Batgirl #1

So, this is the issue I was MOST excited about this week.   I actually put it off until after reading Action Comics and Detective Comics because I was nervous it wouldn’t live up to my expectations.   Between my love of Batgirl from Batman: The Animated Series and all the love I’ve heard for Gail Simone based on her Birds of Prey writing, I was expecting a lot!

Barbara is thinking about what’s happened since The Killing Joke and how her life has been.   Now that she’s cured (or however it is that she can walk) she’s back in costume and saving a couple from some very disturbing kids.   She kicks a kid in the back as she enters the home.   She’s happy to be able to kick again.   My brother has a problem with this – and I’m curious to read his review to find out what it is.   To me she’s just evening the odds.   She’s been out of super hero work for 3 years and she doesn’t have all of Batman’s gadgetry.  I love that the couple confuse her for Batwoman.   I wouldn’t have been primed to find that as amusing if I hadn’t recently read on Comic Vine about whether those two would come to blows since they’re both red-headed bat-women and perhaps Gotham doesn’t have room for that.

At some point she mentions that she has to pee.   Again, a great realism and humor moment that I was mostly primed for because last week’s Comic Vine podcast was talking about super heroes needing to pee, menstruating, etc.   I think it also adds to the feeling of – “yeah, she hasn’t done this in a long time so she’s probably out of practice on emptying your bladder before a fight or something”

So, the issue mentions it’s been 3 years since The Killing Joke.   A lot of people on Comic Vine have been pissed because they assume this erases all of her Oracle and Birds of Prey history.   While some of this may be altered and it’s still too early in the book for Simone to go into this, I’d like to remind anyone reading this review that Comic Book Time is different from Real Life Time.   The Killing Joke was in the 80s, yes.   But, at least with Marvel, 5 RLT years is about 1 CBT year.   So that’d be 15 years which is more time than the 80s to now, but it means that not all of her past has to be erased.   Simone will eventually let us know (as might Birds of Prey #1).   Since most of the Gotham DCU has been left unchanged I hope that most of this is the same although I’m OK with minor tweaks.   Especially because it means that in the new DCU Barbara has still been an active crime fighter, not an invalid (Super hero-wise) And, of course, I’m not sure when this is taking place.   Since Action Comics and Detective Comics don’t alert the reader that they take place five years ago, who knows when in the timeline this takes place.  

Finally, there’s the enemy introduced in this issue.   He has a list of people who should be dead and is going around killing them.   How he has this information is left for future issues.   The funny thing is that Chris Sims’ (of Comics Alliance) review describes the enemy as based on Final Destination because when I was trying to describe it to my wife last night, I said it was the evil force from Final Destination personified.   Good to know I’m not the only one that felt that way.   Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.   Also, he does have Barbara on his list so no matter how she performs as Batgirl, she’s guaranteed to see him again (until he ends up dead or locked up).  

If there’s anything I would have liked to have seen it’s a tie back into the Gotham universe.   I don’t know if James Gordon ever found out about her Batgirl exploits in the comic (I know he doesn’t in the cartoon) but Batman and Dick both knew.   It would have been interesting if they were like – “Hey, you’re working again?” But then again, it would have been terrible for the pacing of a #1 so I guess that’s coming later.   I’d just hate to see her in isolation – I love my Bat Family interactive.