One of the darker but still entertaining and intelligently-written superhero comics I've read with a woman in the starring role, and one of the first that's an origin story. It's also my first mafia book.
'Huntress: Year One' is short but satisfying, even in a story involving the mafia where criminal organisations are cross-linked and spread throughout the world. And in a superhero origin book, there will be a few loose ends.
Huntress is a magnificently gritty, hard-as-nails heroine (though she prefers to be called hero) who takes shit from no one. She is as violent as I've seen her in Gail Simone's 'Birds of Prey' storylines, although there is less of her devil-may-care attitude in her 'Year One' introduction. Here, she takes things in her tragic life much more seriously.
Helena Bertinelli - mafia princess and lone survivor of a family assassination as a little girl - takes everything into consideration. She seeks revenge and retribution in a man's mob-infested world. Even when she falls in love with a man against her better judgement, she is still willing to kill him because he is as flawed as the rest in their connections to a mafia crime syndicate. Yes, Helena is a heroine who will torture and kill her enemies; though she uses fitting punishments more effectively than anything else at her disposal. All the while she carries a cross and a belief in God with her. This makes her ever the more complex and badass, and it's something rarely ever seen in a female lead in anything, much less a superhero comic book. Even at the age of eight, just before her family were massacred right in front of her, she prayed at the dinner table for her abusive father to be dead - outloud in his presence. Huntress's killing policy is one of the things that sets her miles apart from Gotham's more prestigious protector, Batman.
Misogyny is ripe in the story of Huntress. Men beware her crossbow. She will not let herself or other women suffer in the patriarchy like she always had.
Not all men are evil in 'Huntress: Year One', however, and Huntress isn't a heartless, stoic killer. Her relationship with her adoptive brother is wonderfully done; that along with her feelings over a doomed romance show her softer, more vulnerable side. Underneath the violence, Helena is a ball of pain and suffering. She is human.
Looking at some DC background information, I find it interesting that Huntress was once the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, named Helena Wayne, in Earth-2: until that universe was wiped out from continuity. DC - and Marvel as well - appear to be stubbornly against the idea of superheroes getting married and having children; as it shows their age, I presume. I would argue that any icon can be made timeless depending on good writing, which heroes with families have shown us in the past. Families offer a myriad of opportunities for limitless story and character possibilities - the opposite is not true at all! Still, Huntress must have been popular enough to be granted a revamped version in the Earth-1 continuity. Indeed she is one of the genuinely dynamic DC heroines out there worthy of her own title.
'Huntress: Year One' loses a point for its portrayal of Batgirl. I love Barbara Gordon, so to see her in this comic, where she fails in simple tasks and is scolded by Bruce Wayne like a child, really shook me the wrong way. She's a foil for Huntress, but she also seems to exist to make Huntress look more competent in comparison. I know Barbara is supposed to have only gotten started on her vigilante crusade here. However I was thrown from this perspective by how mature she looks in her civilian form, even being directly involved in police work. Batman being a big, brooding ass refusing to share crime fighting in Gotham doesn't help matters, even though it is for understandable reasons. 'Huntress: Year One' is about a woman's crusade to save other women from a corrupt man's world, and yet little love and respect is given to the women victims themselves; and nowhere is this more apparent than with Batgirl, and Batman's undermining of her. This is swept under the rug, obliterating any possibility for Huntress to perhaps talk to Batgirl about becoming her own individual and not letting a man from higher-ups get her down like dirt on his shoe. Feels like a missed opportunity to me.
So yeah, 'Huntress: Year One' does not do my Batgirl justice. However...
Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, is great. I never cared much for her character before, but she is a hoot whenever she shows up in this. A self-confident thief, Catwoman gives Huntress advice and lets her in on Batman's weaknesses. Plus she smokes in her costume while up on roofs like no one's business. What a cool cat.
In a way, both Catwoman and Batman serve as parental figures for the orphan Huntress in her origin tale - perhaps a nod to them actually being her parents in her earlier incarnation.
In terms of how women other than Huntress herself are portrayed, Catwoman makes up for Batgirl's poor, wasted appearance.
To conclude, 'Huntress: Year One' is a fine stand-alone title comic, with sombre and meticulous artwork to accompany the mafia revenge plot. It does get confusing in places, as there is the skipping and jumping about in time and trying to keep up with the many bad guys' plans. But I rolled with it all and it turned out to be fairly simple to follow in retrospect.
Dark, sophisticated and horrific, starring an anti-heroine who doesn’t need superpowers to be awesome. She gets stuff done, and in a bloody and bizarrely biblical style.
Final Score: 4/5
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