GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: Whistle - A New Gotham City Hero
By Lisa Gullickson — I understand that just getting by in Gotham City is morally complicated. Known primarily for rampant crime, corruption, and vigilantism, Gotham’s ethical foundation is clearly built on a steep incline. It’s easy to lose your footing. To cling to what feels right is so effortful and backbreaking that it just feels better to let go a little, begin to let yourself slide, maybe even enjoy the easy gravity of it all.
When we meet Willow Zimmerman, she is a student at Down River High School who is fighting with every ounce of her being to climb. She is an impassioned idealist, holding a one-woman protest outside of her school. She wields a hand-painted sign, “Be The Change,” and tries to convince her apathetic peers to sign her petition to Gotham City Hall to defund the police and invest in education. She is not collecting a lot of ink. Willow is not an optimist. She knows that things rarely, if ever, turn out for the better. Her GCPS has at least taught her that much. But she is a believer in her effort. If she works hard enough, the future can be improved.
Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero, by E. Lockhart (Genuine Fraud, We Were Liars) and Manuel Preitano (The Oracle Code), is about Willow Zimmerman’s fall from grace. To help pay for her mom’s medical treatments, Willow makes a deal with an estranged family friend, Mr. E. Nigma, to make some good money under the table doing some secretarial type work that, while not overtly wrong, is not on the up and up. The extra income makes her life immediately easier, but the deceit and isolation of secretly leading a double life takes their toll. As an experienced and enthusiastic reader of both hero comics and YA fiction, I thought I knew the shape of this story. Crime doesn’t pay, right? Or it does, but it is not worth the personal, moral, and societal price. That is not the moral of this story.
I love Willow Zimmerman. She is only sixteen years old and a force to be reckoned with. Even before she is struck with superpowers, she is doing the impossible; she maintains good grades, cares for her sick mom, stays engaged with her activism, and works the graveyard shift at the animal shelter. Despite it crumbling under the weight of poverty and disrepair, Willow loves her neighborhood. She beams with pride when she describes to the new kid, Garfield, how Down River started as an all-Jewish neighborhood and how that legacy survives in the salty deliciousness of the Ruben sandwich at the Rosen Brothers’ Delicatessen, family-owned since 1951. Lockhart has created an undeniably charming character in Willow. She is intelligent, wise, and cool in that way that goes right over the head of her high school peers but will make her such a great adult. The powers that she is eventually imbued with are quirky and endearing. They defy convention but ultimately prove pretty useful. Willow Zimmerman has a thriving future, as long as she doesn’t despair in the face of her present. Which is a challenge.
Willow and her Gotham are lovingly captured by illustrator Manuel Preitano, with colors by Gabby Metzler. Willow’s brilliance and determination are expressed in her visage and posture through the very first panel. As the story progresses, we see a girl who is game. She may not always be entirely sure what she’s doing, but you can’t deny she is fully committed to seeing it through. We see it in the way she embraces the boy she has a crush on even though they just met and in the way she flying kicks her first altercation with a villain. Willow’s level of conviction is untamed and precarious. This girl is brave, and her Gotham is beautiful - crackling with detail and bathed in a rosy sienna.
Gotham City is the embodiment of all that is unfair, uncaring, and unjust. Maybe the only way to a better future is a series of carefully considered compromises. Whistle is a story about a girl trying, against the odds, for a better future for herself, her family, her neighborhood, and her city. I have to admit, the ending was unnervingly ambiguous to me at first, but then I recalled the subtitle. A New Gotham City Hero. It is startling to meet a young hero in a YA digest-sized superhero graphic novel that is not going for a perfect record. She’s not looking to unwaveringly walk the path of the righteous. What she is looking to do is, in fact, very Gotham. To survive in this economy, she will inevitably have to corroborate with the corrupt. What Willow is going for is overall net good. She is not looking to judge herself with each of her choices individually, but rather the sum of those choices. If the scales tip towards hero rather than villain, she will be satisfied, and maybe I should be too.
Graphic Novel Review: Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero
Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero
Writer: E. Lockhart
Artist: Manuel Preitano
Colors: Gabby Metzler
Letters: ALW’s Tory Peteri
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $16.99
Sixteen-year-old Willow Zimmerman has something to say. When she’s not on the streets advocating for her community, she’s volunteering at the local pet shelter. She seeks to help all those in need, even the stray dog she’s named Lebowitz that follows her around. But as much as she does for the world around her, she struggles closer to home—taking care of her mother, recently diagnosed with cancer. Her job as an adjunct professor of Jewish studies does not provide adequate health insurance—and Willow can see that time is running out.
When in desperation she reconnects with her estranged “uncle” Edward, he opens the door to an easier life. Through simple jobs, such as hosting his private poker nights with Gotham City’s elites, she is able to keep her family afloat—and afford critical medical treatments for her mother.
Willow’s family life quickly improves through the income provided by these jobs, but it comes at the cost of distancing herself from the people she truly cares about. Her time is now spent on new connections, such as biologist and teacher Pammie Isley. And when Willow and Lebowitz collide with the monstrous Killer Croc outside the local synagogue, they are both injured, only to wake up being able to understand each other. And there are other developments, too...strange ways in which they’ve become stronger together. Willow’s activism kicks into high gear—with these powers, she can really save the world!
But when Willow discovers that Edward and his friends are actually some of Gotham’s most corrupt criminals, she must make a choice: remain loyal to the man who kept her family together, or use her new powers to be a voice for her community.
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
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Lisa Gullickson is one half of the couple on the Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast, and, yes, the a capella version of the 90s X-men theme is all her. Her Love Language is Words of Affirmation which she accepts @sidewalksiren on twitter.
