In this review of Batwoman #2, as Batwoman takes her war against the Religion of Crime to a serious level, Jacob Kane tries to help her.
Batwoman #2 main cover by Dani (DC Comics)
BATWOMAN #2
Written by GREG RUCKA
Art and Main Cover: DANI
Variant Covers: STJEPAN ŠEJIĆ, JENNY FRISON, and DUSTIN NGUYEN
Page Count: 32 pages | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)
Release Date: 4/15/26
This review contains spoilers
In Petalon, Green, Jake Kane (Kate and Beth’s father) takes a call from his wife Cat (Kate’s stepmother), discussing Kate’s breakdown and admission to the mental health clinic, and his lack of contact with her in the clinic. He sees Kate’s batsignal from the end of last issue, and goes down into a Batwoman cave, sees a suit missing and tracking active on his computers, and takes a motorcycle out into the city to find Batwoman.
Meanwhile, the villains react to the Batwoman signal with panic. Slay (the Greek theater masked warrior type) calls for teams to converge on the signal origin location, but Batwoman throws a grenade onto the roof where the Batsignal projector has lured the villains. From the street, Jake sees the explosion.
On the roof, Batwoman appears, and begins literally caving in heads with her boot and hurling villains to their deaths on the street below. The villain leader Despina and Gores have a conversation, Gores trying to both hit on Despina and propose an alliance, but Despina tells him to bring her Kate Kane alive and “unspoiled” before she will consider such a thing.
Slay arrives on the rooftop, bashed Batwoman a few times, and she begins to flee across the roofs and Jacob tries to follow on his bike below. Batwoman falls/leaps to the street, and Jacob yells at her to get on the bike, but a thrown knife hits his shoulder, and the pair are quickly surrounded by Slay’s men. Kate says “Sorry, daddy” and shoots the villains with a pistol. Jacob, knife still sticking from his shoulder, asks Batwoman “Kate, what have you done”, as she fades into the traffic.
Analysis
Greg Rucka, continuing from the closing scene of last issue, writes this issue as one long action scene in reaction to that scene. The Religion of Crime sends a relatively large gang after Batwoman, and in a surprising move, she kills most of them. While subplots like the turmoil in the Religion’s leadership and Jacob Kane’s pursuit add depth, there’s once again a feeling of overly quick pacing compared to Rucka’s previous DC comics with Wonder Woman or his last run with Kate, either in Convergence or prior to the new 52. One whole scene to structure the issue just doesn’t feel like a whole lot can happen – though perhaps with later revelations, new depth will appear in the mysteries and character interactions seen in this issue on its own. The extremely uncharacteristic actions of Kate have kicked up a storm of theories that Batwoman is actually Alice/Beth (which tracks a bit with the “daddy” dialogue, not something we see a lot of from Kate, but fits with Alice/Beth’s arrested/traumatized development motif). There just aren’t quite enough hooks yet to fully react to the events of the book for me, which I think is a bit of a mistake, given how long it’s been since Batwoman’s had an ongoing (and even longer since it was a relatively good ongoing). I’m not sure that someone who came to Batwoman fresh, knowing nothing, would feel about this mysterious, extremely lethal vigilante so far – though to be fair, the recent release of Batwoman: Elegy in Compact Comics leaves very little excuse for fans NOT knowing the central part of Kate Kane’s backstory!
Artist DaNi is clearly having a lot of fun with the Greek character designs and scenery, though I’m not sure if Jacob Kane is so horrifically ugly on the page on purpose or stylistically. His reactions to Kate’s brutal violence are nicely handled by the art team, and there’s a distinctly hot night chase feeling from the vibes created by DaNi and colorist Hatt Hollingsworth.
Either way, hopefully Kate will start to have more hooks for the audience to grab onto and find their way into loving the character again in the next few issues, so that we can enjoy Batwoman’s adventures for months to come!
Main artist DaNi provides a main cover with Batwoman against the moon, a grapnel gun held in hand, and blood pouring from her Batsymbol, over Jake on his motorcycle – a nice symbolic depiction of that central relationship in the action within. Stjepan Sejic’s gorgeously painted variant features a gritted teeth Batwoman swinging on a batrope across a blood red and bat-filled sky. Frequent Rucka collaborator Jenny Frison’s variant depicts Batwoman getting ready to either grab something or some martial arts open handed pose. Lastly, DC legend Dustin Nguyen paints a beautifully red-and-black alternating stripe vision of Batwoman plummeting down to earth on her cape.
Final Thoughts
Rucka and DaNi provide a tense action issue, but leave a ton of hanging questions (as one might expect from an early issue of a mystery style comic).
