Stephanie Brown: Spoiler, Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman Appreciation 2021

[ohfellow]

And, I had spotted and ordered this Bengal cover. It was originally supposed to be a Becky Cloonan cover.

It's required a depressing amount of effort to stay on top of variant covers, because for a while DC stopped revealing them until just before final order cutoff (which is around 10 days before publication for most monthly books, but a few weeks longer for specials and anthologies etc.). They're getting better at it, though.

Urban Legends #10 was solicited for November but delayed until this week, and most of the covers were not shown in the online solicits or in DC Connect #16. The only cover that was solicited in a timely way was actually the Federici variant, though it wasn't labelled as a variant.

A bigger problem is that the stories in Urban Legends are rarely good, and the book is big and expensive.

Let's hope Tini Howard's holiday short story in this issue, with the Batgirls and Nightwing, is fun.

[WonderNight]

It's a snowball fight. Steph built a gigantic one.

They just get finish watching some DBZ

[adrikito]

It's a snowball fight. Steph built a gigantic one.

I was thinking in that too but watching her jumping here this high I almost discarded it

[ohfellow]

I was thinking in that too but watching her jumping here this high I almost discarded it

It is way too high, but Steph at least looks like she's jumping. Barbara's posture is far more improbable. Maybe she was dropped from a helicopter. But I'm glad she isn't wearing her new pajama suit.

[millernumber1]

And, I had spotted and ordered this Bengal cover. It was originally supposed to be a Becky Cloonan cover.

It's required a depressing amount of effort to stay on top of variant covers, because for a while DC stopped revealing them until just before final order cutoff (which is around 10 days before publication for most monthly books, but a few weeks longer for specials and anthologies etc.). They're getting better at it, though.

Urban Legends #10 was solicited for November but delayed until this week, and most of the covers were not shown in the online solicits or in DC Connect #16. The only cover that was solicited in a timely way was actually the Federici variant, though it wasn't labelled as a variant.

A bigger problem is that the stories in Urban Legends are rarely good, and the book is big and expensive.

Let's hope Tini Howard's holiday short story in this issue, with the Batgirls and Nightwing, is fun.

I really like this cover. I'm super, super not excited about this issue, though, considering it's part four of Tim's "broke up with Steph" saga, and I have not liked Tini Howard's writing for a long time. Pretty much the only part of the anthology I find interesting is learning more about the evil but beautiful angel character Azrael is facing.

I've been trying to stay on top of variant covers for Batgirls - thankfully, Steph and Cass twitter are pretty good about letting me know about new ones. Other series variants, however, are very difficult. I've been using League of Comic Geeks for a lot of them - that site is pretty well updated.

And yeah, Urban Legends has a really frustrating quality to quantity ratio. And even the decent stories aren't worth 8 bucks a month. And when the Batgirls stories are on the level of the Castellucci or Bennett stories? That's worth negative money to me.

[Frontier]

I really like this cover. I'm super, super not excited about this issue, though, considering it's part four of Tim's "broke up with Steph" saga, and I have not liked Tini Howard's writing for a long time. Pretty much the only part of the anthology I find interesting is learning more about the evil but beautiful angel character Azrael is facing.

I've been trying to stay on top of variant covers for Batgirls - thankfully, Steph and Cass twitter are pretty good about letting me know about new ones. Other series variants, however, are very difficult. I've been using League of Comic Geeks for a lot of them - that site is pretty well updated.

And yeah, Urban Legends has a really frustrating quality to quantity ratio. And even the decent stories aren't worth 8 bucks a month. And when the Batgirls stories are on the level of the Castellucci or Bennett stories? That's worth negative money to me.

What are good Cass and Steph twitter accounts?

[millernumber1]

What are good Cass and Steph twitter accounts?

Daily Cass Cain is pretty good, though I disagree strongly with them about a few things. But that's the case with everyone. Daily Stephanie Brown is also good, though they're mostly a tracker who provides a hugely helpful source for wiki updates rather than commentary. I like to post about Steph myself, but not very consistently. Hopefully Batgirls will change that now that I have a monthly comic to look forward to.

[ohfellow]

I've been trying to stay on top of variant covers for Batgirls - thankfully, Steph and Cass twitter are pretty good about letting me know about new ones. Other series variants, however, are very difficult. I've been using League of Comic Geeks for a lot of them - that site is pretty well updated.

And yeah, Urban Legends has a really frustrating quality to quantity ratio. And even the decent stories aren't worth 8 bucks a month. And when the Batgirls stories are on the level of the Castellucci or Bennett stories? That's worth negative money to me.

