Once upon a time, there was a character. A fictional character, and a popular one. So popular in fact, that the powers that be decided that it was better if the character spawned a franchise. Multiple versions, a sidekick, a canine version, movies, a TV series, a whole universe built around the foundation laid down in an eight-page story in a 1939 comic. In case you’re still wondering, I am talking about Batman – a character that has defied every convention to constantly reinvent himself for successive generations, and achieved (and sustained) a level of immortality that very few icons of the Twentieth Century have managed to attain.

At face value, the name Batwoman sounds like a travesty. It reverberates with the dissonance of creative bankruptcy, a name that one associates with business-minded suits out to capitalise on the popularity of a flagship character by swindling that breed of readers classified as “real fans.” But – wait for it – Batwoman was introduced not for financial gain, but to redeem the masculine appeal (and acceptance) of Batman. Allegations of a homosexual subtext to the caped crusader and his nightly adventures with teenage sidekick Robin had to be stifled before they got out of hand, and DC editor Julius Schwartz, in 1956, hit on the idea of introducing circus-woman Kathy Kane, in her identity as a female counterpart to Gotham City's Dark Knight, as a paramour and a rival to the latter. It worked for awhile, but changing tastes and times forced Ms Kane to bow out of the Batman family, replaced by Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, who became Robin's love interest and a more interesting character, all at the same time.

It’s interesting, then, that the modern incarnation of Kathy Kane, making her appearance in Detective Comics in this decade, is a lesbian. Reinventions and reinterpretations are common nowadays, in the world of mainstream comics. Characters are given a new lease of life, ostensibly to keep them in the public eye, but more importantly to maintain their copyrights for as long as possible. DC Comics reintroduced Kathy Kane in a series called 52, a universe-spanning epic that sought to re-examine the mythos of superheroes in the absence of the Big Three ( Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman). With her distinctive sexual orientation, Kane as the reinvented Batwoman heralded a new era of diversity in comic book superheroics – a conscious effort on DC's part to create an image of acceptance and inclusion among the readers that made up its core demographics.

Let me be frank. If you are a casual reader, and you pick up an issue of Detective Comics’ Batwoman 854-858, chances are that you will gape in disbelief at the explosion of aesthetic wonder that greets you as you flip through the pages. The credit for this goes solely to JH Williams III. A man known for his highly individualistic approach to comic book design, Williams' best-known work so far was a 32-volume epic called Promethea, a mind-altering series that was an examination of magic, feminism, metaphysics and psychedelia. Williams makes no bones about the fact that he treats every page like it were an idea-space of boundless potential. For example, consider the panel. The fundamental unit of sequential art, it has always been a square or rectangular-shaped unit that conveys a moment frozen in time. To Williams, however, a panel is a piece that contributes to the overall design of the page; by itself an unpredictable shard that when allied with the overall layout not only creates, but also enhances the ** of the page for which it was created. Every page in the Batwoman saga is a drop-dead-gorgeous piece of art.

The graphic novels industry goes through cycles. At one time – the early Nineties specifically – the role of the artist was paramount. Superstar artists embellished whatever they wanted, their pretty pictures providing the minimal amount of reader satisfaction the market demanded at the moment. By the end of the decade however, it was the writer that commanded audience adulation, and the trend continues to this day. It is only the rarest of artists in today's market that manage to display their craft beyond the words that drive the story on the page. Sure, writer Greg Rucka plays to his strengths, combining an effortless understanding of the character of Kathy Kane with his natural flair for superheroics. The biggest trump-card Rucka brings to the table is his matter-of-fact handling of Kane's sexual preferences. Yeah, sure, she's a lesbian, but her nocturnal adventures have nothing to do with that. Rucka's distinctive approach to delineating the underbelly of Gotham City deserves a special mention, as crime and supernatural elements coalesce into a slick example of breathless superheroic action, punctuated by moments that retell quiet origin stories of the characters involved.

But it's hard to pinpoint where exactly the art ends and the story takes over. For one, the artist goes berserk with his choice of palette. The shades of red that infiltrate your consciousness are meant to be garish – they accentuate the femininity of the lead character. The red hair, the red lining on the familiar cape, the red high-heeled boots distinguishing her completely from the muted grays and dark blues that mark the usual Batman stories. Not only that, red is a recurring leitmotif in the series, as the action scenes become shapes that trap the characters inside pain-shaped bolts of scarlet and crimson. Another interesting thing to note is how Williams' style radically changes while laying out domestic scenes of Kate's secret identity. Bereft of the iconographic stylings of the costume and the hair, Kathy Kane's world becomes a mundane, retro-colored landscape of a style that I can attribute directly to David Mazzuchchelli's minimalist style way back in Batman: Year One, that iconic origin story from the mid-Eighties that changed the way we look at superheroes.

It's hard to match up to the 70 years of history the Batman mythos has laid out in various mediums and storylines. But Rucka and Williams aren't even trying to challenge any foundations – they are crafting a story that has its own analogues. A mediocre story that is raised to incredible heights by the sheer masterfulness of the art, Batwoman is this year's graphic novel equivalent of a Pixar movie – a comic that was in the making for quite some time, raised extremely high expectations, and which manages to dazzle the senses with its bravura.

ROLLING STONE RECOMMENDS

Batman: The Black Glove
Grant Morrison, JH Williams III
DC Comics

A short three-issue arc in a series of events called Batman R.I.P, The Black Glove was a Christie-esque whodunnit set on an island, starring Batman and his multinational counterparts (called the Batmen of Many Nations) trying to find out the mysterious killer trying to assassinate them one by one. Williams, with the right kind of freedom, weaves magic, and The Black Glove is a perfect example of the way a master-artist can make the old new again.

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D
Stan Lee/Jim Steranko, Jim Steranko

Marvel Comics
Steranko was one of the very few artists in the Marvel stable of the Sixties who managed to break free of the Kirby template that exemplified the company's output. Psychedelic panel designs, backgrounds that defied sanity and a fresh style of storytelling – all of these factors makes Steranko's run on Nick Fury among the most memorable visual landmarks of silver-age superheroics.

Elektra: Assassin
Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz
Epic/Marvel
In 1986, Frank Miller was on a roll. He was working for both DC and Marvel, and his own artistic sense – he had broken into the industry as a penciller before moving on to writing chores – worked in perfect harmony with that of his collaborators. On Elektra: Assassin, Sienkiewicz's lush painted pages gave a claustrophobic resonance to Miller's frenetic, complicated script – the kind of mainstream comic that would scar young minds forever and remain an essential pick of Miller's oeuvre.

Batman: Arkham Asylum
Grant Morrison, Dave McKean
DC Comics
A Scottish writer with a penchant for creating cerebral stories meeting a Scottish artist who twists every convention of what comic illustration should be like, Morrison and McKean taking on Batman in the late 80s set fan expectations soaring skywards, and the end-product did not disappoint. A dark, twisted look at the nether regions of the place where Gotham City consigns its madmen, Arkham Asylum is a tour-de-force that you finish with a sigh and a shudder.

Marvels
Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross
Marvel Comics
Alex Ross did not enter the graphic novel scene as much as he flew into it, soaring high on his artistic credentials. His realistic, fully-painted rendering of the key moments in Marvel history made characters come alive like never before – in 1994, this was the closest you would get to seeing how Spider-man would look like if an actual teenager wore an ill-fitting homemade costume and an industrialist put on a suit of iron armour.