Green Lantern: The New Guardians - 52 Catch-Up

I haven't written anything about New Guardians since my review of the first book because this title is very difficult to review in a monthly format.  To say the story here is decompressed would be putting it mildly as most of the series thus far has seemed like one big extended fight scene, with a plot twist at the end of each issue changing the dance card for the next fight.

I'm not convinced this is entirely the fault of writer Tony Bedard, who has written many great character-analyzing stories in the past  Indeed, his first issue focuses upon Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and retells his origin within the context of the New 52 universe.  The problem is that the vast majority of our protagonists early on are either one-dimensional (the vengeful Sinestro Corps drill-sergeant Arkillo, the ever-optimistic Saint Walker) or largely incapable of normal speech (the Orange Lantern Glomulus, the Red Lantern Bleez).  There's not much for the readers, particularly new ones,  to latch onto in terms of personality and this series lacks a lot of the emotional punch of the other Green Lantern titles as a result.




The plot kicks off as Kyle Rayner is attacked - first by a series of rings belong to the other Lantern Corps then by various members of the other Corps who have come seeking the stolen rings.  Unable to convince Bleez (Red Lantern), Munk (Indigo Tribe), Arkillo (Sinestro Corps) or Fatality of the Star Sapphires (a.k.a. Yrra Cynri, though this name is never used, though she says she is no longer Fatality) that he is not responsible for the theft, things are looking grim for Kyle until the arrival of Saint Walker - first of the Blue Lanterns.  The two of them escape and plot a course to Oa, hoping that the Guardian Ganthet - who helped to start the Blue Lanterns and chose Kyle Rayner to be a Green Lantern - might have some answers.





A quick note about the art.  Regular penciller Tyler Kirkman is joined on issues #2-4 by current Green Arrow penciler Harvey Tolibao and the cohesion of the book suffers for it.  Ignoring my own personal dislike for Toliabo's style which has already been discussed in some detail in my Green Arrow reviews, the two artist's styles do not mesh at all and the designs for various characters look completely dissimilar from page to page.  Consider Kyle Rayner in the above scan (Tolibao) and in the one below (Kirkman).


Issue #3 opens with Kyle having been possessed by the rings and suddenly lashing out at The Guardians.  The rest of the Corps members arrive shortly thereafter and another fight ensues between the Lanterns and the Guardians.  This continues until the arrival of the one party conspicuous in his absence - Larlfleeze, a.k.a. Agent Orange.



He joins the fight in opening half of Issue #4, claiming  that someone tried to steal his ring too.  Having disguised one of his Orange Lanterns - the Slimer-like Glomulus - as a power ring, Agent Orange let it follow the other captured rings while his slave - the former Guardian Sayd - tracked the power that was stealing the rings in the first place to a gigantic orrery in space.





Reluctantly, the assemble band of "New Guardians" as Agent Orange calls them agrees to investigate the orrery, as the party splits up to investigate the differing worlds making up the gigantic solar system model.  They discover several amazing things, such as an entire planet of Tamaranians (i.e. Starfire's race) and another world claiming to be Okaara - the world where Fatality trained as a hunter and warrior years earlier.  Perhaps most astonishing, however, is a temple depicting Larfleeze as a monster called "The Beast" - sworn enemy of The Archangel Invictus, whom the temple is devoted to.




In Issue #6, Invictus himself shows up and begins beating seven kinds of hell out of the team.  For a moment, it looks as if Saint Walker's desperate attempt to use his ring to relieve Invictus of whatever burdens he has might prove effective.  Alas, it turns out that whatever Invictus is, he is far beyond the ability of a Blue Lantern ring to manipulate.




Thankfully, he is all too eager to tell his story to our heroes before they die.  Thus Issue #7 opens with Invictus explaining his own history with Agent Orange and how - millions of years ago - Agent Orange was responsible for undoing all of the good works his people attempted to bring about in the Vega Star System.  If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should - Vega is one of the few systems Green Lanterns are not allowed to enter and the place has become a wretched hive of scum and villany as a result.




