Batwoman #28

I thought Gotham City was horrible before it had giant spiders.

At the end of last issue, Maggie's daughter caught Kate Kane changing out of her Batwoman costume in the middle of the night. If that's the worst thing to go wrong this night then she should probably be ecstatic. She survived being ambushed by Wolf Spider, poisoned, and thrown off of a skyscraper. She could have come home and began making out with Maggie while in full costume when Maggie's daughter walked in. That song would be so much better than "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Which, when you really think about it, is a totally fucked up song. The little girl doesn't know Santa is her daddy so she thinks her mom is cuckolding daddy (I'm sure the girl in the song knows the word "cuckold") and she thinks it's funny! "Oh, what a laugh if daddy had only seen! As long as he had his shotgun locked up in the gun safe, that is." Of course, we, the listeners, don't even actually know that her Daddy is dressed as Santa! That could be her Dad's best friend Ross under that beard and red suit! Still, whether or not Mommy is screwing around behind Daddy's back doesn't bother me at all. It's the little girl's attitude that I find abhorrent! She should be freaked out by this! She should be screaming for Daddy to get in here and kick Santa's ass! At the very least, she should go back to her bedroom and begin shitting in the corner of her room on a nightly basis due to her suddenly acquiring a healthy new set of emotional problems that will be with her for the rest of her life.

"I saw mommy kissing Batwoman,
Bloody bruised and breathing heavily.
All the boners there would have been
If some fratboys had only seen
Mommy kissing Batwoman last night!"

Maybe I'm pursuing the wrong livelihood! I should attempt to be like Hugh Grant's character's father in About a Boy and work on trying to write one fucking Christmas hit and be set for life! Why doesn't everybody do that?! It can't be that hard to write a good Christmas song. People continue to fucking play that vile piece of ear feces "Frosty the Snowman", don't they? Whenever I watched the Christmas special, I always wondered if, after Frosty put on the magic hat, Frosty took on aspects of the original hat's owner and became a raging pedophile? I'm not saying all magicians are perverse kid diddlers but...no, no. I am saying that. I haven't watched that special in a long time because I hate it but wasn't the magician portrayed as a villain? When all he wanted was his stupid hat back after that snowbitch stole it? Frosty really should have been arrested for petty larceny.

I'm not sure why this is such a big deal. Kids get scared sometimes. Probably not enough times even. Actually, they should be in a constant state of terror. If I had a child, you can bet there would be no "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus" bullshit. It would be more, "No no no no no no no no no no why is mommy kissing the bogeyman oh no no no no no no" and "Daddy, why is their a large stone table covered in melted red crayon and hamburger in the basement?"

Since Kate's personal life is now all screwed up because of one inconsequential fright that will probably be forgotten in the morning, Kate decides to go out as Batwoman looking for Wolf Spider. Nobody wants to tell her where he is because they ain't no good rats. Kate does find him the next day when she runs into her high school friend Evan who is just as beat up as she is but neither of them know that they were recently just trying to kill each other. Unless Evan isn't actually Wolf Spider because that would be a bigger twist than him being Wolf Spider. As soon as it was mentioned Evan was good at gymnastics, the odds were more in favor of him being Wolf Spider than not. Also the new character is always the prime suspect when introduced in an issue where a new villain is also introduced. So, yet again, that would make it a bigger twist if he wasn't the bad guy.

This is the face of a woman thinking, "Hey wait. Didn't the Trap Door Spider use Krav Maga to throw me through a window?"

Kate ditches Evan to go talk with Maggie and winds up running into Maggie's daughter, Jamie. Who she scares yet again. Good for her! Keep that kid's instincts sharp! She's living in Gotham City now! Can't ever relax too much.

Maggie and Kate have a really lousy talk because all of a sudden Kate's career as a superhero is suddenly putting strain on their relationship. Not the kind of strain where Maggie says, "I can't do this anymore!" The kind of strain where Maggie says, "You probably need a psychiatrist because cuckoo puffs!" Maybe it's not exactly that kind of strain either but it's definitely Maggie looking at Kate in a new light now that Maggie's daughter is in the house with them. She's actually seeing her as possibly dangerous since she's diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder. That's fair, I guess. Not that everybody that has horrible experiences winds up with PTSD. But it's a possibility, right? And what if Jamie drops her teddy bear really softly one night as she enters the room where Kate and Maggie are sleeping and Kate jumps up and knocks Jamie out with a batarang? Better safe than mentally off-balance, right?

It's more likely that Maggie suffers from PTSD so she automatically assumes Kate does too. Just like an alcoholic seeing a non-alcoholic take a few too many drinks one night and begins getting preachy and smirking knowingly and shaking there head in self-righteous judgment. Man, I hate when dad does that to me! Just because I choose to get shit-faced at the family Christmas Party and accidentally have sex with a stocking hanging from the fake fireplace, that doesn't mean I have a problem! Jerko.

Oh! Now you pull out the Batgrapple?! Couldn't have used it when you were plummeting thirty stories to the ground last issue, could you?

Meanwhile Bette Kane has been doing some research on the artwork that Brown Recluse has been stealing. She's discovered that he's only bothering with crappy paintings by some jerk named Alden Eisenstadt (which is probably an anagram for something like "Eisenstadt Alden"). What she doesn't find out is that some of the paintings were merely concealing maps to something far more valuable than the painting itself. And that's why Wolf Spider has been hired to steal them. He only needs two more: one is in Arkham and the other is in the Kane Family Estate.

Batwoman #28 Rating: No change. I'm disappointed that Batwoman never actually battled a Giant Spider. Oh! That was probably a metaphor for the battle she had with Maggie in which she conceded that she is probably crazy and should get some help. I'd explain how precise the metaphor is in its genius but I wouldn't want to seem like I was patronizing you. I can tell you understood it perfectly!