Batgirls #5 // Review
So there’s this crazy guy who can control people’s minds. A team of superheroes has managed to track him down, but is it really the best idea to have him cornered in Arkham Asylum? Time will tell in the fifth issue of Batgirls. Writers Michael Conrad and Becky Cloonan continue a fun introduction to the new team with art by Jorge Corona. Colorist Sarah Stern lends style and atmosphere to the penultimate chapter of the six-part series-opening story. Conrad, Cloonan, and company have developed a remarkably well-modulated opening adventure for the team with nearly perfect pacing leading into the sixth issue.
Batgirl, Batgirl and Bondo are being chased. (Bondo’s a classy mess of a car that can only play a certain song by Smashmouth. It’s way cooler than any Batmobile.) The dynamic trio is being chased by a van. The van isn’t very menacing, but what’s inside it is three very high-powered bad guys who want to stomp them into the concrete. Batgirl can’t outrun them, so she does what they might not expect: she turns Bondo right around and barrels right at them. Was it a stupid decision? Yes. Did it work? Yes. The Batgirls aren’t out of harm’s way yet, though: they still have a showdown with a villain at Arkham Asylum.
The crisp wit of Conrad and Cloonan continues in another satisfyingly fun encounter with Batgirl, Batgirl, Bondo, and Barbara Gordon. Every issue has managed to feel like some kind of party, which is impressive. More than that: every issue seems like a distinctly different party. The writing team knows how to layer in action-based humor just like any contemporary comic book writer, but they have an almost genius-level understanding of pacing. They have placed just enough different elements into the panel to keep it all feeling crazy and pleasantly disjointed without over-cluttering everything. It all moves in a cleverly orchestrated chaos.
Corona and Stern have a very distinct visual fingerprint for the series. At times it looks beautiful. Things might sometimes trip over each other. In dialogue, a van is referred to as white, and it’s...not. A sudden u-turn seems to have missed a panel. Action sometimes hits between panels, but it all looks so good, and the atmosphere feels so enjoyably cool. The imagination is engaged, and the panels' action connects somewhere between the page and the eye. Like the new Gotham-based team, the art seems to work even when it doesn’t feel completely graceful.
Three women. A car. A motorcycle. A bat motif. It all works. Conrad and Cloonan have even managed to find a relatively novel group of villains for the trio to stare down in their opening story. It all fits together so well. Bat-based Gothamite heroes have been fighting crime and insanity on page and screen for the better part of a century, but Conrad and Cloonan seem to have found a new approach to the action that feels so pleasantly like starting all over again.