Trapped outside the universe after Agent Orange turned his own followers against him, Invictus is newly returned and constructed the gigantic orrery as a means of restoring Vega to its' former glory... as soon as he is done destroying the current inhabitants and Agent Orange himself.  In the middle of all this discussion, it is revealed that for all of his power Invictus is unable to take a power ring away from it's wielder.  This too leads our team to realize what most of the readers had already guessed - Agent Orange was lying his crooked yellow teeth off.  Eventually a truce is reached and Invictus agrees to let the group live if they will accomplish one task - Kill Agent Orange.

As Issue #8 begins, the team is split once more, as everyone parts ways to head to their respective homeworlds and recharge their rings.  The rest of the issue is not as action heavy as previous ones, mostly focusing on plot details as it sums up what we already know of the plot in this book and explains recent intergalactic events to those few people who are reading this book but aren't reading the main Green Lantern title. 





Chief among these events are Sinestro's rejoining the Green Lanterns and shutting down the fear-empowered army that bore his name.  These events are recanted to Arkillo by The Weaponer of Qward, who gives Arkillo a new yellow power ring and battery that will act independently of the old Sinestro Corps Central Power Battery.  We also learn from the Star Sapphire commanders that someone in this universe had to be working to help Inviticus escape... but they have no idea who.   




Issue #9 primarily focuses upon Saint Walker and the Blue Lanterns as they defend their home base from an invasion of Breach soldiers, a.k.a. The Outer-Space baddies responsible for creating Jamie Reyes' armor in Blue Beetle and for the first time in months, Bedard seems to be writing up to his usual standard.  The action sequences of The Blue Lanterns are excellent but what really sells the story is Bedard clarifying the powers of the Blue Lanterns as the story progresses.  The Breach, for instance, take the Blue Lanterns seriously as a threat even though they are thought to be the weakest of the various Lantern Corps.  While it is true that they lack the overt offensive capabilities of most of the other Corps, The Blues are far from helpless as Saint Walker demonstrates.




Kirkman's prowess as an artist is proven in this issue as is the skill of the coloring team.  It would have been all too easy for this issue to become a muddy mess of blues, since the Blue Lantern uniforms and the Breach Soldiers uniforms look fairly similar.  Still, inker Batt manages to keep things separated and Kirkman's designs are distinctive enough to be differentiated  from a distance despite having the exact same palette.  Thankfully, carefully applied glow effects mark the Lanterns easily enough.

Can I recommend this comic?  Yes, but only if you are already a fan of the Green Lantern mythos.  Ironically, this book is not newbie friendly despite the amount of pages Bedard's devotes toward trying to explain everything to new readers.  Bedard's also at his best when he is focusing on individual character conflicts rather than on epic action sequences, as the two most recent issues have shown.  This book has taken its' time getting warmed up but it's finally turned into something worth reading.  And Kirmna's pencils, as ever, make it something exciting to look at.

52 Catch-Up: Aquaman #1-6

If you had told me a year ago that my favorite new title out of a company-wide DC Comics revamp would be based around Aquaman, I might not have believed it. Unless you told me it was written by Geoff Johns with art by Ivan Reis. Then I might have conceded that it was possible. For one of the few bright spots (no pun attended) in the mess that was Brightest Day, was Johns' and Reis' work in developing both Aquaman and his wife Mera into more serious characters. They continue to do this in the monthly Aquaman book, ironically, through the careful use of humor.





There is much that is funny in Aquaman but none of it is due to the title character himself. All of the humor comes from the other characters and how they react to Aquaman out of ignorance. A key example of this comes in the second issue, where Arthur and Mera are brought to investigate the disappearance of several locals. While some of the officials on-hand question what help Aquaman could possibly be, Arthur is big enough to ignore their words, focus on the task at hand and show just how useful being able to see through the eyes of every fish in the immediate vicinity can be when performing a rescue at sea.




