Gotham City Sirens is another installment of Batman Reborn and, like Batman and Robin, it seems to be marking time until something significant happens, somewhere.
Catwoman is rescued from an encounter with Boneblaster, Gotham’s latest would-be crime star, by Poison Ivy, who offers her a place to live. Catwoman is not at her best right now, having been effectively killed and brought back to life — she’s not quite her old self. Ivy has already enlisted Harley Quinn as her third roommate in a townhouse that actually belongs to the Riddler. The Riddler is in no condition to object, thanks to Ivy’s way with plants and their — um, products. Things are pretty much OK until Boneblaster makes a raid — he hasn’t really gotten over Ivy hanging him out to dry — trashing their digs and incidentally freeing the Riddler from Ivy’s control. Catwoman, who has money to burn, buys an old animal shelter, and the three embark on a series of adventures, revolving largely around the Joker and Hush, who has taken on the face and place of Bruce Wayne.
There doesn’t seem to be an overarching story arc in this collection. What we’re given is a series of adventures that segue without really connecting, from the Boneblaster episode, which brings the women together, to Harley’s dalliance with the pseudo-Bruce Wayne, which overlaps the seeming reappearance of the Joker, and then a little back story to wash it down. While the characters are vividly drawn, both through Paul Dini’s dialogue and through Guillem March’s pencils, no one really seems to connect — it’s as though we’re presented with a group of supervillains who are banging around and occasionally colliding, but they don’t really seem to have any effect on each other.
OK, so it’s a comic and I shouldn’t expect too much, but it’s really sort of a nostalgia turn, even though March’s art is very up to date, and I sort of have to put that at Dini’s feet: the characters are, as I mentioned, vivid, but they don’t really seem to be involved in any of this. Scott Lobdell, who wrote number 3, “Riddle Me This,” gave us a story that has a little more meat to it, a reformed Riddler actually working with Batman to catch a group of serial killers — it’s more than a little spiky, as might be expected. Looking at this one in contrast to the others, it’s worth noting that the Sirens make only a token appearance, and that the Riddler is the focus: Dini may have been hampered by the characters he had to work with.
March’s art for the first six numbers is rich, lush, and sharp. David Lopez and Alvaro Lopez, who did the art for number 7, are a good match in style, although they maintain their own identity.
Gotham City Sirens: Union is, when it comes right down to it, pretty much T&A with Spandex, and I’d probably be able to consider it as on the upper side of “good” — except that we’ve come to expect a lot more from comics over the past few years.
