April 12, 2016

Chris’ Comics: Batgirl #50

Batgirl #50

Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, Babs Tarr, Roger Robinson, John Timms, Elonora Carlini, James Harvey, Serge Lapointe

DC $4.99

I’ll be blunt, Batgirl #50 is a little bit of a disappointment.

While it’s not entirely the creative team’s fault, this is a $5 comic that feels more like an annual. What was suppose to be the final issue for all 3 members of Team Batgirl (Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher & Babs Tarr,who are off to do creator owned stuff for Image), the comic actually features several additional guest artists, once again making the title feel more like a art jam project. Babs Tarr does draw the bulk of these pages (20 aka the amount of your average DC/Marvel book), which is where the book really shines. If this was the springboard for the new Birds of Prey book, the additional pages by the guess artists would make a ton of sense. But seeing how none of those character except Batgirl & Black Canary are appearing in that title come this summer, it feels like an excuse to pad the book’s page count. I’m genuinely curious if the decision to make the comic double sized was editorial or the creative teams, because it feels incredibly disjointed.

To be fair to the guest artist, their work is certainly solid. Roger Robinson, John Timms, Elonora Carlini, and James Harvey have all pitched in on art duties before on the character, so they certainly feel familiar on the book. They all manage to ape Tarrs’ s Batgirl-50-11 tyle quite well, so the book looks good all throughout the issue. And while I may complain about the presence of multiple guest artists, I really do dig the Street Fighter-influenced Vs. pages that break up the chapters. And it’s cool to see Babs working off of Cameron Stewart’s layouts again, as we can see how much she’s grown since she last worked off of them.

The book is at it’s best when it towards the ending, as you can really see where the team was trying to take Barbara. It’s where the real meat of the story is, and it does some really cool things with Babs and the cast of supporting characters the team has assembled. It’s a shame that there’s not more time spent on that sort of thing, versus the amount of time spent with the guest artists and guest stars dealing with other villains. The book ends up feeling back-loaded, which is a batgril-50-team shame, because again, while I don’t dislike the artist, but there’s a lot of fat to chew through to get to the good stuff.

Batgirl #50 has some genuinely good moments in it, but this book will test your patience. A shame really, because the team had spent a considerable amount of time taking Babs into her this new and exciting direction. They do ultimately succeed in blazing some new paths with the character, and set things up for the next creative team to do some real interesting things with the character, but I just wish the execution could have been a little better.

March 8, 2016

Chris’ Comics: Batgirl #49

Batgirl #49

Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, Babs Tarr, Horacio Domingus, Roger Robinson, James Harvey, Minge Doyle, Serge Lapointe

DC $2.99

Real talk, it is hard to make a comic work when it has multiple artists attached to it. There’s so many things that could easy throw off the flow of the book, resulting in a great comic becoming merely a good one. I’m happy to say that isn’t the case for this month’s issue of Batgirl, which sees 4 different artists join Babs Tarr on art duties and still manages to tell a killer story.

Batgirl #49 can be summed up as Batgirl gets Incepted (insert BRMMMM noise here for dramatic effect). New villain the Fugue has gone and messed up our heroine’s brain meats all bad like, so it’s up to her pals Frankie and Black Canary to save the day. It’s a dense issue that explains the villain’s origins, while focusing on Frankie as the lead for a change. Brenden Fletcher and Cameron Stewart write a comic that’s heavy on the exposition, but is Screen-Shot-2016-03-03-at-10.58.19-AM also extremely rewarding. It also doesn’t hurt that the art provided by the guest artists is really strong this month.

While Batgirl’s fill in artists have been pretty hit or miss with me, the team of Babs Tarr, Horacio Domingus, Roger Robinson, James Harvey, and Batgirl Annual artist Ming Doyle really knock it out of the park. Domingus and Robinson do a superb job of drawing in a style similar to Tarr, giving the the first half of the book a cohesive book, with some assistance from colorist Serge Lapointe. And while Ming Doyle and Jame Harvey’s styles couldn’t be anymore different, they definitely work for this issue, definitely establishing the chaotic tone needed from the script. Between this and the current arc in Gotham Academy, it seems the Bat-office knows how to bring talent together for a art jam comic.

I also really like what Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher bring to this issue. While the idea of Batgirl’s brain being hijack feels incredibly similar to their first arc (which is touched upon, no worries), what they do with Fugue and team Batgirl definitely makes for a deeper and more complex story. While the Fugue reveal doesn’t hit as hard as maybe the creator’s BG-49-pg-12-073f0 intended it to, he’s still a cool new villain that has some legs, so I’m hoping he can stick around after this arc. It’s also nice to see the writing team utilizing Frankie and various vigilantes who’ve been hanging around Barbara as of late as well as they do, and it makes me wonder if THIS is going to be the Birds of Prey roster hinted at by the DC Rebirth title teaser list.

Building up to what’s suppose to be a game changing 50th issue, Batgirl #49 is a solid read. It’s a pretty serious issue that doesn’t feel like a chore to get through, and the art is superb. I have no doubt that the team of Tarr, Stewart, Fletcher and Lapointe will stick the landing with the conclusion of this arc, and I’m really curious as to what the status quo of the title will be after it. Batgirl #49 not only set ups some potentially very cool things for the character and her cast, and succeeds at juggling multiple artists, a task very few cape comics have done as of late.