Barbara Gordon is CRAZY!
Ever since Batgirl #1 one of the traits of Barbara Gordon in the new 52 is that she suffers a condition call PTSD which forces her to pretty much take really weird turns into the character, lets remember Barbara Gordon has eidetic memory which means that she will never ever forget of what happen to her in The new Killing Joke and she will never get over it in a sense that makes her satisfied, she will keep remember.
I mention this cause this is by far the most unpleasant portray of Barbara Gordon i have ever read in my life and this issue just focus on that single aspect only. of how she never ever will get over the killing joke and it makes her look more pathetic than ever, she is angry, unreasonable, violent to the extreme, she is a suffering victim, and its just painful to watch.
THE STORY
In the last issue the Joker henchmen kidnap Barbara's mother, the immediate reaction of Barbara is to have a panic attack, once again the thoughtboxes tell us over and over again how confused and frighten she is, then she gets a Phone Call and SHE DOESNT RECOGNIZE WHO IS IN THE PHONE.(This is actually important in the story)
She assumes is the Joker and "him" tells her to make a sandwich, to tranquilize her self, then tells her that 3 goons are about to burst through the door, this is makes her suffer a flashback
Look at this very carefully, cause this is the sad pathetic person that the New Barbara Gordon has become, This is the Broken Barbara Gordon
however what she proceeds to do later goes different, she picks her self up and kick all the goon's asses, all while commenting how all this time all she has done has been fighting broken people while this person choose to work for joker, and that they were expecting a broken victim while instead "there is something darker".
This dialog as being put by Gail Simone, is wrong, in the next scene Batgirl proceeds to threat a goon AT GUN POINT until he makes him cry, and wonders how she almost kills him.
This is not a broken Barbara Gordon this is the result of Barbara Gordon having been Broken, she is no longer the same person she ever was, cause she would react like this, and this scene just comes baffling, this is suppose to be empowering in some way, but it comes cheap and diminishing ,is just sickening and disturbing.
This character, this character, it is just not a hero to admire, its a hero to feel sorry for.
then Alysia comes from behind Barbara and Barbara points her with a gun
She apologizes for the mess and tells her that she wasnt a good friend at all but she needs to leave
she suits up still following the instructions of "Joker" in the phone which leads her to a Skate center
she once again kicks the goons in the entrance and then she talks to the Joker.
ok this revelation comes very very stupid, first of all the caller is using a voice distorter, Why would the Joker use that?
how come she never questions this?
also we as readers can tell that is not the joker since the beginning, and being this James Jr makes little to no sense, so he worked with the Joker the whole time, at the same time that he was working with Knightfall, and if Joker knows that Barb is Batgirl which is why he send the goons to kidnap her mother but had no connection to the phone calls then how come he knew that she was coming, much less how did he expected her to find him, this makes no sense at all!
Also she mentions that James Jr just sets him against the joker, WASNT THAT THE PLAN FROM THE BEGINNING?
to go after him cause he kidnapped her mom, unless it was James's plan to kidnap the mother then...
I dont get it
Anyways, Joker tells her that Barb Sr is under a bomb so unless she cooperates she will blow up and then he does this at the end of the comic
The Good Stuff
I dont have anything good to say about this
The Bad Stuff
This story is extremely unpleasant, The Killing Joke is one of my favorite Batman stories cause the basic idea was that The Joker got broken just because of one bad day in his life, just like Batman was which is why both of them laugh at the end, they are laughing at themselves not at the joke, but at the same time the Joker loses, his purpose was to broke Jim Gordon and Barbara Gordon, but they dont break, they remain the same person that they were always were.
This issue is the story of how Barbara Gordon ended up broken by the Killing Joke, she is no longer the same person and at one point she even thinks that she should kill the Joker, I think Jim Gordon suffer more from the Joker than anyone else and he never get to that point, this doesnt make Barb look compelling, or appealing, it almost looks like she still whinning in the inside for the lost of her legs, and that is a sad picture to look at
The art is ok, but it shifts all over the comic, mainly because of the multiple inkers
The dialog is Terrible all over the comic, specially with the Joker cause it feels like Gail Simone is trying really trying to write the joker like Scott Snyder would so and it feels extremely forced, the dialog of Barb is for the most part unbearable to read, and the James Jr in the phone sounds nothing like Joker, in fact it sounds like a guy from the Court of Owls
and one more thing that you might miss, the finger at the end belongs to Barb Sr, this is so gory without reason to be gory, Why the constant mutilations in a Batgirl comic?
and also how is that she has her wedding ring after having left her whole family for years?
Conclusion
If you like Barbara Gordon, Batgirl or The Killing Joke stay away from this
