I used to have time to read my comics in a coffee shop. Now I have to read them in the bathroom. Then I write reviews of them. I wash my hands in between.
BATGIRL #30
DC Comics you are PISSING ME OFF!
It isn’t bad enough that your first big ‘New 52’, universe
shaking crossover is taking over half a year to complete, is overlong and
overwrought and fraught with unnecessary tie ins and not-exactly-tie-ins. It’s
not bad enough that all the books with characters involved in this big
crossover have just been kind of meandering along, killing time until the Big
Event catches up. Now, NOW, we’re nearing the end of the damn thing and you’re
getting confused on who knows what and when. Case in point: Batgirl #30.
This issue is one big personal, internal journey for our
dear Barbara Gordon. She spends a great deal of time thinking about her place
in the ‘Bat Family’. About how she was different from the ‘Robins’, how she had
her own set of wings, etc., etc. That’s all well and good. Happens all the time
to just about every hero out there. But this time there are spoilers.
***SPOILERS***
In remembering the Robins, she focuses on the one she was
closest to, Dick Grayson. They were more than teammates, more than
friends. But in this touching look back,
much of her chastising of herself is for forgetting that Dick is gone. It’s
repeated, ad nauseum. Now, in the last issue of Forever Evil, we see Dick’s
heart stop. But that’s the last we see. Of course we don’t know if he’s coming
out of it or not. We assume he is because he’s Dick Grayson. But according to
batgirl #30 that’s premature. As far as she knows, Dick is gone, never coming
back.
But in the words of the late, great character actor James
Rebhorn from ‘Independence Day’: “That’s…not…entirely…accurate”
I, like many of you, read the comic news. So I, like many of
you, know that Dick Grayson DOES indeed survive Forever Evil somehow and is now
part of some secret spy agency organized through Batman Inc. But Nightwing is
dead, and the world must continue to think he’s dead for Dick’s mission to be
most effective. He’s got a new series and everything. Will it work? Should it?
Is it too much of a direct rip off from what’s going on with the Winter Soldier
over at The House of Ideas right now? Those are questions to be answered in
another review.
I should probably talk about what’s happening in the book,
huh? OK, so some high school kids are playing the local ‘summon the boogeyman’
game (though how stupid do you have to be to tempt fate like that in Gotham of
all places?) and surprise, surprise, they summon a boogeyman. Also known as the
Midnight Man, who is some sort of oozey shapeshifting mimic creature that
batgirl is able to defeat (for now). They’re building up her Rogues Gallery ok
in recent issue, but time will tell how repeat encounters hold up.
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