Monday, September 12, 2011

Comic Review: Batgirl #1

DC Comics has launched 'THE NEW 52' which if you do not happen to be a comic geek means 52 new #1 comic book issues, some or all of which are brand new narratives. This means all y'all can jump right aboard and read a comic without knowing decades worth of classic super-hero back stories!

You know. If you have 52 times $2.99 to spend per month on comics. I'd do the math, but I'm lazy as well as broke.

My stupendous local comic store, Happy Harbor Comics, suckered me in with the cunning ploy that if I don't like them I get my money back. Well played, sirs.

I enjoyed Dan Jurgens' 'Justice League International #1', then I enjoyed 'Batgirl #1'. I already knew I liked Booster Gold, Guy Gardner, and company, but I was leery of the Bat title. I don't historically buy them... but, c'mon. It's Gail Simone!

Gail wrote Birds of Prey, The All-New Atom, Wonder Woman, the Wonder Woman cartoon movie, and 'The Mask of Matches Malone', a music-riffic episode of the 'Batman: The Brave & The Bold' cartoon. Yes, and mostly she won me over with her plentiful and gut-busting comic book-related tweets.

Ardian Syaf & Vicente Cifuentes deliver very fine interior art to supplement Adam Hughes' lovely cover. We start off with a grotesque and shocking murder: an unseen black-clad character who calls itself The Mirror accosts an elderly man who was the sole survivor of a sinking ship... and drowns him with his own garden hose. Then checks him off a list that includes...

Our heroine Barbara Gordon, former librarian, formerly wheel-chair bound, now miraculously back on her own two feet and fighting crime with "upper arm strength like a mother". No mention yet of what restored her spine from the Joker's bullet 'three years ago'. No hint whether she retains the history Gail & others wrote for her as Oracle (the super-hacker information guru to the costumed crowd that many readers know best.) Keep reading!

Batgirl's just moved out of her dad's place, foiled a home-invasion gang, and had to get somebody else to push a hospital's elevator button to accommodate her cumbersome bat-bike.

Now face to (face?) with The Mirror, she stares down his gun... and she freezes. Reliving her trauma- just long enough for The Mirror to kill again and escape.

I'm of the 'tights and flights' school rather than the 'crime and grime', but I'm taking this ride.

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