It isn’t often that a comic about a superhero perfectly encapsulates the essence of young adulthood as well as Batgirl does. With the rebranding of the series at issue #35, the new creative team took Barbara Gordon out of Gotham and into the, dare I say it, hipster borough of Burnside. Gone are the dark days of constant tribulations and turmoil, and welcome to grad school, lost thesis, and getting a bad rep on social media.
Babs began her time in Burnside with a bit of a messiah complex. Leaving her old costume behind, along with her typical Gotham stomping grounds, confident she could rid Burnside of crime. Her hubris began, as it does for so many, with becoming an internet and social media sensation. With everyone in town tweeting, status updating, and posting Pictograms of #BatgirlofBurnside. But this audacity caused her to be bullheaded, she decided to try and prove her few detractors wrong by going after a drunken drag racing reality star. Unfortunately she ends up crashing his car into a much-loved local coffee shop and has to make an escape from the police. So the hero, once lauded by the population of the trendy suburb, has now found herself a pariah.
One of the best aspects of Batgirl #39 is how it takes Babs back to her roots. We get to see her as the problem solving detective so many people know and love. She uses her eidetic memory to try and solve the mystery of the possible other batgirl. And her recently tumultuous relationship with Dinah Lance (aka Black Canary) has begun to heal and we even get a mini Birds of Prey moment—which gives hope for more to come.
The way this series has captured its youthful voice is twofold: The art by Babs Tarr and colors by Maris Wicks take Batgirl from the perpetual darkness of the previous artists and give the series vibrant colors, fun looking characters, and perfect illustrations of our “plugged-in” world. While Tarr’s art is consistently great, Wicks’ coloring seems to have taken an even greater leap forward in this issue, which isn’t a small feat. While the art is important and is what visually conveys they story, it is the writing by Cameron Stewart and Brendan Fletcher who perfectly capture the exploits of someone in their early 20s. From the snappy dialogue, the way the girls discuss dating, the lingo used with social media, the friend’s dynamics, and all while managing to make sure none of the youthful character moments ring false.
The writing duo have also put together a fantastic supporting cast. Bringing in an old favorite in Dinah Lance as a sort of foil to Babs optimism and good nature, and creating wonderful original new characters as well. Such as Babs’ new roommate Frankie, an African-American tech genius and creator of Hooq (the Bat-verse’s Tinder), and notably the brother sister duo of Nadimah and Qadir. Nadimah is a follow grad student and research assistant at Burnside College who is helping Babs out with her thesis planning. Her brother Qadir work at in the college’s robotics lab and becomes Batgirl’s version of Lucius Fox, providing her with all sorts of technology and tools for her Bat-Arsenal. This inclusion of two Muslim characters—one of the most underrepresented population in comics—gives even more diversity to one of the already most diverse series in comics.
An issue that I have had with the newly retooled series is the lack of a substantial overarching story for the first four issues. Issue #39 culminates in a tease that will potentially tie together something that has been tangentially within the narrative of this arc so far; the idea that there’s been another Batgirl running around posing as Babs. If this were a lesser quality series, the more individualized issues would bother me, but the side characters and side plots are the heart and soul of Batgirl, and these shine in every issue. Whether it’s Babs trying to come up with a new thesis after her hard-drive crashed and erased her original, or Dinah starting up a band, or Babs going on a date with a boy from a dating app. It is the little moments and conversations that really make Batgirl so special. It gives people someone to relate to, one who is going through the issues so many young adults do. And possibly the most important part is that this series, more than almost any other, gives young girls a true hero to aspire to be. And that is something worth fighting for.