Batgirl Annual #1

well first i need to see I really liked the art here, its very stylized and good looking on most of the tiem, the only problem seem to be Catwoman face, but the image of the city, the buildings and backgrounds is just amazing, but overall this is an artist i want to see again soon

then the writing, the issue starts with Batgirl fighting a bunch of guys in skimasks in a building on fire, she kicks their asses why she thinks of them as poor homeless ppl that are just victims of the circumstances and yadda yadda yadda, the same PSA crap she always talks about on her own book

but then she hears a baby crying, lets the criminals go and she manage to saves her and her mother before a the building explodes

question

how did she save the woman and her child, she just jump off with them from what it seems at least a second floor but it could be more

I understand that the idea of the scene is "batgirl saves ppl" and it achieves that i just dont get how she does it by just jumping through a window

well Catwoman sees her saving the woman and her child, and she thinks and i quote "from the first time i saw batgirl... I didnt like her at all" and then she says "show off!"

...

i dont get it

she doesnt like her cause she just saved a woman and her child from a fire?

also this is the first time that catwoman ever saw Batgirl

then the issue cuts to a penitentiary where Gordon is going into cause they have found Mary, on of the guards describe her as a dumb MUTE, to which Gordon gets really angry at

so Gordon talks to Mary in which he practically resumes the Nights of Owls but Mary ofcourse doesnt talk and dont want to communicate by writing either

so Gordon leaves and the guard acts like a complete a$$hole to her cause "she makes him look bad" and takes her food and calls her dummy

...

I dont get it

why did we need to see the guard being an a$$hole?

anyways Catwoman completely out of nowhere appears in her cell to spring Mary out of prison

we cut to an alley in which batgirl meets with Ricky, the guy who she fail to save 3 times in a row and lost a leg cause of it, well she comes to him to ask for some info, someone is using the poor innocent victims of this homeless ppl to start fires all over gotham, and ricky apparently has the underground connections to tell that is the OWLS

but then while they are exchanging information Ricky's brother, who apparently is a criminal, just like Ricky i will add, starts coming close, Ricky dont want him to know that he is sharing information with a bat and there is not enough time to run so

Batgirl kisses Ricky, says "gotta go baby" and she leaves, and Ricky's Brother only replies "tell me you are hitting that"

...

once again

I dont get it

there is too much i can say about this but i will just let this one be

well we cut to Mary's cell where she doesnt want to leave without the color crayons that Gordon left to her

then suddenly a$$hole guard appears, tries to stops them and ofcourse as you can guess Mary savagely beats him up

very graphically scratches his face and body and is about to kill him with a stick but catwoman stops him (you know, For Kids!)

so i guess he deserved this brutal attack on the only account that he is an a$$hole?

we cut back to batgirl where she found a homeless family to scare off for question, but then we look at the poor family and she just hand them some money

what is the point of this?

she comes attacking the father of the family of homeless then look at the woman and kids, and she is like "oh sorry, take this money"

I feel this is some kind of message but i dont get what it is

homeless people are also people too, i guess, but why is this is important in the story?

why even come specifically to this ppl for this situation? why come aggressively and then change her mind when she could have just approached gently from the beginning

this is a very weirdly constructed scene

anyways another homeless guy comes out of nowhere, again, and says that she knows what is she looking for

how does he know what she is looking for

anyways Catwoman and mary escape dressed as guards, catwoman asks Mary about her family and friends and Mary uses a pad to tell that she has no family and no friends

then Catwoman ask her to extend her arm and then her pink, and she links her pinky to hers and says "now you have a friend"

DAHHH

thats soo cuty

next scene

we finally have all the protagonist in one place, Batgirl exposits Mary whole backstory, as she arrives to the place where the homeless guy told her the big bad guy was hiding, and Mary arrives with Catwoman

and then we get to exposition of the MASTER PLAN

so the plan was to burn all of this houses that will one way or another tie to Bruce Wayne's Gotham Restoration plan, the idea being that it would incriminate BW directly and that will be his end, and it would only work thanks to all the deathbodies

this plan is ok i guess, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Catwoman, Mary or any of the other Talons

sooooo....

