Bat Of Few Words, But Many Fists: Reviewing ‘Batgirl’ #1

After twenty years, Cassandra Cain, the Batgirl, is ready to take on a new fight and fly solo once more. That’s right, the fan-favorite bat character has her very own spotlight ongoing series.

Lady Shiva is back and ready to make her daughter’s life tougher as Tate Brombal, Takeshi Miyazawa, Mike Spicer, and Tom Napolitano kick off the dynamic Batgirl #1.

If you could not tell, I loved this issue.

That’s because Cassandra Cain is absolutely not only one of my favorite Bat-family characters but one of my favorite DC Comics characters as a whole.

Out of all the members of the family that work under the symbol of the bat, she is one of the most intriguing. Born and engineered to be an assassin (through the machinations of Lady Shiva and David Cain) she strove to be something else. Becoming part of the Batman family, she– more than almost any other of Batman’s children– took the symbol and the mission to heart. She chose to become someone that fights for others, doesn’t kill, and strives to always be better, truly becoming the daughter of Batman (a fact that even Shiva knows and mentions in the issue).

All of this is also taken to heart by Brombal, who nails the character. The succinct to the point nature of her captions, her matter of fact way of speech, and the overall way the character works here is peak Cassandra Cain. I love that between this book and Birds Of Prey, we’re eating fantastically well with Cassandra, seeing all the facets of her and giving her the chance to be the badass that she is. It’s the same reason I loved the still missed Batgirls series that had badass but also fun Cassandra– because her relationship with Stephanie Brown/Batgirl is truly one of the greatest friendships in the DC realm.

What we get here is a very simple premise. Lady Shiva shows up, Cassandra wants nothing to do with her, Shiva warns of a threat to them both, said threat comes for them, and mother and daughter must team up against this threat. Pretty much a textbook type of story that fits both characters and is very much new and old reader friendly. It’s between the lines, and the filling that is added to this simple piece that takes it over the top.

Finding a way to engage any reader, especially any new ones, while delivering something that makes the old fans giddy is very much a tough balancing act. Brombal is over here looking like a seasoned tightrope walker, ready to join Nightwing at the circus any day of the weak. He’s just swirling the two flavors together into something you just want to eat over and over again.

Boosting that is the always fun yet deftly heavy artwork that Miyazawa delivers.

As soon as I see that art style, I can’t help but smile. There is just something so whimsical but also powerful and strong about it. He’s able to make the story feel light and flowing but also weighty and ominous at the same time.

The art is very smooth and captures both action as well as emotional beats with the same relative ease and depth. I felt very similarly about the various Silk books in recent years that Miyazawa was drawing, doing very similar things with that character and her space in the world.

Just like the art itself, the color palette has a solid balance between the light and the dark. Spicer’s choices allow there to be a lot of natural levels of colors which set up the surroundings (building interiors, outdoors, etc.). Achieving this lets the more fantastical or wild elements, such as the villain group or costumes, to become the pop of more vibrant color on the page.

Seeing Napolitano’s name here was a welcome situation. I was quite the fan of his work throughout his time working on Catwoman over the years. Blending the emotional energy and personality of words on the page with really fun visual quirks that give the lettering even more power. Compared to Catwoman, Batgirl has a very subdued personality all around. We feel that within the captions, with the simple black of them and the yellow border and font choice. Keeping a level-toned inner voice for our title character, saying a lot with sometimes just one word.

The way the bold is used here, to really highlight and give emphasis is pretty darn good. Right away, I can feel the sort of heightened emotion behind an “I do not believe her” from Cassandra. Similarly there are the instances where various words change shape, size, or font style in order to really pump up the volume and energy along the way. Not to mention all the really juicy loud SFX found along the way, with their own sense of style.

Batgirl #1 is now available from DC Comics.