Thursday, July 14, 2011

Red Robin #25 & Batgirl #23

It's finally DC time! The first two DC comics I'll be reviewing this week are one of my favorite DC titles(Batgirl), as well as one of my favorite DC characters(Red Robin). With DC rapidly moving towards the reboot, I doubt either of these books will have any sort of lasting impact, but hopefully they'll at least be good reads...

Red Robin #25:

Summary: This issue gets started with Black Bat(the former Batgirl, Cassandra Cain), swooping in to save Red Robin from being deflowered... What?! She did!! Anyway, Cass takes care of Ra's Al Ghul's wacky half-sister(who was trying to get it on with Saint Timmy) and Promise before freeing Tim. With the villains down and Tim safe, the two discuss what their next step should be with this whole assassination tournament, and while Tim is deep in thought and distracted, Cass stabs him with her katana, seemingly killing him! With Tim dead, Cass is declared the winner of the tourney, and a secret door opens up allowing her to enter to claim her prize. A disembodied voice tells her she'd be immortalized for her victory, and a laser blast comes at her, but she is saved by Tim?! It turns out Tim and Cass planned a way to fake his death in order to get Cass access to whoever was running the tourney. The voice tells Tim that it was impressed with his actions, and that it held the tournament to discover the most deadly assassins and then eliminate them for the good of mankind. Before Tim and Cass can glean anything more, the lair begins to self destruct, and it winds up exploding after the two get clear. With that taken care of, Tim heads to Hong Kong to try to help Cass defeat the Cricket, who kicks both of their asses and leaves Tim with a broken arm and some fractured ribs. We also learn that Lucius Fox was still alive, and that his death was faked by the Gotham Police department. Tam Fox is furious with Tim for not telling her that her dad was still alive, and she winds up breaking up with him. With ALL of that out of the way, this issue ends with Tim wondering how his life would change now that he was responsible for assassinating Capt. Boomerang(!?).

Thoughts: Again, and I've been saying this A LOT when it comes to the DC books lately, this issue was very rushed. The assassination tournament stuff was wrapped up, as was the longer running sister of Al Ghul thing. Tim finally broke up with Tam Fox, which doesn't bother me because I never really got their relationship. And in one quick page we get the Lucius Fox is alive announcement, as well as a quick one page blurb showing Cass and Tim getting owned by the Cricket. I mean, I did like the way everything ended, so I can't complain about any of that, it was all just so brisk... I'd have loved to have seen a longer battle between Cass/Tim and the Cricket. Or a longer scene showing exactly how Tim broke the news to Tam about her father. But alas, it was not to be. Still in all though, this issue was quite good, probably one of the better DC books I've read in some time, so I guess I can't complain too much...

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.That's gonna leave a mark! Or will it???


Batgirl #23:

Summary: We get started with three of the Reapers armor-clad goons attacking a police station to steal back the armor that had been impounded by the police from two of their members. The armor-clad goons make short work of the cops, killing several of them before they manage to find the two sets of armor and leave. Meanwhile, Batgirl and Det. Gage come across the corpse of the Grey Ghost, Batgirl's unwanted sidekick. It turns out that Ghost had managed to infiltrate the Reapers base to feed Batgirl information to prove his worth, but the Reapers found out about his duplicity and killed him. All he left was a recording that goes off when Batgirl touches the device, telling her that the Reapers were trying to gain metahuman powers, but that the check from their mystery benefactor bounced. Before he could say anymore though, he is found out and the transmission abruptly ceases. Right after that, Gage hears about the robbery at the police station and both he and Batgirl realize that the Reapers next step would be to free their two captured members from Blackgate prison. Before long, Batgirl heads to Blackgate just as after the Reapers had broken in and caused a riot to cover their tracks. We learn that the Reapers mystery benefactor was actually at the prison, and the Reapers begin to march through the prison in search of him. Batgirl arrives on the scene and attacks all five of the Reapers, but quickly finds herself overpowered. Before the Reapers can kill her, she screams out, “Shazam!”(?!), which confuses the Reapers, but signals Supergirl, Stargirl, Miss Martian and Bombshell to come in to help. The five females make quick work of the five armor-clad Reapers, and while her four allies head through the prison to quell the riot, Batgirl decides to see if she could find whoever it was that pissed off the Reapers by giving them the bounced check. After walking through the prison, Batgirl finds one cell that was not open, and figures that whoever was inside was hiding from the Reapers, and opens it up to find... Her own father, the villain known as the Cluemaster!!!

