Vicente Cifuentes

This volume collects a couple of decent story arcs, detailing the new beginning of Barbara Gordon’s career as Batgirl, now that a miraculous surgery has cured her paralyzed legs. The art in these issues is pretty good, on the whole, as is the writing.

It's difficult to connect this young Barbara Gordon with the pre-New 52 version from just a few months ago. In her previous incarnation, Barbara provided technical and communication support for the rest of Team Batman as Oracle, while mentoring another new Batgirl—Stephanie Brown—on the side. Though bound to a wheelchair, she was mature and savvy, and was, I feel, probably the only true peer with Bruce Wayne's Batman. In this new continuity, she's only in her early 20s, and is even more precarious in the Batgirl role than Stephanie was: insecure, belligerent, reckless, and all too often pulling through on sheer luck alone. It’s not necessarily that she’s an uninteresting or unsympathetic character, but with such a disconnect with the recent comics history, these initial stories with this new protagonist can't help but come off as being a little bit shallow.

“Why do you get a miracle when so many others never will?” Barbara asks herself. This dilemma, at the center of this volume's first arc, echoes my own questions as to why this character deserved to be revived in the new continuity while others I’d really come to love—Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown, for example—have been forced out of the spotlight or written out entirely (for now). Even the previous version of Barbara/Oracle herself will be sorely missed. Yet the fact that this new Barbara is also unsettled about her sudden transformation somehow helps me feel a little more confident about the Bat Family’s new status quo. I’ll always be fond of the characters I’ve come to know over these past few years, but this is a promising new beginning, too. I’ll be looking forward to what happens from here.… (mehr)

This volume collects a couple of decent story arcs, detailing the new beginning of Barbara Gordon’s career as Batgirl, now that a miraculous surgery has cured her paralyzed legs. The art in these issues is pretty good, on the whole, as is the writing.

It's difficult to connect this young Barbara Gordon with the pre-New 52 version from just a few months ago. In her previous incarnation, Barbara provided technical and communication support for the rest of Team Batman as Oracle, while mentoring another new Batgirl—Stephanie Brown—on the side. Though bound to a wheelchair, she was mature and savvy, and was, I feel, probably the only true peer with Bruce Wayne's Batman. In this new continuity, she's only in her early 20s, and is even more precarious in the Batgirl role than Stephanie was: insecure, belligerent, reckless, and all too often pulling through on sheer luck alone. It’s not necessarily that she’s an uninteresting or unsympathetic character, but with such a disconnect with the recent comics history, these initial stories with this new protagonist can't help but come off as being a little bit shallow.

“Why do you get a miracle when so many others never will?” Barbara asks herself. This dilemma, at the center of this volume's first arc, echoes my own questions as to why this character deserved to be revived in the new continuity while others I’d really come to love—Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown, for example—have been forced out of the spotlight or written out entirely (for now). Even the previous version of Barbara/Oracle herself will be sorely missed. Yet the fact that this new Barbara is also unsettled about her sudden transformation somehow helps me feel a little more confident about the Bat Family’s new status quo. I’ll always be fond of the characters I’ve come to know over these past few years, but this is a promising new beginning, too. I’ll be looking forward to what happens from here.… (mehr)