In this review of The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1, Renee Montoya, the Question, is the new Sheriff of the Justice League’s Watchtower satellite – and she must figure out who is trying to destroy the space station and the League itself!
The Question: All Along the Watchtower #1 main cover by Cian Tormey
The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1
Writer: Alex Segura
Artist: Cian Tormey
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Main Cover: Cian Tormey and Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Variant Covers: Jorge Fornes, Lucio Parrillo, Darrny Earls
Release Date: November 20th, 2024
This review contains spoilers
The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1 begins as Renee Montoya, the Question, fired as Gotham Police Commissioner, is now Sheriff of the Justice League Watchtower satellite/space station. Recruited by Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, she works with Ted Kord and Jaime Reyes, Blue Beetles, Animal Man, and Batwoman. Armed with her Phantom Zone Transporter Shotgun, Renee patrols the Watchtower. An armored supervillain called Conduit attacks, and Renee, her team, and other superheroes around stop him, but Renee realizes the attack was a distraction as Batwoman finds a murdered Challenger of the Unknown in Renee’s room.
Analysis
First off, I must be up front and say I’m disappointed conceptually with The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1. To avoid counterfactual criticism, I’ll just say that I thought a book called The Question would be a solo story centered around Renee, not a team book of Renee, two Blue Beetles, Animal Man, and Batwoman. While I like all of these characters reasonably well, they don’t really stand out as very likable with a few exceptional moments (Jaime and Ted bonding in confusion over Renee’s facelessness). However, when approached as a team book, this seems like a reasonable start. You have the tension of people who don’t know each other, and people who know each other too well. You have a similar situation for Renee as the start of the monumental weekly series 52, during which Renee first became the Question. And you have the fun blend of scifi, western, and detective story that has so much potential for fun storytelling.
Segura has a few writing pitfalls in The Question: All Along The Watchtower #1 which hopefully will be tightened up as the series progresses. Superman and Wonder Woman give the same information and don’t really have very distinct personalities in their pages, giving a sense of drag and redundancy to the start of the book – but Batman’s single page is brief but very nicely done. Hopefully Segura can capture some of that energy in how he writes Kate. He hasn’t yet – overwhelming her with narration boxes so far – but the potential is definitely there.
Irish artist Cian Tormey, along with Philippine colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr., provide a slick and confident blend of the scifi, western, and detective flavor in the art. A few nitpicks – while Renee’s costume is VERY cool, giving her an actual sheriff’s badge feels silly and over the top in a way that doesn’t quite suit the faceless heroine. The fight sequence with Conduit is often confusing – the geography, movement from panel to panel, and resolution doesn’t hold together that well, and the way Renee’s shotgun works in the final action doesn’t make any sense given what is told and what we see on page. Hopefully later issues will clear that up a lot more. Tormey and Fajardo do the prime thing for a team book, though – providing very clean and cool looks for all the characters on the team. If nothing else, the book looks very good (an improvement over the last thing I can remember seeing Tormey do in an ongoing, his work on the Cecil Castellucci Batgirl series.) I look forward to seeing more of Renee and Kate in action particularly.
Interior artist Cian Tormey along with colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr. provide our main cover, the Question standing on her symbol against a white background, all in the theme with most of the other All-In first issue covers. Jorge Fornes draws a very sci-fi and design heavy cover featuring Renee’s back, a big red question mark, and a space station hexagonal corridor. Lucio Parrillo’s painterly cover features Renee in a prairie/western context, her lever action long gun held against a massive cloudbank, emphasizing the western feel in an unusual way for what we see in the space-set comic. Danny Earls provides our 1 in 25 incentive variant, with Renee investigating a crime scene in classic CSI pose on the Watchtower, but oddly taking OFF her glove to examine the bloody handprint – not very good CSI there!
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Final Thoughts
Segura and Tormey provide an atmospheric and polished piece of scifi/western/detective mashup, but don’t quite thrill the reader to care what happens next.
If you would like to buy a copy of this title, and help support The Batman Universe at the same time, consider purchasing this book at Amazon or Things From Another World.
