Batgirl Gets Efficient: A Review of Batgirl Issue 24
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Aldrige/Godlewski/Rauch’s issue number 24 of Batgirl is a quick overview of what Batgirl aka Barbara Gordon is currently about and capable of. A quick side note: my wife and I were fortunate enough to have a beautiful little redhead girl one year ago. Since then, we’ve read countless stories to her: Dr. Seuss, Berenstain Bears, Dinosaur books, farm animal books, etc. She enjoys them all, but when I picked up a few DC Super Heroes board books, she fell in love with the images of Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Superman, Batman, and the Flash. Yet when reading to her DC Super Heroes : My First Book of Girl Power, she always gravitates towards Batgirl. With that in mind, I made it my mission to pick up everything Batgirl related so that she and I have something we both can enjoy and share as she grows up. That now includes getting to know the present Barbara Gordon/Batgirl currently gracing the pages of her comic book run at DC, and I’m ecstatic about it.
Warning Spoilers are Most Certainly Ahead
I’m new to the series, but what I picked up on immediately is on how efficient Batgirl is in dealing with the premise of people’s bad choices. The comic opens with four drug dealers attempting to sell a new, Adderall style/deadly drug called Easy-A to college students. We see Batgirl quickly take down two of the drug dealers; the others flee on motorcycles, and Batgirl brings them down too with the assistance of an electrical interference device she throws on both the dealer’s motorcycles.
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Fast forward to a scene where Babs is sucking down a 5 shot red eye (yikes!) at the Gotham Grind Coffee Shop, and she is visiting with an old high school friend. The friend has requested her help, as their former classmate, one Jacob Cesaro, has been brought into the hospital multiple times at night with major bodily injuries. The scene is set, Batgirl is on the case, and later that evening…
Batgirl follows Cesaro to a warehouse and then proceeds to take out a) two guards with guns, b) two additional guards with batarangs, and then c) knock out four more guards with hand to hand combat. I know people complain about the depiction of a +120 pound female knocking out 8 big guys, but let’s be honest: she is consistently trained by the best of the best, the Bat. So I’m ok with it. It’s the Bat, and she is part of his family. So I can deal with it.
The plot quickly escalates as we learn that Cesaro is currently employed by Two-Face to both program a backdoor into the Gotham City utility grid, as well as set off a 22 bomb sequence that will detonate across East Gotham City. Two-Face is greedy in this one; he wants to leave a scar across the city’s urban landscape to remind the good people of Gotham about his personal fate. He also wants to be in a position to blackmail Gotham by turning off the City’s grid. This, of course, would generate widespread panic amongst the populace.
Things are then turned on the story’s head as we see Cesaro knockout Batgirl, and then knock out Two-Face. As we learned earlier, Cesaro’s father was a police officer who was in fact murdered by Two-Face and his gang one and a half years ago. This act is revenge. Cesaro has worked his way to this point, taking beatings, hazing, and whatever else was required, in hopes of gaining Two-Face’s trust in order to murder him. Yet as the Batman-verse goes, Batgirl steps in, prevents the murder and thinks she has saved her former friend from high school. One more story-spin later: Babs thinks she has talked her former classmate off of the ledge of making an extremely bad decision; yet Cesaro engages Two-Face’s bomb sequence to blow up a portion of Gotham City.
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We then get the best scene of the comic: Batgirl smashing Cesaro’s face in with a leg kick while stating “You don’t get to make choices anymore.” It’s a quick solid ending, and Batgirl employs her own programming skills to remove both risks to Gotham City. I liked it.
Why Batgirl Matters to Me
I love the idea of Batgirl. Not only because she represents a strong character in the DC Universe, but because she is a formidable fictional character that my daughter can buy into. She’s intelligent, caring, computer savvy, book wise, and physically capable of taking down multiple aggressive males. What’s not to love about this type of female character in this day and age? I know my daughter will enjoy it in the future, and so will I. It’s a comic book I definitely plan to keep up with going forward.