Johns wastes no time telling us how awesome Aquaman is. He shows us! And, by proxy, Johns shows us how Aquaman's powers are not useless - just intensely focused. By the logic employed by those who rag on Aquaman, The Flash's powers are useless because there's nothing he can do to avert a plane crash. But don't worry, Aquafans! This book is far from being a long, joke-filled diatribe on Why Aquaman Is Not Worthless. There's lots of action, beautifully illustrated by Ivan Reis and inker Joe Prado, as well. Issues #2-4 are full of lots of good scenes like the one below, as Aquaman and Mera pursue a gaggle of Lovecraftian horrors into the depths of the ocean to rescue some nearby townsfolk.




There's also a fair bit of drama, with a minor subplot about Aquaman trying to find a balance between his heritage as the son of a surface-dweller and heir to the throne of Atlantis. Johns does not allow Arthur to get angsty, even as he is thinking back on how many people - above and below the waves - tried to kill him as a young man. Johns also adds further definition to Arthur's life before his father's death - a period of time that was little examined, even by long-time Aquaman author Peter David.




The art team deserves just as much praise for this book as writer Geoff Johns, if not more. Ivan Reis, a long-time Green Lantern penciler, offers one of the most horrifying monster designs in recent memory with the deep-dwelling fish-beings. Colorist Rod Reis uses a balanced palette that - when mixed with the inks of Joe Prado - causes items like Aquaman's trident and scale-mail shirt to shine. This effect strikes the reader particularly hard in the underwater sequences, as Aquaman and Mera descend deeper than even they have ever gone. These scenes further highlight Prado's skill as a inker.




Issue #5 shifts-gears entirely, offering a story in which Aquaman - through circumstances too complicated to get into - winds up lost in the desert after pursuing a group of armed men who attempted to steal a piece of ancient Atlantean technology from the U.S. Navy. The stolen technology turns out to be more than just a plot device - it's a black-box for an Atlantean ship from before the time that Atlantis sank. This, in turn, sets up what will apparently be the major arc of the book in the coming issues.



Reading all this, I think that Aquaman's greatest power may be a sense of self-control so strong that it prevents him from going on a one-man crusade to gut-punch every single person who has ever made a fish-related joke at his expense. Mera, on the other hand, lacks such patience and Issue #6 is a nice slice-of-life issue, detailing Mera's problems trying to shop for groceries without getting sexually harassed by a local shopkeeper.




Mera received a great deal of development during Blackest Night but Johns' uses Issue #6 to build upon even that and establish Mera as a separate entity from her husband. Mera, for instance, was raised as royalty and lacks much of Arthur's tolerance for the confusion of the surface-dwellers. She is much more confrontational and unwilling to back down for the sake of avoiding a scene. Indeed, the only reason she allows herself to be arrested for assaulting the man who dared to lay a hand on her is so that she can get the police to take her to a domestic dispute turned hostage situation so that she can intervene. It is here that we also see just how dangerous a creative aquamancer can be if provoked. Two words - "dehydration sickness".

Read This Book. If you like good artwork, you'll like it. If you like creative superhero stories, you'll like it. If you enjoy a good joke, you'll like it. If you like books with strong women who kick butt, you'll like it. Really, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't like this book except for those people who still insist that Aquaman can't be cool. You know what? I don't care if Aquaman is cool. I like him. I like his book. And I think most of you will too.

52 Catch-Up: Batman #1-6

It is not at all surprising to me that Scott Snyder's The Court of Owls storyline will be taking over several of the other Bat-Family books this May. Snyder reportedly offered up the concept to any other writers willing to play with his toys and, knowing a good thing when they saw it, most of them agreed without any editorial arm-twisting. Why? Because Scott Snyder's scripts are some of the best material The Dark Knight has gotten in years and his Batman title was easily the best of the Batman-focused books to come out of The New 52.

