Each Friday, we'll be letting a different DC.com writer share what they'll be reading over the weekend and why you might want to check it out. Here's this week's suggestion for a perfect Weekend Escape!
 

When queer stories are acknowledged at all, they usually tend to come in one of two flavors. First is the courageous variety, about coming out to an often hostile world and finding your place within it. Renee Montoya already did that one. It was called Gotham Central: Half a Life, and it was great. The second kind, and the kind you tend to see more this time of year, is a queer joy story, celebrating the validity of queer love and identity. And those are great too, especially when we need to be lifted up. But those are two kinds of stories, where more heteronormative narratives have had the luxury to be anything they wanted to be—scary, tragic, complicated, dangerous.

Because they are given such little space in the public sphere, queer people and queer narratives are rarely afforded the luxury to tell more than the most basic stories essential to their identities. We know Renee Montoya is a lesbian and that her queerness is an essential part of her. But that’s not the only thing she is. There isn’t anything wrong with a woman who loves women, but exactly who and how they love…that’s something universal. To that end, 2007’s Crime Bible: Five Lessons of Blood is something of a rarity: a sexually nonjudgmental portrait of a very problematic woman. 
 

THE PREMISE:

Five Lessons of Blood, all around, is a matter of unfinished business. You may notice the “52 Aftermath” branding on the cover. That’s there because this spins out from perhaps the greatest DC event comic of all time: the weekly 2006 series 52, wherein former Gotham PD detective Renee Montoya embraces a new destiny as the Question while following in the footsteps of her predecessor and tracking a dangerous cult called the Religion of Crime. Through her original tenure as the Question, Montoya only ever really had one major case and this is the one. Now forced to walk the rest of this case’s path alone in the wake of her mentor’s death, Renee Montoya’s path to the heart of the “Dark Faith” confronts her with her darkest self, tempting her most destructive impulses as she follows the trail of crime to a demimonde that has kept a special place ready for a “Faceless One.”

In other words, it’s good, steamy noir. But this time Bogart is a badass lesbian.
 

LET’S TALK TALENT:

Greg Rucka may not have created Renee Montoya, but he is unquestionably the writer most closely associated with her. A connoisseur of messy women embroiled in mystery, there may be no stronger avatar for Rucka’s body of work as a whole than this conflicted former cop turned mystery woman. Five Lessons of Blood represents an important step forward by one of the most complex characters in the DC Universe. Steaming with lusty romance, breakneck action and dark mystery, Five Lessons is five issues of Rucka writing what he does best.

He's joined by a collective of artistic partners, including Tom Mandrake, Steve Lieber, Jesús Saíz, Matthew Clark, Diego Olmos and Manuel Garcia who prove to be just the right people to take Montoya deep within the Order of the Stone.
 

A FEW REASONS TO READ:

  • Can You Solve It?: Montoya isn’t the only one getting to the bottom of a mystery here. As she works to decipher the text of the arcane Crime Bible, you, too, are given the opportunity to decipher the code. Every issue of Five Lessons of Blood begins with a page of scripture from the unholy book, each with a message for you to determine that might give you further insight into the Religion of Crime and their designs on their would-be pursuer.
     
  • Follow-Up Questions: Like 52, Five Lessons is a story in thematic and narrative conversation with the seminal run that inspired it: Dennis O’Neil’s The Question (which has been a subject of Weekend Escape in the past). If those stories mean something to you, the tragic saga of Vic Sage doesn’t end with his death. The Montoya years are an absolute must read.
  • Forbidden Passion: Montoya is a character who has always been defined by her vices, either through indulgence or resistance. Her year-long saga in 52 saw Montoya grow to a new stage, but one where she must continue to resist the behaviors she turns to as she faces loss of control. Those sexual, violent and sometimes even manipulative impulses are tactile throughout this series as the words of the Crime Bible leave their mark upon her heart.
     
  • A Special Guest: Is it really a Renee Montoya story if Batwoman doesn’t show up? Surely not in Pride Month it isn’t. You better believe these problematic, tempestuous on and off lovers are at it again here. And after an abrupt departure in 52, there are more than words these two have to share with each other.
     

WHY IT’S WORTH YOUR TIME:

Five Lessons of Blood is worth your time because once you get swept up into it, the story will take barely any of it at all. These five issues are a whirlwind of lust, violence, deception and psychosexual drama that will have you wondering why we don’t have a new Question mystery on our shelves every month. Stories like this are the kind that not even the original hardboiled Question could ever approach. In 52, we first got to know Renee Montoya as the Question. Five Lessons of Blood is the template for what a Montoya Question story looks like.
 

Crime Bible: Five Lessons of Blood by Greg Rucka, Tom Mandrake, Steve Lieber, Jesús Saíz, Matthew Clark, Diego Olmos and Manuel Garcia can be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.