BATGIRL #45: Preview/Discussion

[Aioros22]

The big deal over the issue is Dick acting like a dick. Moreso than a dick is Dick acting like a needy insecure man. Which on itself, is not really a major deal to go fandom for anyway. Once again Internet/we fandom leaves me baffled. But at the very least, we/internet fandom sure are a passionate audience, you can`t say otherwise.

[Badou]

here we go again.

Can he just end up with Star Fire please. The Dick and Babs dream got crushed like 5+ years ago

He's going to appear in the Starfire book soon too and is basically going to get involved with her and her new love interest. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a similar situation in that book that we just had here.

[Faruq]

He's going to appear in the Starfire book soon too and is basically going to get involved with her and her new love interest. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a similar situation in that book that we just had here.

Gotta admit, it would be kind of funny to see Dick turn up in a bunch of other comics, trying to desperately convince female characters to go out with him and continuously failing miserably

[Maxpower00044]

Least favorite issue so far. It wasn't because of Grayson, either. I feel he wasn't written terrible here. People are known to act uncharacteristically, it what makes us flawed humans. My gripe was just the boring content of the issue. I know I'm not the books target audience so I do expect issues that lead more towards things for females, so I'm not gonna call for that to stop, or anything. I just wasn't very interested in the wedding aspect. I'd rather watch Babs kicking peoples' asses.

[Vworp Vworp]

At this point, the disconnect in Batgirl between the quality of the art alongside the mediocrity of the writing is becoming enormous.

Nothing in this issue mattered. Absolutely nothing. Not because there was no action or bad guys or butt-kicking...a comic book is capable of telling a personal little story and still making it an enjoyable read. The problem here was that this issue failed to do that, on almost every conceivable level.

The main problem was the characters. Or, more specifically, the absence of them. Nobody in this issue was anything other than a generic place-holder, people with thinly-drawn personalities that we're expected to care about, presumably just because they're in the book. Alicia hasn't been the most developed or layered character since Gail created her and nothing has changed in the new run. As such, making her wedding the centrepiece of this issue was already getting things off on shaky ground.

And with regards to the 'historic' first trangender wedding in a comicbook, that shouldn't need to be a 'gimmick' for the writers to pat themselves on the back for. Because that's what this felt like. Rather than writing an emotional, thoughtful, believable story that just happened to be about a Transgender marriage, instead this was shallow, bland and came across like no real effort had been put into it cos the writers figured the concept alone was enough.

As for Dick, yes, he acted like a bit of douche here. But really only in the same one-dimensional, blah, writing-by-numbers way that everyone felt lazily written. Personally, I have no particular interest in Dick and Babs as a couple, but their conversation was painful to read. Not from an emotional perspective of course, but simply because the dialogue was so utterly poor, a bunch of cliches and soundbites cut and pasted from the many, many previous times Barbara and Dick have had the same conversation. And the less said about Babs and Lucius chemistry-free relationship, the better.

So why continue to pick up the book? One reason. But a pretty big one. Babs Tarr. Everything that the writing lacks - emotion, wit, feeling, spontaneity, excitement, all those qualities and more are present in Babs' art.

Maybe DC could turn Batgirl's book into the comic equivalent of a silent movie and leave everything to Tarr.