Retrospective Review: Batgirl Vol. 3 by Gail Simone

on

It's a Batfamily tie in! It's an emotional, poignant, brilliant volume! One of the best, if not THE best, set of Batgirl comics of the New 52. I loved that it was overall a collection of Batgirl comics that concerned Barbara's two families and psychotic killers that could break both families. In this regard, I feel like even though the "Death of the Family" title concerns the Batfamily, for Barbara it also had a lot to do with the breakdown of the Gordon family. This volume really showed what Barbara is capable of when she's driven to the edge by those that have broken in the past (the Joker) and those who aimed to break her and her family (Joker and James Jr). I'm curious to see how the consequences of these two stories play out.

I really liked Admira Wijaya's art in the first issue of this collection, every panel and page was more like a painting than a comic book but the art being handed over to Daniel Sampere, for the most part, felt more like a return to actually reading a comic book, especially because the art was still very similar to Adrian Syaf and Ed Benes' collaboration in previous volumes which suits this iteration of Barbara. Greg Capullo did a great job of keeping the artistic style consistent as well for the Death of the Family issues.

I do understand now why people were unhappy with Gail Simone temporarily being replaced by Ray Fawkes as Batgirl writer. Don't get me wrong, Fawkes still wrote brilliantly but Simone has a very significant voice that she gives each individual character that is almost impossible to replicate, something that Scott Snyder also had in his Death of the Family issue. I felt like when Simone returned to writing the comic, the voice of Batgirl she had created for the New 52 was back.

I really do miss this Batgirl costume though, it's my absolute favourite of them all. I'll be sad to see it go after Volume 5.

Reasons to Recommend:

  • Some of Gail Simone's best work
  • Barbara's return to the Batgirl mantle post-Killing Joke and actually seeing her recovery
  • Death of the Family tie-in
  • Stories that show the negative impact Gotham and the Batfamily has on the Gordon family
I give this volume a 10/10. One of the two best volumes of Gail Simone's run on Batgirl and I really hope she gets to write Barbara again someday.

*This review is an edited version of the review I originally posted on Goodreads when I first read the book.

Comments

Post a Comment