From the Batcave: Batwing of Africa

Batwing, David Zavimbe, was basically African Batman that Morrison created during Batman Inc. Not much was done with him there, but as is usual with Morrison's work there were enough bits and pieces that could be explored and built upon to something interesting. So New 52 happens in the middle of the Batman Inc. run and DC felt like it was a good opportunity to try him out as a solo hero. Did it work?

First red flag for me was that Winnick got to write this ongoing. I know that he has his fans and some of his stuff like Red Hood turned out to be big commercial hits, but his work really never clicked for me. On the positive he got Ben Oliver on the art who I tend to enjoy. So yeah, I wasn't very thrilled with the creative team, but I was interested enough to try it.

Unfortunately, while he still has the same name and is based in Africa it does feel like this is entirely different character. Maybe editors wanted this, maybe Winnick wanted it. Who knows, who cares. At the end of the day what matter is how good it is.

New version of Zavimbe is a former child soldier super genius who works in a corrupt police force and tries to do good. On one hand I understand that maybe people in charge felt like African Bruce Wayne is not unique enough, but on the other hand I didn't feel like him being police officer added anything to make him stand out. Winnick never really manages to show how corrupt police force in Africa differs from corrupt police force in Gotham so it all feels a bit samey.

Winnick does a better job with child soldier angle and it is an important subplot that to me, together with some simple African politics, elevates his run a bit from the bottom. Unfortunately that doesn't last that long because, for one reason or another, Winnick gets replaced in the middle of the arc by Nicieza.

So you know what to expect when something like that happens. Dropped subplots, change in characterization of recently introduced characters and so on. To make matters even worse Nicieza also gets replaced few issues later and Zavimbe basically gets written out of his own ongoing.

Reason for that probably was financial. His ongoing wasn't selling very well and I guess idea was that by introducing new black character, Luke Fox, based in Gotham would lead to higher sales. Well, it didn't, but that is probably story for another time.

So what we got in the end with Batwing of Africa was underwhelming run by Winnick that was even further derailed by changes in creative teams. I liked Oliver's work on the early issues, but the book didn't really have distinct visual identity and its neither here or there. So sadly there is not much point in trying to revisit this run.

Zavimbe was also a member of JLI for few issues when he came to visit his old friend Vixen. Asides of creating this link between Zavimbe and Vixen Jurgens doesn't do much with the character. He basically gets the role of "the new guy" who asks questions so characters that matter can explain what is happening or what needs to be done. This JLI run wasn't good so it is not really worth checking out either.

And that was that for Batwing of Africa till, 10 years later, he came back in Waller Rising tie-in to Titans: Beast World event. Chuck Brown has to juggle with a lot here, referencing various things that either happened some months earlier or are currently happening in other books and I think he does fairly good job. What this story is about? Basically bunch of black characters team up to stop Doctor Hate. Trust me, it reads better than what it sounds like. Keron Grant also delivers some unique visuals that stand out in the current DC's lineup. 

Zavimbe's role isn't very big, but I feel like this is probably best thing he has been in since Morrison's Batman run ended? The ending promises more with some new team ("Network") formed by black characters, but I'm not very optimistic about it. One reason is that I think that these "all X" teams rarely work out so even if something gets launched it is not going to last long.

Another reason is that in DC Power 2023 anthology Chuck Brown wrote Luke Fox together with Vixen despite them never interacting before and it teased that more is coming with them. But recently Luke Fox was launched into a new direction in Outsiders book. So I wonder if Brown really wanted to use Zavimbe in Waller Rising or did he end up using him only because Luke Fox was not available? If Outsiders flops before something Network related is launched then I think that it is very likely that Brown will just use Luke Fox again. Reading both of these stories it didn't feel like Brown really made much of a distinction between these two characters.

So yeah, Waller Rising was fun and you might want to pick it up, but lets not get our hopes high just yet.