As I noted in my review of the first issue, Snyder did a masterful job of establishing the new status quo and the major characters - a necessary step given how much could have potentially changed in this new universe. Surprisingly, very little seems to be different - Bruce still has three sons (two adopted, one by birth) who have all served as Robin at one point and still work with him. Jim Gordon is a far younger, back to being a redhead as he was when he first came to Gotham before the stress of the job drove him gray before his time. And per the Batman Inc. storyline, Bruce is openly using his fortune to sponsor various initiatives to clean-up & improve Gotham despite the objections of some groups of very rich, very bad people.




One of these groups is The Court of Owls - a secret society that local legend claims has ruled Gotham City from behind the scenes for generations. Much of the evidence points to such a group existing, with items relating to owls being found at the scene of a murder that also delivers a grim message that Bruce Wayne shall be the next victim. There's also the extra added wrinkle that the victim has samples of Dick Grayson's DNA under his fingernails and an old Wayne family legend that Bruce's great-great-grandfather may have had some kind of connection to The Court and that he became obsessed with owls in the years before his death.




Long-time readers may scoff at the very idea that such a group could exist and function under Batman's nose. And to be fair, so does Batman when the suggestion is made that The Court could be responsible for the strange murder. But Snyder eveals more and more details as the mystery unfolds, including a minor retcon that explains away just why Bruce was so quick to dismiss the idea of The Court of Owls being involved and the idea of the group existing in the first place - because he already went looking for the group as a boy, having become convinced they had a hand in his parent's death and he found no evidence that they were still active.




One thing I would like to note that marks Scott Snyder as a master writer apart from this gripping mystery and his smooth explanations of how everything fits together - every issue thus far has satisfied the Stan Lee dictum that every comic should be written as if it was going to be someone's first comic. Snyder crafts the perfect expository internal monologues to fill in potential new readers. This is a small thing but well worth noting in these days of writing for the trade.



Issue #5 is perhaps the best comic I've read all year and it will be a travesty of justice if it does not win at least one major award for comics writing. Without giving too much away, I will say that the issue depicts Batman's slow mental breakdown after eight days trapped in a maze within the Court of Owls' underground hideout. This is depicted not only through the increasingly disturbing artwork of Greg Capullo - who slowly changes all the figures to appear less than human - but through a change in the layout that requires the reader to turn the comic sideways, read right to left and even turn the book upside down!



Greg Capullo, best known before this for his work on Spawn, also deserves as many accolades as can be awarded for his contributions to this opening arc. He has perfectly grasped just when he should be precise in his pencils and when he can allow himself to depict the characters in a more abstract fashion. This book also has some of the best use of black-space and shadow I've seen in any Batman work since the Batman Animated Series.

Again, I will say it - this is the best Batman book I've read in years and you're a fool if you aren't reading it.

52 Catch-Up: Justice League #1-6

The biggest problem with Justice League is that it was not the book DC Comics needed to start off The New 52 nor was it the book most readers were expecting. Most of the fans were expecting the Justice League title to start off with a freaking huge end-of-the-world scenario, as the World's Finest heroes unite to save us all. They were not expecting an origin story. Eventually, they got both, but I fear few had the patience to wait for things to build up.

Origin stories and big-team books are the bread and butter of Geoff Johns, who balanced large rosters of heroes and introduced obscure or brand new characters throughout his long run on JSA. Despite working with an active roster of at least a dozen heroes most of the time, Johns somehow found ways to give every single member of the Justice Society a little bit of space and time to grow. He may not have managed it every issue, but he gave everyone a chance to shine once in a while.





Johns manages the same trick here, though it takes him four issues to get all of our major players introduced and teamed-up. As I noted in an earlier review, we only see half the team in Issue #1 and even then Superman only shows up on the last page! It also takes half of the six-issue opening story arc for Victor Stone to be transformed into Cyborg and he adjusts to his newfound powers in record time. This is a pity, because Johns puts a lot of heart and conflict into the scenes between Victor and his scientist father and there is a lot of drama in the conflict between the bright but gifted athlete who seeks his father's respect for his talents and the brilliant scientist who is too obsessed with his work to be a proper father.



