Review: Batgirls #19

Overview: In Batgirls #19, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Barbara Gordon face not one, but two deadly snipers attacking a protest of Batgirls supporters as our story draws to a close.

Synopsis (Spoilers ahead):

Grace O’Halloran leads a protest of Gotham’s Hill neighborhood residents in support of the Batgirls, against the sniper’s demands that the police arrest the heroines. Barbara Gordon (Oracle) notifies Bagirls Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain on the ground that there are not one, but two snipers. Steph spots one sniper’s nest and heads towards it. She arrives just as the sniper shoots Grace in the chest. Office Brooks helps Grace as Cass searches for the second nest.

Steph realizes her opponent is Gunbunny and does a bit of mocking of the villains’ name while they fight. Gunbunny declares her motivation as resulting from the death of her partner, Gunhawk, (who died in Nightwing). She mocks Steph as the Batgirl who can’t fight.

Office Brooks discovers that Grace has a bulletproof vest on, and she knocks him out.

Steph demonstrates to Gunbunny that her training with Cass has more than paid off. She beats Gunbunny while keeping up her trademark banter. Grace bursts in with her shotgun, trying to kill the beaten Gunbunny. Steph, however, convinces her not to – only for a second sniper to shoot Gunbunny in the shoulder.

Cass, watching from the rooftops, finds the second sniper, who appears to be Gunhawk. He claims that Gunbunny betrayed him. However, as she chases him, Cass reveals he’s actually Assisi, one of the Saints from the first arc of Batgirls. She takes him down with assistance from Babs.

Steph and Cass enjoy some boba on the rooftop together, as Grace greets her best friend and cameraman Roky waking up in the hospital. Babs and Alysia visit too, bearing drinks, and soon many more Hill neighbors and friends arrive in the hospital room, too. Babs invites them, but Steph and Cass decide to go fix Bondo out of the river instead. As they swing away, the narration meditates on endings, and concludes with, “Once a Batgirl, always a Batgirl.”

Batgirls #19 incentive variant cover by Robbi Rodriguez

Analysis:

For 19 issues (plus 3 backups in Fear State and an Annual that kicked off the fourth arc of the series), Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad have guided Steph, Cass, and Babs through a new neighborhood, new friends, and villains big and small. This issue wraps up the whole series as well as the three-issue finale arc. How does it leave things for our trio of heroines? Does it stand out as a Batgirl ending that will stand the test of time? To answer these questions, let’s take a little walk down memory lane, and look at the five other issues that ended a run on a Batgirl title. Let’s see how Batgirls #19 compares, asking these three questions:

• What feats does this ending give our heroine(s)?
• What is the closing feeling, and how is it achieved?
• Where does the series indicate that the heroines will go next?

Batgirl #73 – the finale of Cassandra Cain’s Batgirl series. This was the first ongoing Batgirl title in history. Sadly, it’s not anywhere close to the best of the run. The final issue of Kelley Puckett’s run, #37, is much stronger. It is a unrelentingly tragic meditation on the broken nature of the world, and broken families, especially fathers, with a powerful grasp of Cass’ character, strengths and weaknesses. There’s a sense of rehash, as Cass beats Lady Shiva for the second time. However, this is the first time she knows that she’s fighting her mother. There’s also of moral failure, as everything Cass fought for is not just tragic, but actually destroyed, and she rejects being a bat. Like many final issues, there’s a heavy use of narration, in a weird fairy tale style saying “once upon a time,” not matching the style of any previous issues.

Batgirl #24 – the finale of Stephanie Brown’s Batgirl series. From my particularly biased perspective, is an absolute masterpiece. Like several of these finales, there’s a distinct sense of compression, as Bryan Q. Miller had to wrap things up really, really quickly. He not only managed to do that, but thematically he tied everything together with Steph’s confrontation with her father, plus six pages of hallucinations/dreams that were a roadmap to where Steph’s future as Batgirl could take her. Miller’s polished TV-style dialogue also calls back to Steph’s catchphrases throughout the series. He wraps up the character relationships in an intensely emotional and satisfying way. He does without relying on almost any narration, except for the very last line in Steph’s thought, “Here we go.”

Batgirl #52 – the finale of the New 52 Batgirl run, effectively just a conclusion to the Burnside run (though Gail Simone’s issue #34 serves as the finale of her own run, though like Batgirl #73, it’s more than a bit of a rehash of previous comics, and suffers from pretty weak art and a TON of unearned cameos). Brendan Fletcher manages to tie together all three of the series he was writing at the time – Batgirl, Gotham Academy, and Black Canary – in a pretty effective, if crowded, and sometimes awkwardly structured finale (the climax hits twice, and is more than a bit clunky) – but all in all, it does a very nice job of giving everyone fun things to do in a way that makes it feel like Team Batgirl is going in good places, and honoring what came before. Like Batgirl #24, little to no reliance on narration, just a nice use of dialogue and imagery.