Why is Catwoman here?

why even ask her to spring out Mary if the guy has other Talons?

it just makes no sense

then we get the preview where Catwoman and Batgirl fight 4 talons as batgirl ask her about her sex life with Green Arrow

ofcourse they lose but then Batgirl tries to reason with Mary, telling her that this guy(evil guy with no name) is going to burn many families like hers

and ofcourse Mary betrays the other Talons and saves catwoman and Batgirl

*warning, huge rage rant here!!*

you know, all Talons had a major problem which was that we never got an consistent portray of them from one series to the other

some die with a gunshot to the head and others dont, and all have different stories but the only consistent fact that we have from them is this

Talons are not only servants they are slaves, they have personality and inner thoughts, but they dont have free Will

they are train to serve and to be great, and when the time comes they become Talons, and when they retire they are still servants

Thats the entire premise of Talon ongoing!

if Calvin Rose is captured and turn into an undead talon, then is game over, there is no escape from that

so this turn with Mary cheapens that effect

not only that, but it also makes No sense

Mary is an assassin, She killed ppl, she used explosives on Batgirl 9, the same explosives that burn her family, but if that wasnt enough, she is dead already

this is pure Hipocracy, is a lame attempt to redeem Mary

*end of rant*

Mary, Catwoman and Batgirl kick ass but then mr evil guy pulls a gun on Mary's head and says that this has a liquid nitrogen bullet that will efectively kill Mary

Question mr evil guy

why do you have that?

I mean, no Talon has ever rebel before, so why would you have that prepared?

Mr evil guy is about to kill mary but he recieves a call, from apparently someone else in the Court, we dont hear the other guy but apparently the plan has backfire and the police is coming for him and he cannot be a liability

so he says "i served the Court for 70 years"(he doesnt look that old) and then he shots himself

hmm, excuse me!

hi there, mr evil guy, wouldnt had been a good idea to kill Mary, you know, the very first zombie talon to betray the court and then kill yourself, hell you could had even tried to aim at Catwoman and Batgirl, who are also enemies of the court, and then kill yourself later

what?

no, you are just a throwaway character with no motivation

oh I see

sorry to bother you

and just because Mr evil guy is dead, the other Talons leave without even awknowledging Batgirl, Mary or Catwoman

dear god, THIS ARENT ROBOTS!!!

the police is closing in so Catwoman aks Batgirl to save mary while she distracts to police

and the comic ends with Mary having drawn a rainbow and some texts that reads "My name is Mary" with the Y backwards

and it also says to look for her in Bop, yet giving me another reason to drop that book

The End

Mary the Talon is nothing but a Bastardized version of Cassandra Cain, mixed with Deadpool

she is just a Talon in name only and just behaves nothing like any other Talon, again there is a huge problem with how the Talons are portray in general but this one goes far far the other end

and just like every character that Gail writes in her own Batgirl book, you are not allowed to question her actions, you are only allowed to feel sorry for her

we didnt got an explanation of why is Mary not in Blackgate like the other Talons, or how is that she is ok after being blown apart

her look different too from issue 9, she looks like the lovechild of Hush and Michone from TWD

and the whole thing at the end

Catwoman did practically nothing in this issue, in fact, the issue could had worked out ok without her

the relation with Talon seems forced too

the plot is a mess it makes very weird turns with no explanation

Why would a homeless guy know where Mr Evil Guy lives?

Why would Danny know anything of the Owls behind this?

the inner dialog of batgirl in this issue is for the First Time ever, not annoying, however thats cause mostly 90% of it just serves to exposit what is happening in that very moment and explaining things that happen in Batgirl 9 and the Night of Owls

the fight scenes are way better her than on any other book and dialog is ok too

but the art is gorgeous and Batgirl is actually half competent for a change, i know its not going to last long but is still worth complementing

I give this a 5/10

a little below average, just nothing special