Sadly, all of this is scrapped when - in an effort to save his son's life - Victor's dad turns him into a guinea pig and transforms his son into one of the superhumans he finds so fascinating. Does Victor come to forgive his father for what he did? We don't know - Vic is too busy running off to save the day by that point and there's no exploration of the fact that while Vic's finally earned his dad's respect at the story's end, it's only because Vic has become a part of his work. Perhaps this conflict will be explored in future issues? I hope so.

Still, given the limited amount of time he has to work with the more established heroes, Johns does an admirable job of establishing the character's personalities in the midst of the action. Batman is established as a cool and collected but somewhat arrogant. Green Lantern is portrayed as strong-willed and courageous but also hot-headed and quick to anger. The Flash, ironically, is slow to action and a reluctant hero, at best. And Superman - in keeping with Grant Morrison's portrayal of the character in Action Comics - is far less of a Boy Scout than most modern readers may be used too.





With Issue #3, Johns hits his stride and I must confess to liking his portrayal of Wonder Woman here much better than the way she is shown in her new title. This Diana is still new to Man's World, very enthusiastic about everything and completely clueless as to just how terrified most people are to have a sword-wielding amazon in their midst. She is a warrior, yes, but she is also the kind of woman who will stop everything to heed a child's words. Or share an ice cream cone. :)





And yet, despite this bit of humor at the start, she is portrayed as being incredibly capable in a fight and the best pure warrior out of all of the heroes. Which is, to my mind, precisely as it should be. She is an amazon, after all - fighting strange creatures should be second-nature to her and she should be enthusiastic about battle, though she doesn't go out of her way to seek it. And her response to the men around her being surprised at her skill? Picture perfect!





Not surprisingly, given that he's done so much to redefine the character in recent years, Johns gives Aquaman one particularly awesome response to Hal Jordan's question regarding just how a guy who breathes underwater, talks to fish and carries a trident can possibly help them in a fight against alien invaders.

Rule Number One: Do not question the use of a man who can command sharks.

This brings to mind a complaint that was delivered to me by my friend Patrick, whom it should be noted is the son of a United States Air Force Veteran. Patrick was somewhat bothered that, in the first issue, Hal Jordan was basically the comic relief compared to Batman and that - based on what was going on in Green Lantern at the same time - that Hal was basically being portrayed as the most incompetent idiot ever. Even granting that Hal has always been portrayed as quick to act and slow to plan, it still bothered him to think that someone like Hal had ever been allowed into the Air Force... even in a work of fiction!

I see his point. And truth be told, Hal is something of a butt monkey for the first four issues. Apart from Barry Allen's portrayal of being scared to death of doing anything heroic that doesn't involve being in a lab studying a doomsday device, most of the other characters aren't give much in the way of negative traits compared to Hal. Batman and Aquaman are both arrogant and assume they should be leading the team. Diana is naive and a wee bit bloodthirsty. And Superman, in a clear about face from his usual portrayal, is cynical of the military and police. But Hal? Hal's role in the first four issues is basically akin to that of Eric in the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon - he is the comic relief, there to make the other characters look better, except when he is meant to do something heroic to the surprise of everyone.

Then in Issue #5, it changes. And Hal Jordan is suddenly the Hal Jordan I grew up watching on the SuperFriends cartoon. The guy who always saved the day when Superman was down and out. The guy who never gave up, even as he was facing an enemy armed with a weapon specifically designed to destroy him. The man too brave to back down ever. And eventually, the man who comes up with a plan (with some prompting from Batman) to take down Darkseid.

I haven't said anything about Jim Lee's artwork yet and that's because there's so little that I can say. At this point, Lee's style is fairly well established and - like opera - you either hate it or you love it. Me? I love it. Though Lee's visual storytelling falters a bit in Issue #6 (seriously, how did Batman get his cape and cowl back?), Lee's greatest strength is his ability to create poster-worthy splash pages.

