Batgirl 4 Featured Reviews 

“Batgirl” #4

By | October 27th, 2016
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

As much an extension of Brendan Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr’s “Batgirl of Burnside” as it is a departure, Hope Larson’s “Batgirl” has juggled a variety of tonal identities in the ‘Rebirth’ era but hasn’t betrayed the young, fun character at its core. Does issue #4 continue this trend, or like Babs’ new acquaintences studying for the college entrance exams does it try to cram in too much, too late in the game? Find out after the jump, while I chug this bottle of tainted Soder Cola.

Written by Hope Larson
Illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque
Colors by Dave McCaig
Lettered by Deron Bennett

“Beyond Burnside” part four! Batgirl realizes too late that she’s fallen right into Teacher’s trap! If she’s going to get to Shanghai in time to save Kai, she’ll have to track down this mysterious new villain and end things once and for all.

We pick up with the jet-setting Barbara Gordon in South Korea as she investigates a potentially toxic biological conspiracy involving students trying to cram last minute for the college entrance exams. What began as a foreign adventure in advanced martial arts training now sees Babs trying to help a childhood friend, Kai, get out of a pop-up shop type scam that he’s put himself in the middle of. While it may be unlikely that Barbara’s excursion, and subsequent friendship, just happened to lead her to the type of conspiracy that Batgirl herself is so perfectly equipped to handle on a regular basis, Larson has found herself a clever avenue into writing a book that can be several things at once. And in fact, I’m not even sure that “a Batgirl story” is #1 on that list, but that makes the book even more fascinating.

The aforementioned “Batgirl of Burnside” comic run made a point that, while it was going to very much be a street-level crime Batgirl book, it was going to be presented in a fresh, youthful, and modern way like we hadn’t seen before from DC Comics (Basically, Babs get iPad). It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that it informed an entire initiative of new DC titles. Very few of these were actually sales successes, but it would be disingenuous to say that the soul of that initiative doesn’t still exist somewhere behind the veneer of ‘Rebirth’, even as it tries to “get back to basics.” In fact, Larson’s “Batgirl” may still be the biggest beneficiary of that original stylistic choice.

“Batgirl” #4 tips the scales back toward being a traditional Batgirl book a bit by having Barbara bounding from location to location taking on criminal goons using her weapons, their own weapons, and her own ingenuity. Through previous issues, it was noticeable how much Larson was content to write this as a travelogue story that occasionally required Barbara to do some detective work. A significant amount of breathing room was given for Babs to see the sights, eat the street food, and study her martial arts (and rightfully get her butt kicked by the people that have studied it for years). While she’s still the brilliant Barbara Gordon, Larson was careful not to make her out to be a savant that instantly picks everything up while she’s in a foreign land. She’s very much a fish out of water, and we see both the fruits and the faults of her experiences there. She even had time to do a little pseudo-dating, which is how she got roped into this whole biotech conspiracy in the first place. Point being, Larson did an incredible job of writing this book with a holistic Babs at the center. Issue #4 comes back to the basics of crime fighting and spends most of its time there as a necessity, it seems. It’s trying to wrap up a convoluted plot, after all. It’s very good at doing this, but there’s less room to breathe here than there had been previously.

What is still present in issue #4 are some of the little things Larson does with the character that are explicitly “DC Comics’ Batgirl” in nature. When taking down some construction goons, Babs remains the quippy, optimistic person we know her to be. She believes that criminals deserve second chances and can make new choices for themselves, even as she’s brutally owning them by beating them up and calling them flunkies. When it comes to finding the next clue in a series of mysteries, it’s almost Adam West-ian the way she takes an incidental observation and flawlessly applies it to the mystery she’s currently trying to solve. Some may find these aspects hokey, and that’s completely understandable. I suspect Larson knows what she’s doing when she plants these kinds of crumbs.

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When it comes to balancing the street-level crime with the romantic travelogue, I’m not sure Rafael Albuquerque could have done a better job than he has. To put it simply, his take on the setting and the character (with ample help with warm color choices from Dave McCaig) have been gorgeous. Albuquerque has kicked around the bat books here and there while Scott Snyder was more heavily involved, but his work on “Batgirl” proves that he can do anything in the realm of cape comics. Apart from the costume itself, not much superficially recalls the work Tarr was doing pre-‘Rebirth’, yet there’s something in the attitude he puts into the character and the book that make this a natural extension for readers that enjoyed that title and are looking where to go next. Albuquerque’s Babs leaps across rooftops and swings from ropes like Nightwing (or Spider-Man, if you make yours Marvel). She sets up her enemies like dominoes before knocking them down, yet makes it look less clinical than her predecessor Batman might. Babs is at her best when she’s showing a range of emotions that you almost never get from the rest of the “main” bat family, and Albuquerque is an expert as showing Babs to be the curious, intelligent, and self-aware character that she is.

Babe doesn’t get many moments outside of the cape and cowl in this one, but when she does Albuquerque proves to be just as good at depicting her as an ordinary person on vacation. She could easily be just another student studying abroad. Again, another series of little conscious style choices that probably don’t make or break a book, but are noticed and appreciated. Because of this, Batgirl better becomes that “holistic” take on Babs that I described earlier. And when she comes across one of those aforementioned “clues”, her “eureka!” faces play into the intentional playfulness of the moment.

If you’re not reading Larson and Albuquerque’s “Batgirl”, this issue may not totally convince you, though there’s nothing wrong with it. But it does contain all of the little things that previous issues have fleshed out to make this one of the more unusual books that DC Comics is putting out right now. It’s easy to say that ‘Rebirth’ has put out a “vanilla” lineup of books, based on their titles alone. Don’t let that color any preconceived notions you may have about this turn on “Batgirl” – it’s just as “DCYou” as it ever was, if not more so.

Final Verdict: 7.9 – a more conventional issue of a Batgirl book that isn’t conventional at all.


Vince Ostrowski

Dr. Steve Brule once called him "A typical hunk who thinks he knows everything about comics." Twitter: @VJ_Ostrowski

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