Last and DEFINITELY least, Batgirl #50 – the conclusion of the Rebirth run of Batgirl. Cecil Castellucci may have been dealt a crummy hand. She jumped onto the title in the middle of a confusing event. She also got caught up in another confusing event at the end of her run. This, unfortunately, dictated many of her plot points. She didn’t get invited to editorial and writer meetings. This is something that Bryan Q. Miller shared also happened to him. The same occurred with Gail Simone. There’s definitely a sense that the Batgirl book was treated as a low priority by editorial much of the time. All that being said, her run on the title is still monumentally bad. The book contained bad rehashes of past stories (especially The Killing Joke). She developed an absolute terrible sense of relationship writing. The Burnside run also had its fair share. But it doesn’t end with that being the emphasis. She also included a political take so preachy and shallow it should have been posted as a placard instead of sold in stores. Babs accomplishes nothing significant except apologizing to her new boyfriend Jason Bard and getting her boss and her dad to join her in protesting for more housing. The two backup stories are dreadful as well, first giving Babs an absolutely cringe-worthy villain named Vi Ross while the Justice League ignores her, the second writing extremely out-of-character versions of Steph, Cass, and the Birds of Prey playing Dungeons and Dragons and then trying to do the same thing in crimefighting. Emanuela Lupacchino’s gorgeous art was wasted on these 24 pages of absolute drivel.

Which brings us back to Batgirls #19, the book in question. Cloonan and Conrad struggled to find the right tone in their first two arcs (9 issues). They leaned too hard on goofiness and cute moments. But by issue 10, they’d settled on a balance of melancholy and snark which served them pretty well. There’s still a sense of especially Conrad’s voice poking through the characters (Steph saying “clowning” in this issue felt so much like Conrad’s tweeting it was uncanny). But in general, the Batgirls and their friends pulled together to save each other in a satisfying and fun way. Steph and Cass each take down one of the snipers. This demonstrated their own personalities and unique skills. There’s Steph’s disciplined chaos and brutal trash talk, and Cass’s brilliance at body reading and fighting. Babs puts in nice work as Oracle. Steph also manages to prove her empathy and communication skills by persuading Grace not to take revenge. This is something she herself struggled with in this run facing down her dad again. Robbi Rodriguez’s art feels a bit rushed. There’s some obviously repeated panels, but not too bad. All in all, a nicely concluded arc that also brings together all the remaining cast members and many nice references to the beginning of the series.

Once a Batgirl, Always a Batgirl

The final line of the comic, also seen on the cover, hearkens back to Vita Ayala’s Future State: Batgirls two-part story back in January-February 2021. I personally speculated that DC originally intended for Ayala to launch a Batgirls series sometime soon after Future state ended, similar to how Matt Rosenberg launched his Red Hood series in the middle of 2021. For some reason, they did not go with Ayala. Nor did they go with Castellucci or Marguerite Bennett, both of whom ran Batgirls short stories in the Urban Legends anthology series that launched several other series like Deathstroke Inc, Tim Drake: Robin, Sword of Azrael (both of which were also poorly received). We know DC hired Cloonan and Conrad for Batgirls in spring of 2021 for the October release of the Fear State backups that led into Batgirls. That, however, cut things very close to the end of the year for what should have been a launch series for Infinite Frontier.

The fan reaction to the Batgirls title that we got has been very mixed. Though it’s not the second coming of the Bryan Q. Miller’s Batgirl, it has a nice set of emotional notes. It plays very well. It also figured out its sense of structure. And it gave Steph and Cass each some really strong issues (particularly issues #14 and 15) that I think will go down in their histories as key moments. The choice to bring things back to the very genesis of the Batgirls concept is a nice one. It gives us a sense that Steph and Cass will always have this time as Batgirls. We know this even though we don’t know what the future holds for all of the Batgirls. Cass is in Spirit World right now. She’s also heading to the new Birds of Prey. Babs is hanging out in Nightwing a lot. Steph, unfortunately, is still in limbo – but there’s always hope. Thank you all for sticking with this series, both of comics and of these reviews. I hope that they’ve given some value for time, just as reading these Batgirls comics has rewarded me.

The Covers

Jorge Corona, artist for the first arc (plus Fear State backups), has done all 19 of the main covers for this series. This final cover is a nice image of Steph and Cass marching with their supporters. It’s a nice mirror of what’s inside, and you can see Babs, Kyle, Maps, Grace, and Brooks at least in the crowd behind them, in a classic final cover “include the whole cast” move. The cover text also mirrors the ending words of the book – Once a Batgirl, Always a Batgirl – first seen in Future State: Batgirls, in what perhaps was the original attempt to launch this series. David Marquez provides a lovely fourth cover in his series for this run. It shows all three Batgirls hanging out on a wire balcony, launching and having a bite together. There are really great personality and renderings of the costumes! Interior artist Robbi Rodriguez provides the 1 in 25 incentive cover, showing Cass and Steph leaping out at the reader. A kaleidoscope of color and light surrounds them (something that might have been nice to see in a foil variant, but no luck).

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Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with a copy of Batgirls #19 for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Comixology through Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.