Gail Simone: writer
Ardian Syaf: penciller
Vicente Cifuentes: inker
The Solicitation
During the day, Barbara Gordon has to deal with the emotional fallout of the return of a key figure from her most painful memories, while at night, high above Gotham City's streets, Batgirl and Batman face the deadly Gretel, a damaged woman with the lethal ability to control men's minds!
It's Batgirl's first face-to-face with Batman since her rehabilitation – and he has a few choice words to say about her return to crime fighting!
Preview
The Story
Hold on minute, I have to focus. My eyes have rolled so far into the back of my head that it hurts.
I just can't feel for Batgirl after this issue. She is always questioning all of her actions, reacting to everything with a sense of nervousness and lack of self confidence that is the lowest I've seen of any Bat-character. If you flip through the book, you'll see that Batgirl ends most of what she says with a question. Is this by design? Does she Just not know the answer? Is this how most characters talk to each other in Simone's stories?
Anyway, to the story. Batgirl fights a supposedly mind controlled Bruce Wayne, who she is able to break out of the mind control. (If he was even faking it. She asked him and he gave her a half answer.) Gretel, the villain who can mind control men, got away and we delve into her origin story. Seems she was a reporter who go too far into the powerful men of Gotham and ending up getting killed for it. Well, killed by any other standards. There were two shots in the gut and one in the head. She survived, but woke up with the ability to control men. But seriously, don't look at that situation too hard.
Barbara's mom is back in this issue, and she is doing nothing but baking for Barbara. Barbara dismisses her and goes to her room. Why wouldn't she stop and think to ask how her mom got into her apartment, and then yell at her a bit to find out what she is doing there. I know its what I would do if I saw a long lost relative suddenly standing in my doorway. That, and who was going to clean up the mess in the kitchen.
We get the obligatory flashback to when Barbara was shot moment. Granted, this one actually tied more into the story since she was fighting Bruce Wayne and the flashback dealt with how Batman reacted to her being shot. There is where things do get a little interesting for me because we get to see how much of the Killing Joke story that showed Barbara getting shot and paralyzed in the old DC universe will get transferred to this one.
From what I could gather, I think just the fact that she was shot by the Joker will transfer over. In the original Killing Joke, Batman did visit Barbara after Joker shot her. At the time, Jim Gordon was kidnapped by the Joker. That wasn't the case here it seems, and Jim Gordon is in the hospital room when Batman visists her for the first time after she is shot. Apparently, they don't exchange any words at all, Batman just holds her hand. I'm thinking that is interesting and cool and everything. They just are taking that one story point from the comic (Barbara getting shot) and going with it. That I have no problem with. The line that gets to me is when Barbara says "...after being shot by the Joker...after losing the ability to walk...after a surgery that haunted my nightmares for a year after...he came to my hospital room."
How I read that line is that Joker did shot Barbara, she lost the ability to walk and then she had surgery that somehow was worse than that? The only think I could think of is that Joker shooting her did not totally cripple her. Some surgeons went in thinking they could fix it, and then that when everything got botched. And then some sort of special surgery outside of the U.S. fixed her again. When that thought crossed my head, then it made me realize that Simone is just going to keep dragging out the mystery of Barbara being able to return for as long as she can possibly stretch it out. Quite frankly, I'm tired of it. There is a good story there to tell and Simone is avoiding it for some reason.
Back to the regular story. Batgirl finds out who Gretel is and why she does what she does. She and Batman decide to use Bruce Wayne as bait and they set her up. Batgirl brings Gretel down, but not before that detective that wants to take Batgirl down, McKenna, steps in to try and arrest Batgirl. Apparently McKenna still blames Batgirl for trying to kill.having played a part in her partner's demise from the first issue of Batgirl. Its a plot line I could go for if it got a better setup than this. The story just seems to come out of nowhere and it makes the McKenna character look bad.
Blah.
Also, if Gretel is high up on some scaffolding that is hanging over the street, and two people are swinging on a rope up to her, how is she surprised by one but not the other?
The Art
We don't have any weird perspectives where Batgirl is high above the city, we just have a constantly changing of perspectives in each panel. While that is good to attract the eye to each panel, there doesn't seem to be much sense between the panels. For example, If we have a crowd of people on the street who are all on the ground level, it doesn't make sense to have a panel where it looks like the ground is constantly shifting up and down on an incline so that people can be shown from a higher perspective than others.
For example, Bruce Wayne is speaking to a crowd of people. He is on ground level with them. We then flip to a shot where Bruce is reflected in a guard's helmet and it looks like either the guards are all kneeling down, or Bruce is about 10 feet above everyone. Then Batgirl swings in and stands at ground level with everyone, then kicks the guards at a position that looks like she is flying through the air. That would be alright, but the guards look like they are flying through the air too, and there is no indication of which was is up or where the ground is.
The Cover
I see where this cover is going, but I think it could have been done very differently that would have had a greater effect. We have Batgirl flying under Batman. If we had a smaller color pallet, and used just purple, yellow, red, and black then this would work better. this needed a more pop-deco kind of look, like a retro feel to it. Use more solid shapes, less shading and line work, and then do the speckled white to make it look like snow just like this cover had and it would pop out much better for me. Yes, it wouldn't be the artist who does the interiors on it, but it would have made this book stand out. Right now I just get a blinded by the white kind of feel. Its too dark where it is dark, and the white background just makes the snow effect on the characters look bad.
Grades
Words: 3/10 - bad characterisation all around. This book is making no sense for me with where it is going, nor do I care about any of the characters.
Pictures: 5/10 - its still a failing grade.
Recommend: Not at all.
Buy Next Issue: I'm done with this comic. Barbara Gordon as Oracle I could respect, Barbara Gordon as Batgirl just isn't for me. She's not my Batgirl.
Previous Issues
Batgirl #5
Batgirl #4
Three Issue Trial
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