such a great storyline and then... after EVERYTHING the past writers developed on her character, she................... becomes good, seeking for redemption of her past [murderous] mistakes. Is this fucking Walt Disney's fairytale or what????
  
  Anyway, it's sad, really sad to see Batwoman end up like a cheap version of Mickey Mouse.
  
  
  https://media.giphy.com/media/kZD8cN1...
• 
  Caroline

  Wow... While the Batwoman series was on a pretty swift decline for quite some time I hadn't expected the final volume to be quite so rough (although...if I'd checked here first I wouldn't have been so surprised). This was just a hot mess of the story being everywhere for no apparent reason and the couple times it looked like there would be some strong moments or interactions between characters something stupid would just derail the whole thing.
  
  If this hadn't been the final volume I'd be calling it off here, anyway. I was close to dropping this back when DC stopped (and lost as a result) the original creative team behind this run from allowing Kate's marriage to actually go through. That really was a sign this series was over.
• 
  Adam Fisher

  This title went down the tube when the previous author left. The series started out so great, but...
  In this Volume, we have a sub-par story involving Batwoman and: Clayface, who is being drastically over used in the Batman titles; Red Alice, Batwoman's crazy sister who is taking a turn at being a hero; Ragman, a new hero-type who sounds kind of cool, but never gets fully developed; Etrigan, the highly annoying rhyming poetic demon; and the return of Morgan LeFay; who looks like a "builder" from the most recent Avengers storyline.
  What comes together is not horrible, but not great either.
  
  Kind of recommend, but only if you are really into the characters contained within.
• 
  Tom

  This was a horrible comic book. The set up in the previous issue was good and opened possibilities for a more psychological story. Instead they threw in a new villain with absolutely no background or raison d'être. Justice League Dark was also thrown in the mix and the result is a story that absolutely leads nowhere and offers no thrills at all. At a certain point we even end up in space. Why? Who knows. And that question actually counts for this entire story arch. Very disappointing.
• 
  Eric Anderson

  Wow, what a drop in quality. They break up Mags and Kate for this garbage villain sub plotline. Alice coming back randomly with no real development seen by the reader. And starting with the space fight just throws off the pacing. This was definitely a poor end to this run. And I can't even start on the dumpster fire that was the future one shot. Hopefully the rebirth line is better than this trash.
• 
  Heather

  The only reason this book gets two stars instead of one is because I really liked what they did with Beth/Red Alice. Other than that, this book was an enormous disappointment. Disjointed plot, inexplicable characters, and an ending that was a nonsensical slap in the face for fans.
• 
  Michael Kitchen

  What was once a creatively mesmerizing comic gone south. I understand now why the title died.