DCU Comic Book Reviews

BATGIRL #2

Batgirl Rising: Point Of New Origin,  Part Two

November 2009

Written by Bryan Q. Miller

Pencils by Lee Garbett

Inks by Trevor Scott and Sandra Hope

Cover by Phil Noto

Synopsis

Now, Batgirl (aka Stephanie Brown) attempts to stop car thieves.  Earlier, Barbara Gordon (aka Oracle) tries to talk some sense into Stephanie and make her stop.  In school, Stephanie cracks a joke in class that Francisco likes, which annoys his girlfriend Jordanna.  Francisco invites Stephanie to a party.  Meanwhile, Oracle investigates a murder in a section of Gotham called “Thunderdome.”  At the Harvest Festival, is attacked by the Jordanna, who is drunk.  When Jordanna passes out, some boys run away suggesting she was drugged.  Batgirl chases them into an alleyway.  During the fight, Oracle taps into the suits communicator and talks to Batgirl.  However, the boys are able to get away.  Afterwards, Oracle contacts Alfred and gains access to the batcave, where she takes Stephanie.  There, Oracle tracks the drug dealers.  Oracle then tells Stephanie to stay away or she will tell her mother.  Elsewhere, the drug dealer is rescue from police custody and taken to his boss, Scarecrow.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

This was an okay issue that probably should’ve been better than it turned out to be.  The reason it doesn’t quite work is that it gets dragged down by its structure to the point where the flow and the tone can’t get into rhythm because the story seems to be fighting itself.  There are problems in the way Miller structure and wrote the story, making a haphazard and awkward reading experience, forcing the reader to stop and attempt to figure out what the hell is supposed to be going on. 

The first problem is the use of overlapping narration boxes and conversations occurring against a different backdrop than where they are happening.  The perfect example of this is page 3 where you have the purple box for Stephanie’s thoughts, yellow box for her spoken words, and green for Oracle’s spoke words.  Most of the conversation occurs while we “watch” Stephanie take care of the car thieves.  Which is okay, if the car thieves meant anything to the plot.  But they don’t.  It is simply a device to provide some action for Batgirl, but all it does is confuse the reader who wants to make sense of trying to match the picture to the words. 

The other problem is that there are a number of scenes that are not quite fully explained.  I mean, Jordanna passes out and some boys start running away.  How and why does Stephanie immediately think they are responsible for what happened.  Wasn’t Jordanna drinking? Isn’t that a plausible explanation for what happened rather than a drug bust gone wrong?  And what the hell is Thunderdome, other than the worst of the Road Warrior movies.  When Stephanie first utters the phrase in class, are we supposed to know what it is?  Even after that reference it is not adequate explained.  I believe that it is supposed to be some sort of fighting arena, with the participants getting drugs to enhance their abilities, or at least pump up their adrenaline. 

Overall, this issue has the feeling of a writer and perhaps artist who have an idea of the plot and the story, but having a tough time actually getting it down into a coherent manner. 

 

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