DC/RWBY #1 // Review
It’s a rainy night in Gotham City. Again. (The last week in February 2023 has been soaked in rain for Gotham across all titles. The city must be WAY ahead of its average rainfall for late February.) Batman and his colleagues are dealing with demons. It’s the demon hunters that are going to be the real danger in DC/RWBY #1. Writer Marguerite Bennett embarks on a seven-issue miniseries crossover between DC’s most beloved characters and the popular animated web series from Rooster Teeth. Artist Meghan Hetrick and colorist Marissa Louise conjure dynamic action to the page in a promising opening issue.
Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang have been stalking a monster through the streets of Gotham City by night. The creature walks like a man, but he stalks the rooftops and alleyways. He wears a cowl with horns and a long, black cape. There’s some sort of arcane symbol on his chest. They’re going to try to ambush him...which is going to be a bit of a challenge. He knows they’ve been following him. He wants answers about the REAL monsters that seem to be flooding Gotham City of late. It’s a mix-up as the heroes collide for the obligatory initial combat before the team-up.
Bennett rolls somewhat gracefully through the motions of the mix-up before the team-up. It’s a tedious trope, but Bennett keeps it reasonably fresh throughout the issue. This is quite an accomplishment given the fact that the bulk of the story is an extended fight scene...in an alley in Gotham City in the rain at night. There isn’t much in the basic premise that’s original, but Bennett finds a brisk enough pacing. The action never really has a chance to drag for very long. There’s power in Bennett’s delivery of the unique personalities of everyone involved in the action.
The art team finds an appealing middle-ground between the animated feel of the web series and the contemporary visuals of a modern DC comic book. Hetrick has a remarkably clean approach to line, form, and shadow. Batman’s cape seems to have its own fluid sense of life that adds considerably to the atmosphere...a bit like Bill Sienkiewicz’s approach to Moon Knight’s cape in the Marvel series of the 1980s. Louise soaks the page in the atmosphere of the rainy Gotham night. It’s one of the more effective uses of color to amplify atmospheric rain in Gotham City to hit the comics rack in late February 2023.
With the initial mix-up taken care of, the series has a chance to move forward. It would have been a bit more interesting to deliver a little more detail on the RWBY end of the crossover, but the monster hunters ARE the guests on the page in a DC comic book, so it makes sense that Batman would get the center of the page in the first issue. Still--it’s not like there’s any scarcity of Batman in DC comics. It would be nice if he could share the page more evenly.
