I guess I didn’t see this one coming. I fully expected the “Beyond Burnside” arc to be over, but Hope Larson gives us this one-shot epilogue to close things out (and Rafael Albuquerque gives us one last round on Babs Gordon). This is purely a transition piece, but it’s wonderfully comic-booky and reads like an…

The “Beyond Burnside Finale” brings Hope Larson’s first Batgirl story to its conclusion. Right up front there’s a lot of cool action in this comic as Batgirl has to work out how to take down Teacher with her enhanced mental/physical abilities.  Right up front I’ll say that I liked her solution. Right up front I’ll…

We’re in Part 4 of the “Beyond Burnside” arc and all the elements of the story that Hope Larson has been setting up are coming together. We’ve met Schoolgirl early on, but now it’s time to meet Teacher--and Teacher has some very curious surprises! First off, though I want to draw some attention to the…

Barbara Gordon does something in this month’s issue of Batgirl that I’m pretty sure we never saw her do during her Burnside run (and possibly even before Burnside, when she was still under the helm of Gail Simone): she got fed up with someone’s shenanigans (Kai’s, of course), and utterly left him in the lurch.…

Hope Larson looks to be doing some slow-burn setup with this continuation of last month’s “Beyond Burnside”. After making big changes in Batgirl’s rebirth, it feels like she might be playing it a bit safe, but I’m okay with that and here’s 3+1 reasons why you should be too: All that and scary schoolgirls! The…

The big question everyone is asking: is Hope Larson going to bring Batgirl back to her potential glory? I won’t make you suffer through a whole review to get the answer. The short of it is that Hope has put HOPE on the horizon. “Beyond Burnside” gets us out of the Gotham burb and half…

Brenden Fletcher brings this book to a close before Rebirth as Batgirl says bye-bye to Burnside in a finale titled “Turning the Page”. So is it a page turner? Let’s talk about the art first for a change. I feel like cutting this issue some slack given we haven’t had a Batgirl book with a…

This month’s issue features a sad Babs on the cover with her costume in the trash bin in perhaps what feels like an appropriate commentary on the whole redirection of this comic, but I’m going to back off from that remark because it’s pretty harsh and, well, even if this book has deserved some of…

This plus-sized issue is 40 pages of Batgirl, but before you get too excited about that, let me just state up front that 7 of those pages are basically pin-ups, 5 of which are masquerading as pages, but really serve as weird “deathmatch” promos to set up the various fights throughout the book--in case we…

Okay folks! Now we’re cooking with gas. It’s unfortunate that Barbara Gordon needs to be unconscious on a table in order to be interesting in her own comic book (let alone an AI version of her), but this is what it’s come to. And frankly, the change of pace in this month’s “Mindfield”  is definitely…

“Old Friends” brings Black Canary back to the pages of Batgirl, but don’t get too excited. While Dinah may have perked the book up a point the last time we saw her at Alysia’s wedding (issue No. 45), and while she’s actually the best thing about this issue as well, there’s really not a lot…

Every month I come to this book with some small ever-fading glimmer of hope, but notoriously low expectations, and every time those hopes are dashed and the expectations are met head-on. These last couple of issues, I’ve resorted to a page-by-page blow-by-blow in which I nitpick the comic to death. This month I’m going to…

The Batgirl team continues to give us more of what someone wants (apparently a lot of someones since the book sells). Unfortunately I’m not one of those someones, but every month I try to find things to say about this book that are positive given its focus on what appears to be a very specific…

Welcome to a new nadir from the Batgirl team: a superhero book without any real superheroics that features a title character who is so insufferable you'd think she was the neurotic bride being married. “Dearly Beloved” gives us the conversation we should have had in the last issue of Grayson--but couldn’t because, you know, Spyral…

I've "been trying really hard to highlight the positives that are in this book”. Truer words from Bat Reviewer Josh were never spoken as I really struggled with this issue. The fact is, I just don’t enjoy much about this book and would have a hard time recommending it even to its intended audience. It’s…

I promised I was going to try to say good things about this book this month and I’m keeping my promise, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to point out where it’s still going places that nobody should want it to go. “Tooth and Claw” is the start of an arc about tigers gobbling…

Last month we saw the rebirth/escape of the villain Livewire. This month’s “Surge Protection” gives us her origin via her YouTube-like channel (for which she also apparently did makeup tutorials--seriously). Babs calls on the assistance of both Frankie and Qadir (who has now conveniently left the University for a job with Luke Fox), to help…