Art By: Babs Tarr, Maris Wicks
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: February 18, 2015
Will The Real Batgirl Please Press Ctrl Alt Delete
Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
In the last issue of Batgirl we saw our Burnside Brat going full throttle into the point of no return..... The point of no return being how much I can handle from this title completely destroying the good name of Barbara Gordon and her heroic persona of Batgirl. She's trending on social media, taking selfies, destroying her friendship with Black Canary and deciding to take out a drunk driving reality TV star....... after having a couple of drinks herself and all she ultimately does is come off as a fool when she raced recklessly through Burnside......... trying to stop a drunk driver and ultimately making him crash into a local coffee shop. Yeah, Batgirl's just terrible now, but maybe there's a glimmer of hope with Barbara being tormented by someone claiming to be the "real" Batgirl. Will Barbara straighten up and become the hero we all knew and loved or will this other Batgirl take her out and we all just go with it because at least we'd be done with the Burnside nonsense? Let's check it out.
Explain It!:
The issue begins with Batgirl running from what looks like everyone in Burnside. From rolling pin wielding Grandmas to heavy set ladies with purple hair........ Yeah, Burnside is weird. So yeah, everyone's after Batgirl now that she's proven herself a menace with her superheroics and I guess it doesn't help that someone hacked the Hooq dating app and put up a twenty million dollar reward for catching Batgirl. All the selfies in the world aren't going to save you now Barbara!
With all this going on, somehow Barbara finds the time to go and try to save her friendship with Black Canary, but it comes off as Barbara trying to get Dinah back in her life so she can complain about how terrible things have become and when Dinah, now the lead singer of a big band that everyone knows about; doesn't have time to listen to her, Barbara is about to delete her number out of her phone............ and as any tween will tell you, that's some serious shit right there. Don't worry though, this friendship is saved when Batgirl gets jumped by a bunch of people creating a mugging ruse and Dinah jumps into action to save her friend......... Does this mean that the band is over? They were supposed to have a big show that night.......... Well, Black Canary is getting kicked out of the band. You have to sell a few albums before you start pulling an Axl Rose. The two go on to train like old times as they try to help us understand what's going on by explaining that all this internet celebrity nonsense is over and it's time to get back to the Batgirl we all know and love......... Which is a wonderful thing and if DC Comics is only fucking with me here....... well I don't really have a suitable threat to dish out but I can guarantee I won't be happy.
In the end, when trying to explain to Dinah that something is going on with her and this person who has her voice claiming to be the real Batgirl, she realizes that her college thesis has something to do with a brain scan and her roommate Frankie working on a problem with her dating app Hooq......... Yeah, I get completely lost in this section because somehow Frankie gets kidnapped and when Batgirl goes to rescue her from the Hooq main headquarters, we find out that the person claiming to be the real Batgirl seems to be actually Barbara, only she's in the computer like that awful Transcendence movie......... When did Barbara have a brain scan that was put into the Hooq algorithm that gained sentience? This is all very odd but hey, at least Barbara wasn't completely awful here.
That's it for this issue of Batgirl and for the first time since Batgirl moved to Burnside, I don't hate it. There's real promise here that Barbara may return to form and not set women back by fifty years. It's possible too that this cliffhanger ending is actually the real Barbara Gordon and she's none too pleased that she's stuck in a dating app while this lesser Batgirl is screwing up everything that she's worked so hard to make.......... yeah, that's a long shot but I just want my Batgirl to be Batgirl and I don't think that's asking too much. Seriously though, this is definitely the best issue of the new Batgirl and it ends with a really interesting cliffhanger that actually makes me want to read more....... So yeah, this is a strange feeling. See you next month where we see if the trend continues or if Batgirl just goes back to being a completely terrible character.
Bits and Pieces:
I have been a avid hater of this new take on Batgirl, so it surprised the hell out of me that when I finished this issue that I didn't hate it. Yeah, it still has some problems in the way that Batgirl is presented but it really does it's damnedest to try and tell us that Barbara Gordon is on her way back to the character that we all knew and loved. So yeah, that's pretty awesome. Add that to a mind blowing cliffhanger and you have yourself the best issue of Batgirl of Burnside.
7/10
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