[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Marguerite Bennett
Artist: Fernando Blanco
Summary
“FEAR AND LOATHING” part one! When her father, Colonel Jacob Kane, realized that Kate would never become the soldier he wanted, he chose someone else to lead his secret paramilitary group, the Colony. That man—Colony Prime—hates nobody on Earth the way he hates Kate…and the feeling is mutual! So when the two of them are stranded in the Sahara Desert, heavily dosed with Scarecrow’s fear toxin, with no way to survive except to rely on each other…they might just choose death instead!
Positives
In what certainly could have been DC’s version of the classic Star Trek episode, “Arena”, becomes a nice character study. We catch up with Batwoman, as Batman has her tracking down a group of bioterrorists, which leads her to one of their members, The Needle, who is camped out in the Sahara Desert. The reader jumps back and forth before the mission and during the mission, as we see Kate’s romance with Beth blossom. Eventually we see Scarecrow’s toxins takeover her psyche as she struggles to stay coherent. By issue’s end, Kate finally meets the nightmare version of Scarecrow.
Negatives
As a fan of Grant Morison and Neil Gaiman, they still hold the standard as far as “psychedelic trips”, so this one sits at the shallow end of the pool as far as how trippy it could have been.
Verdict
Buy it if you want to know more of who Kate is, as the toxins that Scarecrow unleashes brings up many of the insecurities she has hiding, and as always, not many writers are as good at character development as Marguerite Bennett.