I think the ultimate problem with Justice League is that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, while both fine creators on their own, are ill-suited to partnering with one another. To use a track metaphor, Lee is a sprinter where as Johns is a marathon runner. Lee is always at his best when he's depicting high-action, fast-moving scenes. Johns tries to accommodate him with his scripts here, but the best scenes are the ones where the action slows down and Johns just lets the characters talk. But Johns doesn't have the time to develop the deeper characterizations he became famous for in JSA and Hawkman. And the book suffers a little for it. It isn't bad... but it isn't the home run it should have been.

52 Catch-Up: Supergirl #1-6

I wasn't expecting to like the first issue of Supergirl, let alone start picking the book up on a regular basis. But this book proved to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the New 52 and perhaps the most criminally underrated. It is also one of the few New 52 titles to have had a complete multi-issue character arc which can still be picked up and read one issue at a time, without any worries about being able to get back into the story - a trait that is rarely appreciated in these days of "writing for the trade".





As I noted in my review of the first issue, writers Michael Green & Mike Johnson were quick to establish Kara's character, showing that she is logical and intelligent as she is able to quickly deduce that she's on an real alien world rather than dreaming. Despite this, she is still portrayed as being a typical teenage girl, as her first thoughts are worries about how her mom will react to her wearing an outfit that she is too young to be wearing. Okay, the outfit in question is the formal garb prepared for her graduation rather than a mini-skirt and fishnets, but the principal is the same.





As Issue #2 opens, Kara is confronted by Superman, who claims to be her younger cousin, Kal-El. She finds this completely preposterous - understandable given that her last memory of Kal-El involved holding him while babysitting several days earlier. The standard "fight-between-two-heroes-over-a-misunderstanding" issue commences, made somewhat less-than-standard by the wonderful internal monologue going through Kara's head. Understandably shaken up as her body begins to react to Earth's yellow sun, her horror at the alien environment and her very being rebelling against her is well conveyed, turning what might have been an ordinary issue-long action sequence into a character-defining issue as well.





Issues #3 & #4 pit Kara against Simon Tycho - a young super-genius who made his fortune by recovering and exploiting alien technology that has come to Earth. He grabbed Kara's spaceship during the fight with Superman and - not content with that find - goads her into chasing after him so that he can have a real, live alien to experiment on. As a villain, Tycho is rather forgettable - a lightweight Lex Luthor, if you will. But these issues are still enjoyable as they do much to further establish Kara's compassionate nature and growing skill in using her powers.





Issue #5 details Kara, newly armed with a crystal from her spaceship, trying to fly back to Krypton in the hope that someone may have survived the cataclysm. This leads her to the remains of Argo City and her uncovering her parents' last message to her. She also finds a being who calls herself Reign, who it turns out is one of the mentioned - but unseen until now - Worldkillers that her father had been designing.




With Issue #6, Kara comes full circle. Refusing to die among the ruins of her people, she returns to Earth in hot pursuit of Reign. She accepts her destiny as a hero and proves herself worthy of the clothes that she's wearing - both by the standards of adulthood on Krypton and by what the S-shield means to people on Earth.




All of these issues are ably illustrated by a top-notch art team. Many Supergirl artists take great license with the character, drawing exaggerated cheesecake poses while giving Kara the body of a porn star. Penciller Mahmud Asrar avoids this, thankfully, giving us a Supergirl who looks like a young, athletic young woman. The backgrounds are also well-illustrated, with several two-page spreads depicting poster-worth landscapes. Inker Dan Green does a fine job of defining and separating everything on the issues Asrar did not ink personally. Colorist Dave McCaig, who colored all the issues save #3, also does an excellent job, using a somewhat muted-palette that only serves to make the bright colors of Kara's costume stand out all the more, seeming all the more out of place in the various places she goes.

In short, this is a wonderful book and you should be reading it!

