Batgirl #36 Review

Burning Down The House

Written By: Mairghread Scott

Art By: Paul Pelletier, Norm Rapmund, Hi-Fi, Andworld Design

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: July 3, 2019

Sadly, this marks the end of Mairghread Scott's amazing run on this character, where she not only got rid of the nonsense that had been plaguing Batgirl ever since she started hanging around Burnside, but she also made me care about the character again.  It's over now though, but lets see how it ends as Barbara continues to take on the Terrible Trio, while she's being muscled out of Gordon Clean Energy.  Let's check it out.

For this issue of Batgirl, we see Barbara spending the majority of the issue telling us and the criminals that she's locked in The Den with, while it burns to the ground that they may be scum, but they don't deserve to die.  While that sounds kind of one dimensional, this is actually where the book shines in my opinion because we have Batgirl squaring off against the different mindsets of each of the Terrible Trio.  Barbara wants everyone to get out alive, while Vulture wants everyone including them to die because she doesn't want anyone to know that the Terrible Trio failed in keeping their obligations, Fox just wants to save his own ass, while Shark has a change of heart.  

I've never been a fan of the Terrible Trio, but actually found myself enjoying their inclusion in the story and while I would have liked more to do with them from this story, what we got was pretty interesting and entertaining and the artwork that depicted them was just amazing, where I constantly wondered if Scott was going to flip the script and reveal that they were actual animal people here.  That aspect is never revealed here, but it's fun to think about.  Besides for the Terrible Trio though and their awful, awful club, The Den, we do see the status quo for Barbara Gordon change going forward with the new creative team, where we pretty much break Barbara Gordon down to nothing, but as we've learned throughout this arc, Gordon's don't give up and with that mantra, we see our hero stronger than ever as she takes an unflinching look towards the future.

All in all, I love the art in this issue and I'm going to be sad to see this creative team leave because they made me care about Batgirl again.  With the darker changes made to the character I hope that we see more interesting and intense stories told and make sure that we keep moving forward in this direction instead of taking two steps back to the selfie loving Batgirl of Burnside........ which I loathed.  Yeah, things come rushing to an end here because this is the last issue of this creator's run, which leaves things a little loose feeling with the Gordon Clean Energy, Jason Bard and Barbara's relationship with her father, but overall I enjoyed this issue and have high hopes for what's to come.

Bits and Pieces:

While this story comes to a close, I find myself sad that Mairghread Scott's time on this book is over because she's certainly done the most for this character in years.  With that we have some awesome art from start to finish and my biggest problems with the issue is how things have to be quickly wrapped up with the dangling plot lines, but maybe this is just somewhere for our next writer to start.

7/10