Batgirl #40 // Review
Burnside is burning. Not all of it. Just bits of it. The fire stretched across the southwestern neighborhood of Gotham is in the shape of a giant bat sigil. Implausible? Yes. But not considering it’s been engineered by a highly intelligent AGI. Looks like Babs is going to have her hands full in issue #40 of Batgirl. Writer Cecil Castellucci brings a very compelling action/drama to the page with the aid of artist Carmine DiGiandomenico. Gorgeous color radiates off the page courtesy of Jordie Bellaire. Many things begin to connect-up in a well written fourth installment of Castellucci’s “Oracle Rising” story.
Babs is in her apartment watching the news when she first sees the live TV news feed from the Burnside Bridge. Clearly, there’s a message here, and the message is understood loud and clear by Burnside’s defender. She heads out to investigate. Turns out that the Terrible Trio is involved, but this time they’re working for someone...the rumor is that a robot is out to get her. It will come as a great surprise to her that the “robot” in question is one that she created. It’s had a few modifications which turn out to be very, very dangerous by another intellect altogether. More than a mere program, it is now and sentient Artificial General Intelligence. And thanks to being abandoned by Batgirl, it’s now a very, very angry sentient Artificial General Intelligence.
Castellucci swings through a very well-thought-out, well-constructed story with action and drama in all the right places. His sharp characterization of Batgirl if impressively sophisticated. She’s a powerful intellect who is adroit enough to know right away that burning Burnside is going to have repercussions for the pharmaceutical supply in the city...casually warning the police on her way off to handle the fire. She’s very quick on the uptake about everything that’s going on in the heat of the moment. Naturally, she’s going to be a bit confused by the sudden appearance of Oracle as a sentient robot, so she doesn’t come across as being unrealistically brilliant. She’s just a badass, selfless intellectual hero. Very cool characterization for a hero who lately has been far more interesting and infinitely more appealing than her male counterpart on the other side of Gotham River.
DiGiandomenico uses a really appealing layout for this issue. The Burnside fire seems overwhelming. The first couple of pages have panels of immediate action bordered by much larger scenes of a massive metropolitan fire. Architectural rendering in the background is beautiful amidst the flames and smoke that are brought to the page by Bellaire. The action feels very fluid as a heroic Batgirl glides through the flames surveying the scene and trying to locate its causes. The ease with which she dispatches the Terrible Three on her way to the fateful meeting with Oracle makes the power of that conflict feel all the more powerful. Through it all, there’s an intense contrast between the gritty determination on the face if Batgirl and the calm, affectlessness of Oracle’s visage. Very striking stuff.
Castellucci and DiGiandomenico’s brilliant execution of Babs’ chronicles amid a big, oppressive multi-title crossover speaks to a very deft mastery of the street-level superhero genre that should be great fun to see develop further once the title wheels itself out from underneath the massive machinery of The Year of the Villain.
