In this review of Batgirl #16, the War of Shadows comes to a dramatic end!
Batgirl #16 main cover by David Talaski (DC Comics)
BATGIRL #16
Written by TATE BROMBAL
Art by TAKESHI MIYAZAWA
Main Cover: DAVID TALASKI
Variant Cover: JORGE FORNÉS
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: 2/4/26
This review contains spoilers
Batgirl begins Batgirl #16 by dictating into a receiver on the events of the past night. As she recounts, we recap that Nyssa Al Ghul created Samsara as a haven for those wanting to heal from their trauma. She intended to further these goals with the aid of stolen blue poppies from The Unburied, who then (and unbeknownst to the others) were led into the city by a traitorous Jaya. But as Jaya meets up with Batgirl and they confront Nyssa and Angel Breaker over their betrayal, Nyssa offers Cass everything she desires – from being free from the pain of her upbringing to getting rid of Tenji. Cass rejects, racing off to find and rescue Tenji.
Aruna finds Jaya at the Samsara turrets and figures out that she’s a traitor. Learning her true motives when she transforms into her, Jaya quickly disable Aruna and throws her off the mountaintop.
Batgirl finds Tenji and Kalden the Unseen. Rejecting to fight for vengeance over her mother, Batgirl frees Tenji from his chains just as Nyssa arrives to kill her. Cass quickly jabs her with several pressure point-hitting attacks, restoring in Nyssa her sense of touch. Leaving Samsara with Tenji and Jaya, she concludes her report to Oracle as we see the Unburied return their stolen poppies to their hideout, and Aruna posing as one of them, escaping Samsara alive.
Analysis
Finally. We are finally finished with the Unburied plotline. Seemingly.
Takeshi Miyazaki returns for Batgirl #16, delivering pretty solid artwork once again. Batgirl looks great both masked an unmasked brandishing a katana. There’s actually some neat sequential storytelling, like the panel-to-panel transition of Aruna getting thrown off the mountain, and Batgirl hitting the ground in the next shot. That’s uncommon for this series, and I’d like to see more of that ingenuity.
Story-wise, nothing much in Batgirl #16 was hugely unexpected. The events of the conclusion were fine and I liked how Cass remains at the center of everything. Brombal has been good about keeping focus on her when there are so many characters that have been introduced in this series. So the general outline of this chapter was good.
I couldn’t stand the dialogue.
If most Cass Cain fans agree that the initial run of her first series by Puckett and Scott is the bar to reach towards, then there is way too much talking in Batgirl #16. I can be forgiving whenever Batgirl spouts off badass one-liners before an action sequence, but Brombal has been almost reliant on that, to the point where scenes seem to start over again in exposition despite everything happening in linear sequence. Consider the fact that Batgirl’s opinion on the Unburied had changed in the last couple of issues, which is why she sees through Nyssa in this one. Why exactly is she reacting and fighting them in the beginning, saying “Test Your Luck”? It’s like she’s got no reaction on the new information until she has to say it again for the readers.
Not only is the dialogue ill-placed, it’s also lousy. When Batgirl and Jaya are confronting Nyssa, Jaya says “You’re a villain, Nyssa Al Ghul.” Next panel, Nyssa says to Tenji’s whereabouts “He tried to play hero and save the day.” While I imagine the intent was to underline everyone’s motivations with an ironic sense of remove in invoking language like “hero” and “villain”, their characterization is so thin any subversion effects as straightforward text. It comes across as unironic, chosen words in the voices of these people who are being rendered as terribly shallow and one-dimensional. But it’s worse with Batgirl. Cassandra’s struggles from her past, her yearning for justice and her sense of herself are all swirling in her head, to the point that she talks to herself out loud all the time. And look, every fan is different, but I don’t see Cassandra Cain saying out loud “I choose to reach for the light!” Maybe Brombal is going with a Cass who wears “Reading is FUNdamental” shirts and loves poetry, so her voice is embedded with that kind of influence (I still don’t love that recent element to her character), but that’s not how it comes off in the book. It reads as histrionic and melodramatic, same as the entire book has read with the over-the-top martial arts drama. Everyone sounds mostly the same or highly cliche’d archetypes, like Tenji.
I don’t think that these kinds of stories don’t work with Cassandra’s character. Honestly, this last War of the Shadows arc has recalled the final arc in Cass’ original series during the Andersen Gabrych run, with the snow and super-powered characters. While I think that Batgirl’s 2000 title lessened with each writer, it never got bad and I was sold well enough on the writing (mostly). But Brombal approaches writing this kind of high-fantasy story like it’s an action movie off of the Hi-Yah channel. That’s not really how a Batgirl book should sound like.
Also, Batgirl hitting Nyssa and returning her sense of touch came out of nowhere. Wouldn’t she offer to have done that for her three issues ago?
I can’t wait to see our girl back in Gotham, for both a change of pace and to invite voices into the book that shouldn’t be written like these characters have been for the past year. Will his voices for Batman, Oracle and Stephanie Brown go down better than Shiva and Nyssa? God, I hope so. As for this arc, for me it overstayed it’s welcome after Shiva left the series. I never warmed to Tenji and the characters ballooned in the title with little else to say but to take up space. It’s a lesser arc than the first one with Shiva in it, but it doubles down on the problems I had with that arc, and sews misfortune for the remainder of the series unless a change of scenery turns things around.
