It opens up with Batgirl's head being held underwater. Great start. You know, Barbara? Maybe you should retire. You can do it, but that doesn't mean you should. Anyway, the villain of this piece is introduced as Grotesque, a metahuman in a gargoyle mask. She escapes by knocking it off, and he vanishes with a promise to return because he finds her fascinating.
Flashback to earlier, we have a cameo from Black Canary as she spars with Barbara, discussing what is holding her back. Again, Dinah has the brilliant insight that Barbara is still being haunted by her crippling at the Joker's hands. She does show some greater combat therapy insight by figuring out that something else is bothering her, which is when Barbara brings up her mother. She lapses briefly into self-pity, until Dinah slaps her out of it and gives her a lead on Grotesque.
One brief comment here. It seems that the whole paralyzation thing went down very differently in this version. The part everyone remembers, with Barbara answering the door to Hawaiian shirt Joker, happened exactly like that. None of the other stuff from the Killing Joke seems to have happened. Especially not that stuff that was merely implied to happen. This...is probably for the best.
Anyway, while Barbara was talking about her, Barbara Gordon Sr is reuniting with Jim. He asks why she abandoned them, and his wife brings up their son, James. Wow, the Gordons are really creative at naming their kids.
Batgirl arrives at Grotesque's heist underway. I must say, Grotesque's design is pretty creative. He has a fine tuxedo, a gargoyle mask with horns like Marvel's Loki, what is either a cane or a mace, and, oddly, bare feet. His bare feet are what makes his design unique. He also fancies himself a gourmet (which the writing mistakes for a gourmand), so he murders a rich guy for a bottle of rare wine. Batgirl intervenes and easily takes out the thugs, but Grotesque absorbs electricity from the light fixtures and gains super strength and energy blasts.
What. Look, I was on board until this point. The gargoyle mask, the name, even the epicurean tastes all hearken back to the Romantic period, so I was primed to like this guy. Then turns out his powers have absolutely nothing to do with his theme. Even Evil Sherlock Holmes and his Heat Ray made more sense than this.
So Batgirl follows him into the sewer, which brings us back to the present. She examines his unconscious thugs and recognizes one of them as one of the guys who was with the Joker when he shot her. Danny "The Weasel" Weaver. As he realizes she recognizes him and starts to wonder from where, another thug regains consciousness and tries to attack her from behind. She easily beats him unconscious, taking out her rage on this other guy, but she still is careful to catch his head so he doesn't splatter it on the hard stone as he falls. She turns back to Danny and tells him to run, because she can't just let him sit here either without taking it out on him too.
Mulling over that night, she wonders why she opened the door for the Joker. She also realizes that she was supposed to die there, but something went wrong and help arrived before her father did. Barbara decides to contact her mother, and asks flat out why she left. Turns out that she left because of Barbara's brother, James. He was a sociopath from an early age. He killed the cat and flat out told his mother to run or his sister would be next. She lost it then, fled, and had spent the past decade in therapy. She still couldn't come back until James was safely locked away. I was not aware of this storyline, but it is intriguing. This tells you pretty much everything you need to know about James Gordon.
Grotesque meanwhile figures out that Weaver is somehow special to Barbara. Weaver wants out, but Grotesque forces him to stay in and sets a trap for her in Weaver's apartment. He seems to have taken an especial shine to Batgirl as one of the "fine things" he desires and talks about what they will name their first kid as they fight. She knocks him outside, but he charges up using a lightning bolt from the storm cloud. He is about to attack Batgirl when Weaver shoots him in the back. It only stuns him, but he uses a lot of his stored juice zapping Weaver. While he's distracted, Batgirl clocks him and attacks him savagely. Once Grotesque is unconscious, she turns to Weaver.
Weaver is fatally wounded. He says he never wanted to kill, no matter who he worked for, he just held the gun and looked scary. There's not much work for a con like him except as a henchman though. He did one good thing in his life though. He remembers being there when Barbara was shot..then he changes his story at the last minute and says it meant nothing. She realizes he is the reason she's still alive. He had a sudden attack of conscience and called the police after he left. He doesn't even know why, maybe because Barbara was so strong about it. Weaver dies not knowing he was talking to the woman whose life he saved that day.
Since this thing has to end on a cliffhanger, Alysia is leaving work when she runs into a handsome young man with red hair and glasses. He introduces himself as James.
Grotesque continues a string of weak villains. He holds up better than the previous ones, but his random-ass powers pretty much cause it all to fall apart. Then again, it really isn't his story. It's Weaver's story, and his conflicted relationship both to his job and to Batgirl serves up most of the drama here. He's also pretty well contrasted with his more traditionally villainous boss. Grotesque follows standard supervillain patterns, while Weaver is just a guy. He's done bad things, but he did one really good thing. Grotesque is just a caricature, a hollow monster mask without much of a man behind it. Weaver is a man who is forced into a mask by guys like Grotesque. James is also a contrast to Grotesque. He's a monster who doesn't bother with a mask, because his face is blanker and more false than any mask could be.
This story shows Gail Simone's strengths as a writer much better than in her previous arcs. I have high hopes for James as a future villain, and this is starting to give me good hopes for Simone's further run on Batgirl. I give it 4/5
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