In this review of Batgirl #19, as Batgirl and her allies approach the Midnight Tower, can they succeed in gaining passage back to the land of the living?
Batgirl #19 main cover by David Talaski (DC Comics)
BATGIRL #19
Written by TATE BROMBAL
Art by TAKESHI MIYAZAWA
Main Cover: DAVID TALASKI
Variant Cover: SERG ACUNA
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 5/6/26
This review contains spoilers
In the Spirit World, Batgirl, Jaya, Tenji and Bloodmaster are all battling towards the Midnight Tower to seek favor from the lord of that domain – Midnight Eye. Chased by the spirit of Wu Bing, Batgirl wields her new blood abilities to battle back her army, breaking through the tower and even seizing it’s gigantic guard serpent to travel the rest of the way.
Upon meeting the Midnight Eye, Batgirl demands that her cursed blood be removed from her body. The Midnight Eye refuses, explaining that the affliction was brought about due to an imbalance in Alpha Energy involving Superman, providing a loophole for an unknown being to deliver the curse to her. He goes on to explain that two-thousand years ago, Cassandra’s ancestor united two different tribes in the Land of Wa against a warring third nation. In return, they brought him to the Spirit World where exchanged his bloodline’s souls for the power to defeat his enemies.
Bloodmaster then offers the souls of Batgirl, Jaya and Tenji in exchange to become Midnight Eye’s vassal between the mortal world and the Spirit World. The offer is agreed, and Cass and the others are captured and about to be judged. Just before judgement is passed, Bloodmaster returns and demands that everyone be free as Cass’ ancestor’s deal was done without her knowledge centuries in the past. Midnight Eye agrees, but only after informing Cassandra that the time will come when he will need her abilities in the Spirit World.
Now returned to normal, Cassandra shares an impromptu noodle-dinner with her companions atop of Wu Tower. Just as she’s accepted that her family has given up on waiting for her arrival, the Bat-Family show up having decided to track her down. Cassandra introduces her new friends to Batman, Oracle, Batgirl (Steph Brown), Robin (Damian Wayne), Nightwing and Signal, basking in the love and surrounding of family.
Analysis
When this arc first started, I was decently interested. Cass was back in Gotham, returning to the Bat-Family, and the strange new blood powers seemed intriguing enough to warrant holding off her big reunion a least for a couple of issues. By part two however, I was sufficiently annoyed. The story was taken away from Cass and focused more on the Wu family and another damn journey in a foreign land, learning more about characters and concepts I personally do not care about. Now that the arc is concluded, that should warrant enough satisfaction for my gripes to have reached their end. But that’s not the case.
I don’t know what Tate Brombal had in mind for this series when the title began, but it’s now become clear that whatever fuels his writing energy probably comes from the Hi-Yah streaming channel. There is so much melodrama with the Wu Family and Cassandra’s extended relatives that the book circles the drain on her inner turmoil without sufficiently moving forward. Each opening narration is no more or less histrionic than the last, while the bulk of the story focuses on developments for characters we’re challenged to be interested in. I don’t care that seemingly everyone is Cassandra’s family is a vicious killer, as a matter of fact it’s only become more derivative each time (remember that Shiva being her mother was a retcon). But we lose pages and pages on info-dumps surrounding Cassandra’s ancestor, who was a conniving schemer and cursed his entire bloodline for selfish reasons. His decisions are implicitly revealing that Cassandra’s family is cursed, yet with Batgirl’s powers having been removed at the end of this story, we’re not really in a different place with that information. Theoretically, Cass should become even more depressed, yet this shouldn’t affect her for the foreseeable future. And while the ending with the two parts of her life converging is intriguing, eighteen issues in and I’m not confident Brombal is up to the task of properly contrasting those two factions to further Cassandra’s development.
You’ve read these kinds of comics before, the kind where fantastical, magical, unbelievable things happen at a moment’s notice, yet the book is so speedily paced that there’s no time to take in the fascinating surroundings that the characters find themselves in. Tenji has a distancing line or two, but even amazing images like Batgirl riding a gigantic serpent or the very design of Midnight Eye (which is very cool) go un-commented on, unreacted to. It’s the kind of story where words like “honor”, “oath” and “debt” fly out of so many characters mouths it furthers the criticism that the book’s voice is hollow in how hardly anyone sounds distinct. I’m even questioning the decision to keep Batgirl’s mask on throughout this adventure, because everyone already knows who she is. Cass’ stories used to work with the fact that she has no self-awareness for her double identities, yet seeing her in the costume spouting lines like “This curse is mine, if I deserve punishment, so be it. Let your tallies and scales weigh that.” works to distance me form seeing this as a viable Batgirl story. It’s just a martial arts adventure with the tone and magical action akin to the third act of Shang-Chi.
As I said earlier, with the Bat-Family in the book by the end, one might be interested to see how Cassandra’s adventures have affected her and potentially might affect her relationship with them. But again, for all we know there might be a time-skip that has Cass away from everyone else in the next issue. We’ve seen the kind of book this is, what it represents. What’s the use in hoping for anything different?
