The Big #1: Gotham City Garage

Whatever else I might have to say about them, DC have absolutely hit on a winning formula for their Digital First offerings. By now, Bombshells is one of my favourite series of all time and the various Trinity-starring anthologies were gold mines of interesting, innovative takes on the characters that often put their mainstream counterparts to shame. Seriously, take the time to track down the collected editions of Sensation Comics, Legends of the Dark Knight and Adventures of Superman at some point, you'll never see as many and as interesting interpretations of DC's flagship characters as you will in those issues. Plus, there was a fantastic Batman Beyond series under the digital imprint.

Anyway, here we are again: Gotham City Sirens, another alternative universe again focussing on DC most iconic female characters (and, hopefully, like Bombshells it'll spin out to encompass many more characters).

This time its thirty plus years since the end of the world and the last city on Earth is The Garden, a utopia governed by Lex Luthor. Yes, its dystopia o'clock and our plucky young female protagonist is Kara Gordon who has some sort of job managing the implants that keep people docile and happy. That is, of course, until her secret past catches up with her and she's forced to go on the run.

This is absolutely and blatantly an attempt to do the DC Universe as YA dystopian fiction and you know what? I am all for that. True, we've got a year long Kamandi series running right now but seeing Supergirl running around a world that's half Logan's Run and half Mad Max has an extra edge of gleeful smashing the toys together to see how it works to it. The whole first issue follows Kara, Harley on the cover be damned but I'm more than used to the fact that covers mean nothing from the last two years of Bombshells, and the titular garage has yet to appear. Neither has Gotham, come to think of it, whatever form the place takes in this world. Certainly a different one since we get to see what Batman is like in this world and... its not a nice guy who adopts orphans, that's for damn sure.

Whilst the series doesn't gran me as strongly and powerfully as Bombshells did, it doesn't introduce a lot of interesting elements and some nice character redesigns. The world is interesting if, at the moment, a bit too easy to boil down to two film references. Part of this feeling, though, is probably down to the source material. I'm not really that into the Hunger Games and its stablemates whereas Bombshells' pin-up art style has a more timeless and attention grabbing quality to it, at least for me.

That having been said, the cliffhanger promises that the series might be going in a more Mad Max-y direction with the next issue, which is right up my street.