Gotham City Sirens: Unfit For Orbit #1 // Review
Somewhere in Gotham City, someone’s breaking into an apartment. She’s greeting the hyenas. Given what a weird place Gotham City is, this could be any apartment in the city, but it just happens to be the apartment of a crazy woman wielding a large hammer who happens to be in the shower at the time of the break-in. So naturally when she gets out of the shower, she’s going to have a little bit of an encounter with the burglar that’s going to involve the hammer in Gotham City Sirens: Unfit For Orbit #1. Writer Leah Williams opens a whole new weekly summer Sirens series with Taiwanese artist Haining.
The burglar is dressed like...a burglar. (But actually a lot more like the Hamburglar.) A simple lift of the bask and it’s apparent who this really is: the single best cat burglar in the whole of the DC universe. So what’s Selena doing breaking-in to Harley’s apartment? Well...she’s got a job that involves the need to create a bit of mayhem. And since the nature of the job happens to involve an operation that’s creating some really criminal levels of carbon emissions...an operation that’s being tracked by Poison Ivy. So naturally, they’re all going to all team-up for an investigation into the operation. And as luck would have it, the operation is hosting a rave, so the three of them will all fit right in.
Williams crafts a tight, little story featuring three characters who all have their own series. Each one of them has their own distinct personality...and each of those personalities is really distinct and really drastically different. Williams has delivered a script that truly respects the unique personalities of all three protagonists. This can be very, very difficult to manage in a big crossover. A big summer crossover has a tendency of feeling cramped and rushed. Williams juggles all of the different elements of the story with a deft grace that acts as a very appealing opening.
The visuals of the story are brought to page and panel with a breezy sense of humor thanks to some cleverly comic work by Haining. The action is highly kinetic. The emotions come to the page with a crisp sense of drama. THere’s some clever work establishing the mood with some very sharp angles. (The opening shot of Harley’s apartment is a lot of fun to hang out in prior to the rest of the issue.) Given the nature of the adventure, Haining is called upon to gradually ramp-up the sci-fi elements of the story as the pages progress. There IS a strong sense of progression in that direction that ends up being a lot of fun as the three protagonists delve further and further into the mystery.
A group of appealing characters who are all involved in their own series come together to explore an adventure that oddly echoes aspects of the origin of the Justice League. Williams has done an excellent job of bringing all of the different elements together in a promising start to a new series that could be a lot of fun Here’s looking forward to Williams’ latest adventure into the heart of the summer.
