Batgirl #43 // Review
Barbara Gordon is drawn-into a realm between psychosis, love, and ultimate power in Batgirl #43. Writer Cecil Castellucci casts Batgirl’s internal conflicts against the fantasy world of a novelist who has been stricken with a kind of limited omnipotence in Part One of “Graveyards of Words and Bones.” Artist Cian Tormey and colorist Chris Sotomayor conjure a story to the page that is trapped between worlds. The action and fantasy are well-established in a dreamy story caught in the inner conflicts Batgirl has been struggling with between the panels of the recent past. The darker earthbound elements of Batgirl’s life take a backseat to fantasy-driven psychodrama in a satisfying issue.
Batgirl is patrolling a park when she sees an old woman beset by a couple of massive, animalistic purple demons. Naturally, she swings-in to help the woman...a process made all the more difficult by the fact that she’s evidently suffering from some kind of schizophrenic break from reality. When she turns out to be the long-lost love of a god-king from the popular Unearth fantasy novel series, things get a lot more complicated for Batgirl and her own love life.
Castellucci’s exploration of Barbara Gordon’s psychology is smartly worked-into the story of fantasy novelist Earnest Hinton and his struggles to aid his mentally ill former lover Margaret heal. Love is a central theme in the issue as Batgirl’s love for colleague Jason draws HIM into the dizzying danger between Gotham City and Unearth. The emotional adventure going on between Barbara and Jason and Earnest and Margaret does not detract from the fantasy adventure that involves demons, magic, and paired worlds. Castellucci has a very deft handle of all of the story’s elements that cleverly keeps everything from crashing into itself.
Tormey etches sophistication into the fusion between Gotham and Unearth. Part of the success of this lies in nuanced rendering of the magic and drama that never overwhelms the page with too much detail. Part of the success also has to do with the fact that Tormey has such a refreshingly sharp way of laying out the action on the page. Action glides gracefully from panel to panel. There’s a page where Barbara is getting lost in Unearth novels that wittily illustrates the nature of getting lost in a fantasy world while also providing some really endearing characterization and insight into where exactly it is that Babs is in her life right now...half awake sitting reading fantasy at a bus shelter until the fantasy world takes over and she’s lost in a weird world. It’s very casually stylish stuff. Sotomayor lends the page luminosity in the radiance of portals between the two worlds while providing some appealing visual depth to all of the action.
The act of thrusting a gritty, earthbound hero into a fantasy world is often used as a form of distance from the heavier aspects of the character’s life. Here Castellucci is using the fantasy world to explore the deeper elements of Barbara’s life into a fantasy world. It makes her inner struggle that much more visually appealing.
