No Tears

Batgirl #18

Batgirl survives — barely — her close call with Firefly, all while Gotham’s citizens try to pull her out of the wreckage — and her psychotic brother tries to find her to kill her. Barbara learns from her father that Damian Wayne is dead, and James Jr. calls her to threaten her. He misses the chance to kill his mother, and Batgirl goes after Firefly and then tries to track James down.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story is fine, and the tension with James Jr. is handled well. But it is a bit annoying that the cover promises much mourning about Robin’s death, only to deliver a couple of pages in which no one sounds particularly sad. (And it’s not like this version of Batgirl ever had much to do with Damian anyway — that was all Stephanie Brown…)

Sledgehammer 44 #1

Here’s a story from the Hellboy universe’s World War II. Mike Mignola and John Arcudi tell the tale, while Jason Latour and Dave Stewart illustrate. It focuses on a small group of dogfaces in occupied France who are called on to help support a guy in powered armor who’s been airdropped in to fight the Nazis. While he meets with initial success, you can always trust the Nazis to have a much larger mecha on their side. Even if the good guys can survive that onslaught, can they escape from the Nazis — toting the powered-armor Sledgehammer in a wheelbarrow, no less — without getting captured or killed?

Verdict: Thumbs up. But I’m a complete sucker for fightin’ robots in WWII.