DC’s Future State Brings Back Kevin Smith-Created Villain Onomatopoeia

This week’s Future State: Catwoman #1 delivers another fantastic entry in DC’s latest publishing initiative, telling the tale of what Selina Kyle’s character is doing in this not-too-distant future. And what she’s doing is hopping aboard a prisoner train put together by the evil Magistrate which is chock full of other villains that they’re hoping to rehabilitate. Among them is a character that Selina enlists to help her make her way through the remaining cars on the train., but also one that hasn’t regularly appeared in DC books for quite some time. Full spoilers for Future State: Catwoman #1 below!

On the train, Selina encounters a villain that is heavily secured, who she quickly identifies as none other than Onomatopoeia, the Kevin Smith and Phil Hester created villain that first appeared in the pages of Green Arrow almost twenty years ago. The name Onomatopoeia comes from the terms that appear throughout comics, phonetically suggesting the sounds they’re describing like the classic BIFF!, BAM!, and POW! A trained marksmen and assassin, Onomatopoeia the character makes the sounds himself out loud as dialogue in the pages of the comics.

Writer Ram V. and artist Otto Schmidt are the ones that have brought Onomatopoeia back into the fold at DC with Future State: Catwoman. In the issue he agrees to help Catwoman on the train and since he’s without any of his equipment, creates a brand new version of his mask from a torn T-shirt and the blood of a dead guard. The final panel of the issue reveals the most important prisoner on the train though, none other than Bruce Wayne himself. We know from the solicitation for Future State: Catwoman #2 that Onomatopoeia will still be present, so it will be interesting to see how they interact when it’s published.

Recently Onomatopoeia had made minor appearance in Teen Titans, Deathstroke, and the #1000 anniversary issue of Detective Comics. Previously he’d been used almost exlusively by Smith who had him appear throughout his Green Arrow run but also in his Batman mini-series Batman: Cacophony and Batman: The Widening Gyre, which elaborated on his backstory a little more.

Smith previously opened up about the idea of f appearing as a character in the Arrow TV series after he’d lamented that the character would only work on the page. In the end, he came up with an idea.

“I’ve figured out a way to do it that is kinda bad-ass and also connects to comics more or less,” Smith told Den of Geek (back in 2016) “So instead of just doing the actual sound – which to me, in the real world, would be like the dude from Police Academy making noises with his mouth – he’ll just have little cards. Business cards that have typewritten words of whatever the f**k. So instead of him saying ‘blam’, you’d find this card on your desk and turn around and ‘blam’, he’d shoot you and stuff like that. Which I think is a little more chilly, you know, for doing it in live action. On a comic book page, those big word balloons with a tiny word in it were so f***ing sweet. It looks beautifully graphic, like, at the same time it creates an image of ‘this is weird’. But I don’t know if audibly making noises would ever work in the real world, so I think those cards would be bad-ass, man.”

You can find the solicitation for Future State: Catwoman #2 below.

FUTURE STATE: CATWOMAN #2
written by RAM V
art by OTTO SCHMIDT
cover by LIAM SHARP
card stock variant cover by HICHAM HABCHI
ON SALE 2/16/21
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES | 2 OF 2 | FC | DC
CARD STOCK VARIANT COVER $4.99 US
Catwoman has clawed her way through half of the Magistrate’s bullet train, but her fight has only just begun! Now, with Onomatopoeia in tow, Selina makes her way toward the car carrying a ghost of her past, and Gotham’s as well. It’s Bruce Wayne…but is it really him? And with Talia al Ghul on board as well, will this be a long-awaited reunion between the Bat and the Cat, or will Selina’s mission to rescue the Magistrate’s prisoners go off the rails?