Thoughts: Okay, that ending was all kinds of awesome! The rest of this comic? It was okay. I mean with only one more issue left of this magnificent series, I get that Bryan Q. Miller had to rush his story a bit, which is why we probably got a quick, one issue showdown between Batgirl(and friends) against the Reapers. With that said though, with how long the Reapers/Batgirl stuff had been building, I'd have hoped for a longer, more dramatic battle there... I mean this was a perfectly acceptable comic book, but that was about all it was...

Score: 7 out of 10.Why would the Gotham City prison system allow a costumed criminal to keep their costume in their cell???

6 comments:

  1. "This issue gets started with Black Bat(the former Batgirl, Cassandra Cain), swooping in to save Red Robin from being deflowered... What?! She did!!" Lol, it's funny cause it's true. Yeah, both of these issues felt rushed, as with most of DC right now, but they were good for what they were. I hated that the Cricket ass-whooping seemed to be in fast forward or something. Also, the fact we never got to know who that voice was and probably never will, is gonna annoy me.

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  2. "Deflowered"... HA!! *ahem* Yeah, the DC books are really moving on fast-forward right now, especially this issue of Red Robin, where like SIX weeks passed in like THREE pages! I mean the thing with Cricket REALLY deserved to get an entire issue to itself! I was also bummed that we really never got to see exactly what Tim's role was in Lucius's faked death. I mean we KNOW he knew, but I'd have liked to have seen the conversation between Tim, Lucius and Gordon. Plus the fact that Tam broke up with him and it was totally glossed over, kind of sucked. Tim was like, “I guess we broke up, although I see her from time to time on business...” Really, that's the end of that relationship? I was never really a big fan of Tim's relationship with Tam, but damn, he'd been dating her for like 2 years(real time), you'd think we'd get better than THAT!

    Oh man, the disembodied voice! You know you're right... With no Red Robin series, and Fabian not writing Tim, I guess that'll simply be forgotten... Maybe... Here's what I think. I think the voice was possibly a futuristic version of Tim(maybe he becomes a time traveler or something), there were a few instances where it seemed like the voice knew EXACTLY what Tim was thinking. There are holes with that(like why would future Tim try to kill current Tim in a tournament, how did he get access to that lair, which was centuries old, etc), but I'd be down with seeing an older, evil Tim(like in the Teen Titans) vs younger, not evil Tim. Maybe we'll find out more with whatever this assassination of Capt. Not Old, Not Bald, Not Fat Boomerang is all about next issue...

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  3. I couldn't agree more about the Tim/Tam blow off, I guess she'll go onto never ever existing much like the chick Bart dated in Flash The Fastest Man Alive.

    I really how we do hear something more about it. The guys been around forever though, which kinda rules out the time traveling thing right? I mean even if he could time travel, this guy lived probably longer than Vandal Savage, and besides Ra's who else fits that description? But Ra's seemed WAY too obvious.

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  4. Bart dated a chick? The hell you say! :P At least Tam is still related to Lucius Fox, the girl from Bart's comic doesn't even have THAT going for her!

    Well, in Marvel you have Kang the Conquerer. That's their top time traveling villain. As an adolescent he's visited by his future self(Kang), who tries to turn him evil in order to assure that he(Kang) exists. Young Kang resists and forms the Young Avengers, but ultimately has to fulfill his destiny since the timeline needed a Kang. There's also an older version of Kang named Immortus, who's been around presumably for eons. With time travel you can always screw around with ages and times, hell, Kang is the perfect example of that. Throughout his life he's ruled over ancient Egypt as Rama-Tut, so who's to say Tim doesn't build/find a time machine, then go back in time to start this assassin tournament years ago? Man is time travel a headache! :P

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  5. We BOTH know we'll never see Tam Fox again, lol. Regardless of her relationship with Lucius.

    Goddamn that just exploded my brain... thanks a lot X!

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  6. I don't know... Maybe she could like stand in the background of a comic Lucius is in... Naturally she'll act like she doesn't know who Tim is and all, but still, there's at least a(SLIM) chance that she may pop up again. Bart's girlfriend? Never in a zillion years!

    Well then, my mission has been accomplished! :P

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