Review: Batgirl Volume 1 - The Batgirl of Burnside

Having moved to the trendy Burnside, Barbara Gordon must start anew after a fire destroys her Batgirl equipment. With a new roommate, new costume and a new enemy, the scarlet-haired vigilante finds fame in her new surroundings and embraces her role as the beloved heroine of Burnside. However, when the citizens begin to turn against her after a motorcycle chase gone wrong, it becomes clear that fame might not be all it was cracked up to be. Welcome to Burnside Batgirl, we hope you survive the experience.

 Batgirl Volume 1: The Batgirl of Burnside collects Batgirl #35-40, written by Brenden Fletcher and Cameron Stewart with art by Babs Tarr.

It’s been no secret that I absolutely adored Gail Simone’s run on Batgirl during the New 52 initiative. She breathed new life into the character, tackled some heavy issues and created a colourful cast that I came to adore. When it was announced that she’d be leaving the title and a new creative team would be taking over, it became clear that the book would undergo a massive makeover that was intended to bring more of a lighthearted and accessible feel to the title. The art in particular emphasized a hipper and much more colourful aesthetic. It was an understandable and even admirable decision to make given the criticisms that had been heaped upon DC Comics for being too dark and gritty. Though much was gained in this process, there were also great losses. The supporting cast that Simone had so carefully cultivated was axed and the reader was now thrown into the often superficial world of college and social media. Indeed, the first few pages of issue 35 are tough to get through. The slang and dependence on forcing the title to be relevant to Millennials left me with an overall sense of a dumbing down of the series. Thankfully, that feeling would not stay with me.

There hadn’t been this big of a tonal shift on a female character at DC Comics since Ed Brubaker and the late Darwyn Cooke reinvented Catwoman for her 2001 relaunch. Much like with Brubaker and Cooke’s beloved turn on the feline fatale’s title, The Batgirl of Burnside proves that a strong creative team can transform and elevate a comic book into something truly special. There is an insane synergy between Fletcher, Stewart and Tarr here that is actually quite magical. From a strictly aesthetic standpoint, I absolutely love what they’ve been able to do with this book. They’ve made Batgirl into something that marries writing and art. The rough layouts Stewart provides and the gorgeous pencils that Tarr lays down are brilliant. For example, the use of the visual recreations of Barbara’s memories is an absolutely genius device for a character with eidetic memory. Tarr also does an impeccable job of distinguishing each character from one another. Her style is gorgeous and I’m in constant awe of each page. Her take on Black Canary in particular is especially stunning.

The other thing Batgirl has with Brubaker’s Catwoman is its distinctive ability to build a world for its lead character that gives her a purpose and an identity. Of course, unlike the poverty-stricken East End setting in Catwoman, Batgirl’s Burnside is a trendy borough of Gotham City populated by college students and party-minded twenty-somethings. Technology, education and social media all play crucial roles in the makeup of Burnside and its inhabitants, which does a fairly adequate job of mirroring our own world. Though I was gutted by the removal of Alysia from the supporting cast, I was overjoyed by the diverse group of characters that was brought in to fill that void. Frankie is Babs’ stylish roommate who works as a developer for a dating app called Hooq, Nadimah is a fellow student helping Babs with her thesis and Nadimah’s brother Qadir becomes Batgirl’s equipment provider. I fell for each one, particularly since they were all very distinctive and thoughtfully conceived characters that served a purpose to the overall narrative. That said, I do feel Black Canary was misused throughout. She seemed out of character, sulking and being antagonistic towards Babs for much of this collection. The Black Canary I know, at least the one written by Gail Simone, would never harbor a grudge as long as she does here.

The overall narrative structure of The Batgirl of Burnside is extremely solid. The story itself revolves around Barbara’s move to Burnside and the mysterious presence of someone’s knowledge of her exploits as Batgirl. Over the course of each individual issue, she faces off against some heavily stylized (but ultimately amateurish) bad guys who are all part of some larger plan by her unseen foe. Meanwhile, Babs struggles to recover an algorithm she lost that was necessary for her schoolwork and must mend her relationship with Black Canary after it becomes frayed. As such, there’s a sense of direction and purpose to the book. It’s well-done and the issues themselves are very engaging.

I greatly enjoyed The Batgirl of Burnside. Though it was a sharp turn away from the world Gail Simone had built for the character, it was still entertaining and makes great strides in proving that DC Comics isn’t all doom and gloom. Despite OOC moments from Black Canary and slight issues with dialogue here and there, the creative team on this book is simply sensational. The characters are loveable, the setting is distinctive, the tone of the book is consistent and the art is jaw-droppingly beautiful. For fans of Bryan Q. Miller’s Batgirl, this book will capture the excitement and youthful exuberance that Batgirl represented while Stephanie Brown was under the cape and cowl.

RATING: A-