Hey folks, Crooker here, back with another issue of DC’s Batgirl, starring Cassandra Cain, written by Tate Brombal with art by Takeshi Miyazawa. This is issue #11, just shy of a year worth of comic. Pretty impressive lasting even that long these days, but clearly there’s a lot of story left to tell. Let’s dig in, shall we?
Honestly, the past few issues have felt on the mixed side, but this one feels firmly “pretty good.” It goes into the territory I thought it was gonna be going in, though with maybe a lot less “oomph” than I really would have wanted. Cass’s lashing out is given more focus, and the intent here is that the tigers Bronze and Jade bring her back down to reasonable levels, Bronze Tiger especially giving her the permission to grieve she’d been looking for. I like that, but I do think I wanted more of that in the last issues to really fully explore and dig into that, instead of it playing B-plot to the secret brother stuff.
DC
The handling of that material is what I would say is “just fine.” Tenji as the Jade Tiger has some potential, but so far he hasn’t done much yet to really endear himself and do any real winning over on a narrative level. He’s a nice kid and I think there’s plenty of room to give Cass more of her own supporting cast, but I think waiting and seeing is the best approach here. Whether or not the Jade Tiger lives to see continued use beyond the story Brombal wants to tell will be entirely dependent on if he brings something a little more characterization and narrative-wise to the table in the coming issues.
DC
Miyazawa’s art is as good as it tends to be, and as this is a very action dense issue, there’s a lot of strong utilization of his fight scene chops. There’s still a bit of Anime Magic type stuff that I continue to feel is strongly out of place in a Batman-adjacent book, but it’s still well rendered and the actual choreography is fun, easy to follow, and flows very well leading to a satisfying reading experience. Cass’ weapon work oddly reminds me of Ninja Turtles 2003’s action sequences, though I doubt that’s intentional. It’s a show with good action though, so I mean that as a heavy compliment. As I’ve said in many past reviews, visual storytelling isn’t just good for Cass stories, it’s a hard requirement. Telling a story via a fight even more so. Still in particularly good hands in that regard.
Batgirl #11 is a step up from last time, but I think still needs to earn itself back to my 100% approval. It’s not a poorly constructed book on any technical level, but there’s been a sense of fussing about with different stuff that leaves these last two mini-arcs concerning Shiva’s backstory and its consequences falling short of how good the opening six issues were. That story felt like it was a knockout one issue after another, and these ones have thus far felt like a promise to build back up to something just as cool and strongly characterized. I get the intent, but I wish this didn’t decompress so much and keyed in on the intense, emotional beats more. Honestly, it feels like Brombal is intentionally holding back, and with how fantastic the book proved itself out the gate, I cannot imagine why. I really hope the next few issues manage to re-catch that fire shown in the first arc, because while I’d settle fine for a good Cass ongoing, I’d much rather have the great one I know this team is capable of.
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