Batgirl#9: Writer: Bryan Q. Miller. Pencils: Lee Garbett.
This issue kicks off with Batgirl defeating some psycho threatening to blow up a Gotham commuter train. Upon taking the loser down and seeing to his arrest, Steph is congratulated by Commissioner Gordon in an AWESOME scene. From there we head to Steph's mentor, Barbara Gordon(Oracle), who is still trying to help the Calculator's daughter Wendy come to terms with the loss of the usage of her legs. After a while, Steph arrives on the scene and Wendy takes off. With Wendy gone, Babs decides to take Steph to see the new base of operations she was putting together in the basement of her apartment building. While the women are working on Babs computer systems, Steph's cop friend, Det. Gage, is investigating a bizarre death in the Elysium Tech building in downtown Gotham. While the detective is investigating the death, the building goes into lockdown due to a security breach, which sends an alarm to Babs and Steph, causing Steph to switch to her Batgirl outfit to respond. Gage decides to investigate and runs into a seemingly possessed Elysium Tech security guard who had stolen a top secret suitcase and was only speaking in computer programming language. The possessed guard goes to shoot Gage, but Steph manages to disarm him with a well-placed batarang just in the nick of time. The guard runs out of the room, stashes the suitcase in a garbage can and leaps out of a window in the high rise building. Steph and Gage run after him and Steph manages to snag the plummeting man with a rope, momentarily halting his fall. Unfortunately for Steph though, the man slips out of the rope and falls to his death. While all that was going on, a possessed woman walks over to the suitcase and takes it before leaving the building. Back at the Batcave, Babs cracks into Elysium's computer systems and learns that they had been hording technology from Apokolips, which causes her to tell Steph to return to the Cave immediately. This issue ends with the possessed woman who took the suitcase from Elysium handing it over to the Calculator(!), who has seemingly been living with his very dead son!
How I've missed reading this series! If I were to rank my favorite DC comics, this series would probably be in the top 3. This issue did everything right. It built a good story, had great dialogue, introduced a strong villain, and gave his motivation. So we had a great story, great dialogue and extremely good art... What more could I ask for?
Score: 9 1/2 out of 10.
I REALLY enjoyed this scene.
Nice review, I loved this comic and our scores were pretty close too, I gave Batgirl a 9 and Flash a 8 so your 9.5 and 7 weren't far off from me. Glad you pretty much enjoyed them though. I'm wondering what role Wendy will play in this arc.
ReplyDeleteI was kind of tempted to go all the way score-wise with this book, but I held back at the last minute. I'm REALLY trying to give out less perfect scores nowadays, that way at the end of the year it'll be easier for me to tell which series were good from the beginning of the year onward.
ReplyDeleteYeah, we were pretty close score-wise with these two, the wonder twins powers might be ramping up again.
JT, my man, I'm gonna ask you a favor, although I'm not sure you can(or will for that matter)do it. I won't read Yost's writing. I just can't do it. Sad but true. However, I'm kind of interested in knowing what happened in the Batgirl/Red Robin x-over. So buddy, ol' pal, I was hoping that maybe sometime down the road you could post a full review for that storyline. I'd def owe ya something blog-wise in return if ya did, but I'm really curious as to what I missed, and since we tend to be pretty simpatico about this series, I think you'd be the perfect guy to do this. So, what do you think? Yea or Nay?
I try to do the same thing X, I hate myself for always giving out 8's a lot but sometimes I really wanna give 10's but I feel like it diminishes their value.
ReplyDeleteYeah those wonder twin powers are really flaring up eh?
Sure dude, no problem. I was gonna pick up the final issue when it drops anyway so I'll gladly do a review on all four issues for ya man. No problem at all. So want one of my usual spoiler-free reviews or should I just go all out since you don't wanna read them? Lol
Ha, for me it's not 8's, I notice that I tend to give out a lot of 7's. 7 is like my number for, "It was good, but nothing more."
ReplyDeleteAwesomeness!!! I was hoping you'd go all out spoiler crazy, since like you said, I'm never going to read those comics now(nor possibly EVER!), so the more of the story you can put out there the better. Thanks JT, now name your *gulp* price!
Lol I know what ya mean, I feel like 8 is like, well it was good, not great but I'd recommend it. Then I'll look back and be like..."I reviewed six comics why are there four 8's?!"
ReplyDeleteAlright bro, consider it done. It'll be my most spoiler-filled post EVA! As for that favor you're good lol. I reserve the right to revoke it at any point though...Bwahahaha!
I'm really glad we can all share in the love on this book. This series reminds me of the early Robin and Nightwing issues, before everything got all muddled in the larger DCU and Morrison's tangled web and all that. Not that it's been ALL bad, I'm just a fan of some good old fashioned vigilante justice.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't computer programming language, it was binary. C, perl, python, java etc are programming languages.
ReplyDelete>.<
What? I'm a computer guy. I HAVE to correct you :P
I was also glad this wasn't part of the crossover. I mean, it does mean I have to buy two more issues of Red Robin (or is it one now?), which I'm not looking forward to, but the writing was surprisingly not that bad. Unlike New X-Men 38-41 (the Pixie looses her soul one - I picked that up dirt cheaply and was highly disappointing. And didn't understand why the art was different to 42-43, which was far superior yet by the same people...)
At least it was rain and not bird poo, which is what I first thought it would be. But then I work in London and live in Oxford - two cities infested with pigeons...
Ah great, thanks JT. I'll def be looking forward to that review.
ReplyDeleteYep, that's Batgirl Kello, bringing comic fans together, one issue at a time! "I'm just a fan of some good old fashioned vigilante justice." You and me both!
Oops, forgive my ignorance of computer terminology Nagash! I shant make that mistake again. GAH! A New X-Men reference! By that point in that series, I was basically just skimming the issues, I couldn't stand to read 'em anymore. You think you have it bad with those flying rats Nagash? I grew up in New York City, the pigeon capital of the world! :P