InsaneJournal

Someone is killing mobsters with replicas of Huntress' crossbow bolts, and the frame is closing in on Helena. If that wasn't enough, an odd figure in blue is watching her apartment. In the first issue, after a confrontation with Batman and some reminiscing about her family's history, she heads to the funeral of her cousin, one of the mobsters supposedly killed by Huntress. Not digging the scene, she cuts out, overhearing some of the guys talking about Huntress as she walks past.



And so it begins...again. Issue #2 continues this scene.



Ah, "a pain in the butt!" She's thankfully dropped the "keister" bit, but she certainly remembers him! He's still playing the smirking jackass, but she's not biting. Of course, it's hard to sell it when the mask hides the smirk, but I've always like to think that's half the reason he even wears the mask. :D
Helena goes on her way, this time getting a visit from Nightwing that starts out friendly but turns bitter pretty quickly. As he leaves we see Question watching cross-legged from an adjacent rooftop. Helena puts her costume on and pays a visit to a reporter who wrote about the "Huntress murders" with two different tails dressed in black and blue. Helena finds the reporter with two bolts in her chest and the police banging on the door.
Shes swings out from the balcony, only to be intercepted by Batman and Nightwing. She tries to explain how she's been framed, and Bats orders her to come with him, saying she'll go underground until the thing blows over if she wants to keep her identity secret. Helena's not keen on it, there's a struggle with her and Nightwing. She falls, her crossbow goes off, Dick avoids the bolt. Unfortunately, Bruce was standing behind Dick. He takes the bolt in his ribs.
Helena pleads, Dick overreacts. He fights, she escapes. Eventually, she's on the ledge with only one way to go, and that's down.

Alright, now that all the set up's done, let's get on to the real story!

#3, Helena wakes up. She's in a log cabin where a redheaded man with a beard offers her tea while he mends her costume. "Richard Dragon. Canada. The Butterfly brought you. That should answer some of your questions, at least." Yes, even Richard Dragon is making question puns. They are contagious. They are trying Helena's patience. She wants to know what's going on. "We're saving your bacon." an off-panel voice says.


One thing I love about Rucka's Vic is that he is a brand new take, but he comes off as a logical progression from the previous ones. He seems to have exorcised a lot of the anger from Denny's days, but he hasn't forgotten it. He treats it like it's just below the surface, waiting for him to give it a chance to boil over. But he doesn't, those days are behind him, and the amused serenity he's replaced it with makes for fantastic reading.

Richard gives Vic and Helena a chance to talk alone.

I hadn't realized till I was going through this to prepare this post that she didn't realize until the fifth panel there who Vic was. Yes, his hat and coat are hanging just on the wall, but Helena is groggy, confused. We can forgive her if she hadn't had enough time to put two and two together.
The other important thing on this page is Vic talking about the Question in the past tense. It says interesting things about his self-identity, perhaps he associates the other identity with the anger? And now he may still wear the hat and the mask, but he's still Vic (which some would argue he always was)?

Anyway, the book cuts away to Tim convincing Babs to try to clear Helena's name. The previous issue had her arguing with Dick on the same issue, but Tim having faith in Helena and Dick having faith in Helena are completely different things, especially to Babs, especially then, being so soon after Dick and Helena were kind-of-a-thing.
Anyway, back to Vic and Helena.



Is it safe to think he might be a little better than a pain in the ass by this point? Also, more reverent respect to past anger, tempered with Vic's sense of humor.


I'm fighting the urge to break page limits here, since my selections are a little Vic-centric and I'd love to show some of the Richard-teaching-Helena pages. In particular, there's a two-page spread of them doing tai chi that, even if you took out the words, exemplifies exactly what he's trying to teach her. They both start in the same position, but she's quickly moved to a different one by the second panel, whereas he moves calmly, slowly, relishing each half step till finally, in the tenth panel, he comes to rest in the position Helena came to. By the sixth, a butterfly comes down to chill on his hand, and Helena takes notice and just sits in awe. It's magnificent.

