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Batgirrrl, Batgirl! Batgirrrl, Batgirl!/Where do you come from, where do you go?/What is your scene, baby, we just gotta know!/Whose baby are you, Batgirrrl, Batgirl!

Of all the radical revamps and reimaginings that DC has subjected its characters to, one of the ones that has actually worked, and worked well, and has actually made the character more interesting has been the transformation of Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl into the wheelchair-bound Oracle, Batman and the DCU’s resident information specialist. Of course, that was kinda thrust upon them by Alan Moore’s decision to get Babs shot and paralyzed in Batman: the Killing Joke. But subsequent writers took lemons and made lemonade, and that’s been the status quo for over a decade now.

So now, in the wake of all the Batman: RIP stuff, someone somewhere has decided that everyone, at least his or her immediate circle of friends (if that applies) is tired of one of DC’s more interesting characters, at least as she is currently, and has apparently mandated that the status quo must change. This is not explicitly stated anywhere in this first issue, but if you read between the lines, it’s there. You can see it too, right? Right? Anyway, conspiracy theories aside, my admiration for the Oracle character hasn’t really translated into any sort of situation where I have been compelled to lay down coin to read her exploits in Birds of Prey, although I did buy that series for about a year at the beginning. That said, she’s always been a welcome addition to any JLA or Batman-related story I’ve read in the past, and it can even be said that her character has been an inspiration to disabled readers everywhere, to show how she overcame great obstacles to become a key player in the DCU.  But apparently that doesn’t matter so much anymore, if I’m interpreting this correctly.

OK, I hear you say “I get it, you like the character and think it would be a mistake to change her. What did you think about this comic? Should I buy?” Well, considering that it’s only chapter one of a multi-issue series, and much is yet to transpire, I liked it. As you might infer from my statement earlier about my lack of patronage of the BoP title proper, I am not really equipped to judge the characterization, but I thought that new-to-me scripter Kevin Van Hook set up the various scenarios well, and wrote naturalistic dialogue, two pluses as far as I’m concerned. I enjoyed the scenes in which the ordinary stuff happened- Babs’ distracted dinner with her dad, for example, and her back-and-forth with her hacker friend. Tying all this in with Barbara’s return to Gotham City, why I don’t really know and they don’t bother to tell us, assuming we read it somewhere else, and Final Crisis, specifically the Anti-Life Equation, remnants of which were apparently left here and there on the Web for the likes of the Calculator to find, was a pretty good idea as far as I’m concerned. I thought the ending was a bit arbitrarily brutal, but I suppose that the thinking was that they needed to get our attention with something shocking to show that “Hey, we’re not screwing around here!” Not really having gotten to know the unfortunate victim kinda blunted the impact, but I don’t suppose the character’s death was the point, just a plot nudge and a reason to give Babs a reason to seek righteous vengeance in the next two issues. The art, by Julian Lopez and Fernando Pasarin with inks credited to someone or something called “Bit” and Hi-Fi’s David Bryant, maintains a streamlined look that achieves the goal of looking like generic DC house style, vaguely Byrne-ish superhero art, with better-than-average depictions of the female form, and a slick Photoshopped sheen candy-coating the whole thing despite a scratchy ink line when you look close. It’s tolerable, but there’s no individual style, no spark. It tells the story, little more. Guillem March’s cover, shiny boobies and all, is dynamic and sharp- something the interior artists rarely aspire to and never manage to achieve.

If you’re invested in this whole Battle for the Cowl thing, then you’ll want this. If you like the Barbara Gordon character, well, this is as good a showcase as she’s liable to get- at least in this incarnation. If you couldn’t care less about either, then you can safely ignore this and go on about your business.

Battle for the Cowl: Oracle #1
“Home Again, Home Again”

Script: Kevin Van Hook
Pencillers: Julian Lopez and Fernando Pasarin
Inkers: “Bit” and Hi-Fi’s David Bryant
Letterer: Steve Wands
Color: Hi-Fi
Cover art: Guillem March

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