Review: Batgirls Vol. 2: Bat Girl Summer trade paperback (DC Comics)

If there was a word that came to me throughout reading Batgirls Vol. 2: Bat Girl Summer, it was “romance.” Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad’s Batgirls is, and tries to be, a lot of things — buddy comedy, superhero book — but a distinct change from last time to this, perhaps due to the shifting winds of the DC Universe — was romance title.

It is not something DC does all that often (or, perhaps, didn’t used to do all that often), and so in that way it’s appealing. Also that the writers bring exuberance to a certain “ship” that perhaps reflects a certain amount of pent-up fandom demand. In this — and in a book that feels more focused with one two-part story and one four-part story instead of last time’s six-parter, plus maybe a smidgen less irreverence than in Batgirls Vol. 1: One Way or Another — Bat Girl Summer is an improvement for a book that, unfortunately, only has one more volume to go before its cancellation.

[Review contains spoilers]

I’ve made the mistake of reading Batgirls Vol. 2 before catching up on my Nightwing reading, so I only learned here that Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson have apparently gone beyond some increased flirting to a full-on relationship. And by Cloonan and Conrad’s rendition, that relationship is … athletic, to say the least; outside of crimefighting, the book makes no mistake of where Barbara and Dick are spending their nights (and sometimes their early mornings!). I couldn’t really say if I’m Team Batgirl or Team Starfire (Koriand’r seems the one generally worse off since the DCU went “Gor-son”), but Batgirls at least has made its choice enthusiastically. Barbara, as she says in the book, is “smitten.”

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

It’s again not a particularly usual thing to find in a DC Comic two young superheroes who seem to be caught up in their new romance and loving it. (I can only hope that Tom Taylor’s Nightwing is reciprocating all this and it’s not just over on Barbara’s side.) It’s all the more romantic given how unironic and drama-free it is; neither Lois and Clark nor Bruce and Selina are ever this happy. Lest the younger Batgirls be ignored, Stephanie Brown makes a connection with Kyle Mizoguchi, late of Cloonan and company’s Gotham Academy, though for the moment the two are “just friends.” (Cassandra Cain is the odd-Batgirl-out this time, though longtime fans might enjoy the variant cover where she snatches a plush Superboy Conner Kent from a claw machine. If you know, you know.)

The Batgirls series still lacks in critical areas, particularly in examining at all who the young Batgirls are, what their histories are now, and the basis for their strong friendship.¹ But it makes up for that in some romantic comedy — Cassandra and Stephanie calling Barbara out for wearing Robin underwear, for instance — that is funnier and more timeless than the last volume’s dated Shrek jokes. Barbara’s friend Alysia Yeoh also appears; in all, Bat Girl Summer, less frenetic, sells its “friends-as-family” aesthetic better than its debut did.

Notably, in its initial two-parter, Batgirls jettisons all remaining aspects of the Batman: Fear State crossover that it launched from; it makes short work of villain group the Saints, and also major technological foe the Seer — revealed to be a child — disappears with nary much fanfare or even explanation for why she caused the mayhem she did. That Batgirls almost immediately improves in its “Bat Girl Summer” storyline proper perhaps suggests “Fear State” as an albatros that was bringing the book down (and why Batgirls Vol. 1: One Way or Another seemed far more interested in villains Tutor and Spellbinder than the “Fear State” ones), though that clearly wasn’t enough to forestall Batgirls' demise.

I took the long road to “Bat Girl Summer,” completing reading all the Gotham Academy books before starting this in expectation of Kyle’s appearance — and more importantly, the maybe-once and maybe-future Robin Maps. Kyle is the least interesting Gotham Academy character (your results can vary) and Maps the most, and this book is minorly upside-down in the attention it gives the former over the latter, though I like the update on his tennis career versus his interest in culinary school². I equally enjoyed Maps' continued melding into the Bat-family, though I could have done with her asking after Damian or some other specific reference to past adventures.

After Jorge Corona’s distinctive art in the first volume, Batgirls Vol. 2 splits duties between Robbie Rodriguez and Neil Googe. Rodriguez more closely resembles Corona’s zany-realistic style, fine again for these transitional chapters, but Googe’s flat, animated pages feels like just what Batgirls needed. What did not work in something more serious like The Flash is perfect here, and Googe is even still able to generate gore and menace when needed.

I love that Batgirls Vol. 2: Bat Girl Summer makes an attempt (I rather doubt it’ll be lasting) to reincarnate the Batman/Jim Gordon relationship with Batgirl Barbara and new Gotham commissioner Renee Montoya, and that equally Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad can have Barbara and Renee on opposite sides while still acknowledging Renee was once the Question. Though, going that far, Renee’s hostility toward Barbara is a little befuddling, given that if Oracle didn’t save Question Renee’s life at least once, then we might at least posit Renee is still friends with Huntress Helena Bertinelli, and six degrees of Oracle from there.

2.5

Rating

But don’t mull over that one too long — Stephanie Brown apparently thinks her father Cluemaster is dead, even though she just faced off with him in Young Justice. I’d happily keep reading Batgirls, but it’s frustrating as much as it is fun …

[Includes original and variant covers, character sketches, script pages]

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1. A movement of late among comics creators to “just tell a good story” about a character without getting bogged down with their histories or origins confuses, I think, a good instinct to avoid complication with the necessary effort required to make a character feel fully realized.  ↩︎

2. Though, we’ve seen the Mizoguchi house and the fact that they have some household help, under Gotham Academy co-creator Karl Kerschl’s pen, so Becky Cloonan’s assertion that Kyle does “most of the cooking” at his house makes me wonder if the Gotham Academy writers, separated, are all working from the same playbook.  ↩︎