Batgirl #8 – Review

By: Gail Simone (writer), Ardian Syaf, Alitha Martinez, Vicente Cifuentes (artists), Ulises Arreola (colorist)

The Story: It just goes to show, you can sometimes trust a man named “Weasel.”

The Review: Last month, I complained about how tired I was getting of Batgirl constantly questioning herself, of asking whether she deserved everything she had.  While this kind of reverse-guilt was understandable in her case, after a certain point impatience has to kick in.  In a world where good people suffer horrors every day—certainly something Babs knows firsthand living in Gotham—how long can you really tolerate someone worrying over their good fortune?

Thankfully, Black Canary beat some sense into her in that issue, and here, I am happy to report, Babs steers clear from the self-doubt issues she’s been plagued with since day one.  At one point, she does experience a physical reaction from seeing someone who dates back from the most traumatic incident of her life, but she keeps it brief and under admirable restraint.  Certainly it doesn’t stop her from knocking out an attacker from behind and then cradling his head before it hits a stone ledge.  That speaks volumes about the kind of self-control she possesses now.

The next step Simone should take to make this the title we all want it to be is to improve the quality of villain Batgirl encounters.  Black Mirror came quite short of being truly compelling, and Gretel barely had a backstory worth reading.  Grotesque, as I believe our current psychopath is called, doesn’t even have a backstory.  All we really get out of him is a taste for “beautiful things,” a foppish manner of speaking, and some electrical powers.  Not much to go by.

It certainly doesn’t help that Simone still spends way more time with Babs’ stream-of-consciousness rambling than advancing the plot, even though we no longer have to sit through too much maudlin reflection.  The whole string of text we get when Babs gets back to her apartment is a good example of the repetitive, jerky, wearisome narration we must deal with: “Three years ago.  The Joker and two thugs stepped into my house.  I opened the door.  That’s what kills me.  Cop’s daughter.  Superhero.  And I opened the door.”