Batgirl #1

With DC's relaunch, they haven't been afraid to make big changes. Any past continuity they want is salvaged, but anything they decide not to take is discarded. Unfortunately, one of those pieces of discarded continuity is Batgirl. Actually, two Batgirls: Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown. Both are fan favorites, and represent two very different extremes. At present time, neither has ever been Batgirl. Cassie at least survives as Black Bat, protector of Hong Kong, but Stephanie may not exist. This has been controversial.

Equally controversial is Barbara Gordon discarding her role as Oracle, as well as the wheelchair that has defined her character for a generation. She has been the most prominent disabled character in comics. She served as an inspiration to many for continuing the fight in her new capacity and even excelling at it. However, the elephant in the room has always been "in a world of cybernetics, Lazarus pits, etc, where a literal angel has been on the justice league, why has her spine not been repaired?"

Well, they did something about that elephant with the reboot. Barbara can walk again. I say "again" because the incident that cost her use of her legs still happened. She was incapacitated for three years, long past the point where doctors would say the spine is likely to recover. Yet recover she did, and they call it a miracle. She's not so sure.

Batgirl #1 opens not with Batgirl, but with an old man watering flowers. An unseen assailant walks up to him, and tells him he does not belong alive. The assailant holds him still and sticks the hose down his throat, drowning the old man on dry land. He then crosses a name ("Graham Carter") off his list, and looks at the next: Barbara Gordon.

One note, this scene is probably far more comedic than they intended. The old man's face with his eyes bugging out and water spewing out his nose had me laughing pretty hard, but then again I can be a sicko sometimes. The terrier yapping through the scene didn't help.

Now to Batgirl. We're introduced like so many other Bat-books to our character standing on a rooftop getting ready for a case. A group of thrill-killers in Halloween masks are torturing a family, and Batgirl comes to the rescue. Her dialogue here is hard to take seriously, but that seems to be the point. Outwardly she says things about her opponent like, "There you are you rotten monsters. Found you, didn't I? Oh yes I did, babies. How sad for you." Her internal monologue, however, betrays her nervousness and fear. Batgirl is rusty and she knows it, she just hopes this will be an easy one.

One interesting moment in the fight is when their leader (Spook) is holding someone at gunpoint. Batgirl pulls a batarang and starts laughing. He asks "What are you laughing at?" "You, little man." She then thinks: "Fight a monster, become a monster." Her internal monologue then screams at her in quotation marks and Frank Miller's voice, "You thought you were going to terrify the world! Look at you, you're a punk, a nobody. I'm frankly amazed you haven't wet yourself."

I'll confess I've never read the Killing Joke. However, even if it's not in the comic, it feels like something the Joker might have said to Barbara on that horrible night. Her laughter, her comment about monsters...it seems the Joker left a mark on her worse than the spinal injury.

She takes the man out, but he tackles her out a window. Her insane internal monologue changes back to self-doubt as she realizes how rusty she is. She's left dangling over the balcony with Spook in her hand, and the family helps her pull both of them up. Her confidence has evaporated. She can only say "I'm glad" to the family before she leaves, with her thinking about her shaking knees and how much she needs to pee.

She has a nightmare where she relives that night. "I'm not Batgirl. Not tonight...Tonight I am Barbara Gordon. She of the eidetic memory. She who never forgets. Never. Except how to breathe sometimes." Her father, Commissioner Gordon, hears her scream as she wakes up and checks on her. She's getting ready to move out, but he doesn't want her to. She feels she has to in order to move on with her life.

We're then introduced to her new roommate, Alysia Yeoh, a political activist who works at the local bar. The hospital must be across the street or something. because Barbara is just here to drop Aysia off at work, but Alysia notices the wheelchair lift in the back of her van. She's surprised, since apparently Barbara has not told her about the past three years. Alysia assumes its for a relative while making a very insensitive comment about how a wheelchair would be like a prison, which Barbara does not respond to.

Meanwhile, the killer from the start walks in, punching out the receptionist and shooting a guard. He's here for Spook. Barbara hears the commotion and gets the motorcycle she had hidden in her van, driving it through the hospital to get to the room, but she's not fast enough and both of the police detectives guarding him are shot, one fatally. The killer reveals himself as a very large man with a mask made of broken mirror shards, who opens his cloak to Spook to "show him his true face" at which the man screams. Mirror says Spook should not be alive, and gets ready to make that true.

Batgirl enters the room and Mirror turns to her with his gun. He points it at exactly the same place as Joker did, triggering a flashback and causing Batgirl to freeze up. The surviving cop shouts at her to move, because now she's blocking the line of fire. Mirror grabs spook's bed and pushes him out a window to his death. Now the cop turns her gun on Batgirl, accusing her of being a murderer too for not doing anything to stop Mirror, and that's where the comic ends.

Like most of the new 52 bat-family comics I've read, this one serves as an excellent introduction to the character. We learn all the important stuff (Batgirl, shot by Joker, Commissioner Gordon's daughter) in rapid succession while also delving into what makes Batgirl tick. Or, just as often, what makes her stop ticking, or even go cuckoo.

Batgirl/Barbara Gordon's character has changed a lot as well. She alternates between giddy overconfidence, in which her dialogue/internal monologue turns into Gail Simone's impression of Frank Miller, and a scared trauma victim recalling her past and berating herself for not being "over it" yet. And it is clear she is a trauma victim here. She has a past she is still struggling with, and is hoping that by becoming Batgirl again she can move on.

Gail Simone is an excellent writer, who especially does good female characters and coined the "women in refrigerators" trope. Here, she is in fine form delving into Batgirl's psyche, and getting the chance she always wanted to defrost Barbara Gordon. Yet, I wonder if it was such a good idea, because even if the original story was a prime example of WIR, what they'd done with her since was remarkable and it is a shame to see Oracle go.

I also wonder about the overall portrayal of females in the comics at this point. Catwoman is revealed to have deep-seated abandonment issues and occasional emotional breakdowns. Batgirl is a trauma victim with severe PTSD, including flashbacks, nightmares, and freezing up. Were it not for Batman being portrayed as a profoundly unhealthy enabler in Catwoman, I'd be worried this was exclusive to females. I'll be on the lookout for it in other books, but I hope this is more a "street vigilante" thing than a "female" thing.

As for the villains. The Thrill Kill Monsters (Spook, Devil, Frankenstein, Dracula) are pretty much just a group of punching bags and a plot device to get the ball rolling. Mirror looks more interesting, as I wonder what is under that cloak. Is it like Ghostrider's Penance Stare?

Commissioner Gordon's cameo is brief but touching. I would have liked to see more of Alysia, but I'm sure we will. Also, what happened to her during the fracas? Probably hiding somewhere, but still, would have been nice to see.

My biggest problem plot-wise is with the ending, where the surviving officer calls Batgirl a murderer and points a gun at her because she failed to save someone. That reaction seems a little extreme and serves as little more than a bumper. Also, the scene at the beginning of Mirror murdering an old man is largely unnecessary, not to mention unintentionally silly. Aside from such silly moments, the art is pretty good, with nothing jumping out as either particularly awesome or particularly bad.

It's a stronger intro to the character than Catwoman, though leaves fewer unanswered questions to keep you coming back. I think I enjoyed it more though, due to the emotional weight. I give it 4/5 stars, and will get back with a review of the first arc later.