There are a lot of great retailer exclusive variants but they cost too much. And the 1:25 variants, which, if you find a retailer who is going to be willing to buy 25 copies, is going to probably cost even more than what retailer exclusives cost, because retailers will at least want to recoup their costs to buy 25 - they may be left with unsold copies.

I go to the distributor source to watch for some covers that I know were missing - lunardistribution.com.

They don't do a perfect job with their home page lists, which are organized by FOC date, because they don't even leave blank placeholders for unrevealed covers. They are just missing completely from the carousel.

But there's a search bar at the top, and you can find everything through that, including blank placeholders. (Very occasionally, clicking on a blank one to see the details will actually show the larger image of the cover.) The blank ones are almost always updated during the week prior to their Sunday FOC - somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday I think.

It's a very competent and easy search engine. For instance, simply legends 10 will find these covers.

tfaw.com is a retailer that keeps covers mostly up-to-date, and has very high resolution full size images.

Another thing I look at is artists' Instagrams and Twitter pages - sometimes they post at least teases of things that you can't find elsewhere.

I'll check out those twitter users you mention.

[millernumber1]

There are a lot of great retailer exclusive variants but they cost too much. And the 1:25 variants, which, if you find a retailer who is going to be willing to buy 25 copies, is going to probably cost even more than what retailer exclusives cost, because retailers will at least want to recoup their costs to buy 25 - they may be left with unsold copies.

I go to the distributor source to watch for some covers that I know were missing - lunardistribution.com.

They don't do a perfect job with their home page lists, which are organized by FOC date, because they don't even leave blank placeholders for unrevealed covers. They are just missing completely from the carousel.

But there's a search bar at the top, and you can find everything through that, including blank placeholders. (Very occasionally, clicking on a blank one to see the details will actually show the larger image of the cover.) The blank ones are almost always updated during the week prior to their Sunday FOC - somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday I think.

It's a very competent and easy search engine. For instance, simply legends 10 will find these covers.

tfaw.com is a retailer that keeps covers mostly up-to-date, and has very high resolution full size images.

Another thing I look at is artists' Instagrams and Twitter pages - sometimes they post at least teases of things that you can't find elsewhere.

I'll check out those twitter users you mention.

I feel ya on the cost of the retailer exclusives. I'm buying the Babs Tarr and Joshua Middleton ones, and they're both a lot more than I usually am willing to spend - but...I just love the covers, and want to support the book. And I don't think DC has been collecting these covers in their non-deluxe trades, so if I want them, I have to get them now. Unless Batgirls sells ridiculously well and it gets a Deluxe first edition, but I doubt it, sadly.

[ohfellow]

I feel ya on the cost of the retailer exclusives. I'm buying the Babs Tarr and Joshua Middleton ones, and they're both a lot more than I usually am willing to spend - but...I just love the covers, and want to support the book. And I don't think DC has been collecting these covers in their non-deluxe trades, so if I want them, I have to get them now. Unless Batgirls sells ridiculously well and it gets a Deluxe first edition, but I doubt it, sadly.

I don't think DC ever collects the retailer exclusive covers anywhere, but might include their own variants in a collection. Traditionally, I've seen variants even in the basic TPBs, but maybe not when there are this many?

I wonder what ethnicity Will Jack was thinking of for his Steph variant at East Side Comics, and Joshua Middleton's Cass doesn't look Asian to me. His girls spent a lot of time putting on makeup, too - blush and lipstick. That's the "cover girl" cover.

The covers I know of are:

DC:

CVR A Jorge Corona
CVR B Inhyuk Lee masked connecting
CVR C Inhyuk Lee unmasked connecting
CVR D Team variant Amano Yoshitaka
CVR E 1:25 Rian Gonzales
CVR F 1:50 Dan Hipp

(The team variants are semi-retailer exclusive. Not sure you can call them CVR D, but DC does list the team variants in solicits.)

Retailers:

Many of the so-called retailer "exclusives" seem to be available at many retailers, which I haven't seen before. I guess they partner up to make the investment, but don't the retailer names get printed on the back cover? So these are just some of the places you can buy these:

Alex Garner (his Instagram lists Comic Kingdom of Canada)
Will Jack (East Side Comics)
Kendrick Lim (Comics Elite, South Side Comics)
Dan Mora (Glass Cabinet Hobbies)
Joshua Middleton (Big Time Collectibles)
Babs Tarr (tfaw)

Am I missing any?

The Alex Garner has some amazing colors (as you'd expect from him) - Steph's cape is literally translucent. Makes me think of tinted jellyfish, and unless it's a new miracle fabric, that cape isn't especially practical - it wouldn't last long in actual use. On the other hand, Spoiler's traditional cape looks very bulky, so given the choice, a lighter one could be better.

OK, so one thing I hope you do if you write the tbu review is to review all of the covers. Your descriptions of covers are excellent.

