Batgirl #44 Review

Edit That Out!

Writer: Cecil Castellucci
Artist: Cian Tormey
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 26, 2020

Oh, Batgirl.  What did you ever do to deserve to get thrown into an Unearth story?  Maybe it's a karma thing for not being able to jog Ric Grayson's memory, but she certainly deserves better.  Seriously, I thought it could only get better after the Year of the Villain showed the best bad guy or gal they could come up with for Babs was an out of nowhere, never explained, Oracle robot based on the AI Barbara destroyed in Birds of Prey.  And who and what made and put it in mountain facility?!?!?  Oh, who the hell cares!  Let's get on with this issue, shall we?


We open this issue in Unearth with Batgirl and Jason fighting the dragon from the last issue. After the convoluted explanation of what's going on, we see that Jason digs Barbara as the dragon feeds on that love and grows bigger.

That's when Barbara realizes she can't have fear, but fear is love that is defeated by the courage that is based on the fear that must be the love of something, something dark side.  Through all of this, we get some writer's puns and jokes and the idea that everyone is part of the story and has a part to play.

After Travesty sacrifices himself, Jason tells Batgirl about his love of Barbara, which is nice, but it doesn't matter to what is going on.  Nope, the thing that will stop the dragon is a sword forged by the Maker and Margaret, and if they can do that, why didn't they make the dragon scale they needed in the first place?!?!  I guess then we wouldn't have gotten the over narration of just what love is!

We do get a good part near the end when we see the real stakes at hand and also see what a true hero can do, even if it means they will not survive it.  Too bad it wasn't our hero doing that and only came after an odd evil turn by the Maker.

The issue ends with everything resetting back to normal and Babs deciding that she has to give Jason some props for being a good guy...until it looks like he might be a monster...or it's Unearth again...who knows???

I am glad this story is over.  Unearth wasn't great the first time we dealt with it in Titans, and it's even worse here.  Motivations and rules seemed to be very elastic the whole time, and Castellucci did nothing to set up anything meaningful.  We found out that Jason loves Barbara and then set him up as the next bad guy.  Awesome! The art was outstanding, but Cian Tormey couldn't do all the heavy lifting here.

Bits and Pieces:

The Unearth story comes to a close, and I can't say I will miss it, or even bring it up again.  I liked the art in this issue, but not much else at all.

4.0/10