Three months pass. Richard and Helena talk about Huntress as she relates to Helena. And tea. Richard really likes tea. Vic comes back, and Richard packs Helena's things. Helena insists that she isn't finished, but Richard explains that what he's taught her can't be finished there. Hesitantly, she follows Vic to the road.



I don't know what my favorite thing is here, that she acknowledges how contagious the question puns are, or that she's so aware of it as she does! Either way, it's adorable.

Issue #4 revised Helena's origin, though with Huntress Year One it's probably been overwritten. I'm focusing mostly on the shots of Helena and Vic on the bus.


You could make a drinking game out of shots where Vic isn't smirking in this book. By the time you reached the end, you'd be dryer than the Sahara.

First panel, awwww.

It's the details that grab me, the way Vic pounds on the soda machine, the way Helena holds it against her forehead to cool off. Rick Burchett mostly did DCAU comics, but anything he did, he did well.
Helena tells Vic about the first time she ever saw Batman. Vic psychoanalyzes.

Oh damn why don't I have an icon made from that last panel Taken care of.

Vic, stop looking so damn cool!

Bus comes to Gotham.

There are some questions a gentleman doesn't ask!

Cock-blocked by the Bat! Too bad, you two, but don't you know what happens when you don't take the guy home to meet dad?

#5 is another skirting-the-limits issue, even moreso than #3, as I'm pushing 7 1/3 here, so I can't give you the whole conversation with Bruce. Here are the highlights.


To Bruce's credit, his next line is "...But neither do I."
And yes, Vic stands there smirking the whole time! :D It could only be better if he were making silly faces, giving Bruce rabbit ears, being a general putz, etc.

I still love how Bruce invokes answers. I still want to think that exchange was deliberate, planned even! If he isn't punning him, maybe he's taunting him? Mocking him? That doesn't seem Bruce's style, though.

Yeah, panel six is a shot. But once dad leaves, these guys waste no time!

Unfortunately, neither does Tim! (that panel is adorable, the little bastard knew he was interrupting and it gives him endless glee!) Not to waste time, he gives them all the info he and Babs dug up.

Tim leaves and reports to Bruce, who tells him and Dick to respect Helena's space. This unfortunately means not helping her more as well. :/
Helena gets her mail.

more backstory

I'd already posted the next scan for OPM week, so I figured I'd include it here as well.


"Don't follow me" she tells him. The man in the photo is not her father, at least, it isn't Franco Bertinelli. The confronts Santo Cassamento about it, and he reveals that he is indeed her father, and he knows that she is Huntress. With this information, he blackmails her into being his own personal enforcer, otherwise he'll reveal her identity to the rest of the mob, who have always had a pretty big mad-on for her. He tells her that she was a mistake, that he told the hitman to spare the sister when her family was killed, and he'd misinterpreted. Blaming her for her mother's death, he'd make her life hell.

Issue #6, Dick tells Helena that they'd run a DNA test when they saw the picture in the files. It was all true. And they trusted her to deal with it the right way. Helena thanks him sarcastically and returns home.

Those. Shadows. There's no guessing game going on here. Everyone knows that kingdoms rise and fall, lives being and end, and planets are born and die (little deaths?) in the time between this panel and the next. It's only subtext if it's subtle.

Yeah, sure. You may want us to think they were just eating Chinese all that time, but anyone with a brain knows Vic's already full of Italian! Also, I like how they hide Helena's probable pantslessness there.
oh shit there's still a plot going on here
sorry guys

Sicilian tradition, no father can refuse a request made on his daughter's wedding day, and the father at this wedding Tomaso Panessa, Helena's uncle. Helena makes a request. Tomaso agrees. Cassamento and his son decide to say hi while Helena and Vic are at the reception.

That night, they make like they're after Cassamento's heroin trade, to get his attention.

His attention gotten, Cassamento calls Helena in for protection.

"...He just doesn't know me." She meets him at the docks, he tells her to take a position on the roof, then heads in the building.




And they never saw each other again.
okay so they technically met one more time
you'll get that one tomorrow, but now i need to sleep