[millernumber1]

I don't think DC ever collects the retailer exclusive covers anywhere, but might include their own variants in a collection. Traditionally, I've seen variants even in the basic TPBs, but maybe not when there are this many?

I wonder what ethnicity Will Jack was thinking of for his Steph variant at East Side Comics, and Joshua Middleton's Cass doesn't look Asian to me. His girls spent a lot of time putting on makeup, too - blush and lipstick. That's the "cover girl" cover.

The covers I know of are:

DC:

CVR A Jorge Corona
CVR B Inhyuk Lee masked connecting
CVR C Inhyuk Lee unmasked connecting
CVR D Team variant Amano Yoshitaka
CVR E 1:25 Rian Gonzales
CVR F 1:50 Dan Hipp

(The team variants are semi-retailer exclusive. Not sure you can call them CVR D, but DC does list the team variants in solicits.)

Retailers:

Many of the so-called retailer "exclusives" seem to be available at many retailers, which I haven't seen before. I guess they partner up to make the investment, but don't the retailer names get printed on the back cover? So these are just some of the places you can buy these:

Alex Garner (his Instagram lists Comic Kingdom of Canada)
Will Jack (East Side Comics)
Kendrick Lim (Comics Elite, South Side Comics)
Dan Mora (Glass Cabinet Hobbies)
Joshua Middleton (Big Time Collectibles)
Babs Tarr (tfaw)

Am I missing any?

The Alex Garner has some amazing colors (as you'd expect from him) - Steph's cape is literally translucent. Makes me think of tinted jellyfish, and unless it's a new miracle fabric, that cape isn't especially practical - it wouldn't last long in actual use. On the other hand, Spoiler's traditional cape looks very bulky, so given the choice, a lighter one could be better.

OK, so one thing I hope you do if you write the tbu review is to review all of the covers. Your descriptions of covers are excellent.

I think that's all of the covers, but if you missed any, I collected all of the ones I could find here: https://stephaniebrown.fandom.com/wiki/Batgirls_Vol_1_1

I'm not assigned to reviews, but I have been thinking about doing a youtube or blog post about all of them. There are so many exciting ones to talk about!

What do people think of today's issue? I think on careful reading and rereading, I see a lot of character notes for Steph that feel a lot like her Batgirl run, which makes me happy.

[sunofdarkchild]

I enjoyed it. Nothing blew me away but I also have no complaints. A decent first issue that leaves me wanting more.

[millernumber1]

I enjoyed it. Nothing blew me away but I also have no complaints. A decent first issue that leaves me wanting more.

Hooray! Any favorite Steph moments?

[ohfellow]

I think that's all of the covers, but if you missed any, I collected all of the ones I could find here: https://stephaniebrown.fandom.com/wiki/Batgirls_Vol_1_1

I'm not assigned to reviews, but I have been thinking about doing a youtube or blog post about all of them. There are so many exciting ones to talk about!

What do people think of today's issue? I think on careful reading and rereading, I see a lot of character notes for Steph that feel a lot like her Batgirl run, which makes me happy.

I won't get to it till tonight .

Any thoughts on the Nightwing story in Urban Legends?

It's great you started the Batgirls section on the wiki, and that you've got the skeleton for all of the Future State and Infinite Frontier appearances.

I've played part, so far, of the "Chattin' Batgirls with Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, and Jorge Corona" episode from a GateCrashers podcast I stumbled on yesterday, and I recommend it.

https://gatecrashers.fan/2021/12/13/...-jorge-corona/

[millernumber1]

I won't get to it till tonight .

Any thoughts on the Nightwing story in Urban Legends?

It's great you started the Batgirls section on the wiki, and that you've got the skeleton for all of the Future State and Infinite Frontier appearances.

I've played part, so far, of the "Chattin' Batgirls with Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, and Jorge Corona" episode from a GateCrashers podcast I stumbled on yesterday, and I recommend it.

https://gatecrashers.fan/2021/12/13/...-jorge-corona/

My physical copy is on its way to me tonight, but I got the digital copy too!

The variant cover with Steph and a huge snowball was the best part of the Nightwing story for me. It wasn't BAD, especially given how little I like Tini Howard's writing for the X-Men, but it wasn't very good either (not looking forward to reviewing her Catwoman). Art was nice, though.

I really need to do some more updating of the wiki, but I just am slowly struggling to get back the motivation to do it all. I'm definitely going to keep up with the Batgirls issues, though.

I've listened to that Gatecrashers podcast, and about four others that the team has done in the last two weeks. I am hoping all the marketing will bring in some new fans! What Cloonan and Conrad said about Steph really made me happy - it feels like they've really thought through her character, and I can see it in the first issue.