52 Catch-Up: Batgirl #1-6

Batgirl made me more nervous than any other title in the New 52. While Gail Simone is one of my favorite writers and I trust in her, I shared the worries of many fans that restoring Barbara Gordon's mobility and having her take up the title of Batgirl again might be a step backward. While I didn't think we'd regress to the point of her carrying a red Bat-Purse or have her fix her make-up while Batman and Robin were getting beaten-up, I did agree there was a chance that much of the characterization Barbara had built up as Oracle might be lost.





As I noted in my review of the first issue, this fears turned out to be completely fruitless. And while Birds of Prey fans didn't get any confirmation that Barbara's days as Oracle were still in continuity and we didn't get an explanation for how exactly Barbara was walking again, we did learn that she was paralyzed by The Joker's actions. We also learned that Barbara was still the same strong-willed survivor that we all knew and loved.





More, Simone reminded us that Barbara Gordon has always been smart and strong-willed, whether she was working behind a computer screen or back-flipping across a rooftop. Every note that Simone needed to hit with the first issue, she hit perfectly. That quality of writing, coupled with the amazing artwork of Adrian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes (which I cannot find the words to describe, so I've included extra scans with this review to showcase their excellent work) has made Batgirl into one of the best books DC Comics is publishing right now - the perfect balance between action, drama, comedy and romance.





For action, we have the main plots regarding some new villains in Gotham. The first four issues center upon a new baddy called The Mirror, who dedicates himself to killing those who somehow cheated death under miraculous circumstances. To explain more beyond that would be to give away too much of the story but I will say there is a certain dramatic balance in pitting Barbara - an example of the power of hope to so many readers - against a villain whose entire motivation is to destroy the hopes of others.





Issues 5 and 6 introduce another new baddie - a telepathic assassin known as Gretle, who seems to have it out for Bruce Wayne and - at one point - forces him to fight Batgirl! Both these villains allow Barbara a chance to showcase her fighting skills. But more than that, we get a chance to see how Barbara's greatest weapon in a fight is her mind, as she analyzes her enemies and figures out ways to maximize her own strengths against them. We also get to see that she's no mean detective, as she deduces what little she can from what few bits of evidence The Mirror leaves behind at his crime scenes.





For Drama, we have the return of Barbara's estranged mother, who apparently walked out and left Jim Gordon to raise two kids on his own when Barbara was 12. Apparently Jim Gordon and Sarah Essen never became an item in this universe, as we are told Jim never found anyone else.





For Comedy, we have numerous moments of the kind of wacky humor we Secret Six fans have grown used to.





For Romance, we have little scenes like Barbara's date with her former physical therapist.






We even have comedy mixed with romance as Barbara confronts Nightwing for the first time in a long-while and they quickly fall back into their old habits... until Barbara makes it clear, with a sharp edge, that whatever her feelings for Richard may be, she has to fight her current battles alone.





With every little scene, we learned more and more about Babs' past in the new DC Universe as well as her current state of mind as she moves out of her father's home and into a new apartment. Her new roomie - an immigrant from Signapore named Alysia - is particularly noteworthy. Though she hasn't been given much page time, Simone has already established Alysia as someone who should not be messed with - a woman capable of patching-up Barbara's injuries but not without questions, immediately making it clear that if Barbara is a victim of some kind of domestic abuse that she is not going to tolerate it. It's subtle touches like this that make Simone's characters more real.





Indeed, the one new creation who seems out of place is Detective McKeena - a Gotham cop who seems poised to become the General Ross to Batgirl's Hulk. The first issue ended with McKenna's partner being killed after Barbara froze up while staring down the barrel of a gun for the first time since reassuming her activities as Batgirl. Blaming Batgirl for the whole incident, she has apparently spent her time on administrative leave obsessing over Batgirl and indeed she tries to arrest her in the middle of an incident where there is another, far more obvious threat endangering people and only Batman's intervention keeps Barbara out of a squad car. This kind of shallow stereotype is beneath Simone's usual level and we can only hope she gets fleshed out a little more in the future.

Despite that, I have no qualms about declaring that Batgirl is a must-read book for any and all lovers of good comics everywhere.