Review by Frank Plowright

Batwing stems from a time when Batman employed surrogates around the globe and equipped them. David Zavimbe is selected as “the African Batman”, which gives him a hell of a lot of territory to monitor as Africa is a continent covering an area a few thousand times larger than New York. Out of costume he’s a police officer combatting both crime and corruption in the fictional city of Tinasha,

It’s immediately apparent that artist Ben Oliver errs heavily on the wrong side of caution with panels too violently explicit. The opening chapter features two scenes of decapitated heads among corpses filling a room and blood pouring from gaping neck wounds, and ends with someone being run through with a sword. Even if the primary villain is an appalling thug named Massacre who lives up to his name, there are ways of generating horror at his deeds without pandering to sadistic instincts, as shown when ChrisCross draws a chapter. It’s distasteful and entirely unsuitable for a standard DC superhero title. Otherwise Oliver can draw well, but can’t be bothered with backgrounds or full figures, more intent on his own technique than telling the story.

Neither is Judd Winick any more convincing, working on the basis that as Batwing is a superhero anything is possible. Just after awakening from a two week coma brought on by astonishing injuries he’s told if he gets up he’ll die, yet there he is a couple of pages later in costume confronting Massacre. When things aren’t going as well as they might, Batwing is saved by a man who’s just had his arm chopped off. Things don’t become any more credible moving further into The Lost Kingdom.

Thankfully the title doesn’t refer to a regular cliché of African fiction, but a now defunct group of African superheroes, the Kingdom. Yet despite that being a viable plot, there are holes the Hulk could walk through in the way it plays out. Winick is better when considering David’s past, drawing on the real life tragedy of boy soldiers being recruited to rebel armies in several areas of Africa.

What’s been weak picks up in the final chapter, which in turn leads into In the Shadow of the Ancients. Let’s hope this is just teething problems.