It’s been ages since I reviewed any comics! Let’s jump back into things with a look at Shadow of the Batgirl by Sarah Kuhn and Nicole Goux.

We start out with Cassandra Cain, brainwashed teenaged assassin, whose conditioning is unexpectedly broken when one of her victims leaves a brief final message for his daughter that shocks her out of her murderous programming. She spends a night in an alley before she’s taken in for a meal by Jackie Yoneyama, an old woman who runs a restaurant. Cass isn’t even able to thank her properly — she was trained by her father solely as an assassin, and she isn’t even able to talk.

Cass runs away and finds herself confused and frightened by the noise and chaos of modern life — and being pursued by the other assassins in her father’s employ. Soon she finds shelter in the Gotham Public Library, where she’s able to hide, learn to read, practice her fighting skills on stacks of books, and eventually start making friends, including a wheelchair-bound librarian named Barbara Gordon and a boy closer to her age named Erik.

Can Cass learn more about the world around her? Can Jackie, Barbara, and Erik help her come out of her shell? Can she defend herself against her father’s villainy and discover what happened to the long-vanished Batgirl?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Sarah Kuhn’s story is fine — a tad slow around the middle, but it picks up wonderfully well before the end. Besides, the slower portions of the story are where the character building comes in — and there’s so much great character detail in here. Lots of comics fans love Cassandra Cain, but this is a graphic novel for younger adults who might not be as familiar with Cass as everyone else is, and this comic gives her space to become a heroic character and a character who readers can love. That’s a great gift — not just to readers, but to Cass as a character, who now gets a new generation of fans.

I’m also a big fan of Jackie Yoneyama. She’s a new character created just for this book, but she was wonderfully realized. And she’s the kind of character who should be present in more comics, and particularly in more Bat comics — a street-level civilian who isn’t a victim, isn’t a crook, isn’t a future hero — just a connection to keep our main characters grounded as part of Gotham City. Even better — a character who runs a restaurant, because superheroes need somewhere to stop and get a bowl of ramen while fighting crime.

And let’s give big props to Nicole Goux’s stunning artwork, which rocks its way across every single page. And colorist Cris Peter really makes this book sing — shadowy libraries and rooftops, brilliant sunsets through windows, gloriously colorful clothing. The art and colors really make this book come to life.

Do you love Cass Cain, brilliant characters, beautiful artwork? You’ll definitely want to pick this up.

We got another giant buttload of Convergence comics this week, and once again, I’m going to try to get all of these cleared out of the way quickly.

Convergence: Nightwing and Oracle #2

The rotten-as-snot Flashpoint versions of Hawkman and Hawkgirl are in Gotham City, looking forward to killing Nightwing. But Dick Grayson isn’t all that easy to kill, and Barbara Gordon’s awfully, awfully smart. And they both have some really great friends. Can an acrobat and a paralyzed hacker beat up a couple maniacal winged fascists and still find true love?

The backup story is the first glimpse we get of the new “Midnighter” series.

Convergence: Superman #2

While Superman battles the Flashpoint versions of Cyborg, Captain Thunder, and Abin Sur, the skinny Flashpoint Superman kidnaps the pregnant Lois Lane. He takes her to the Flashpoint Batman’s Batcave, hoping Dr. Thomas Wayne can help deliver her baby. Will Lois’s baby be delivered safely?

The backup story is the first glimpse we get of the new “Doomed” series.

Convergence: The Question #2

Renee Montoya, along with the Huntress and Batwoman, are trying to find Two-Face. Harvey Dent desperately wants to die, and since he’s not able to commit suicide as long as his coin keeps coming up heads over and over, he’s decided to track down the Harvey Dent of another dimension and get him to commit murder on his behalf.

The backup story is the first glimpse we get of the new “Starfire” series.

Convergence: Speed Force #2

Wally West has to battle the seriously psycho Flashpoint Wonder Woman and her Amazons, while Fastback, from the Amazing Zoo Crew, tries to defend Jai and Iris West. Can the Flash handle a foe who’s almost as fast as he is and a much more deadly combatant? And will the loveable cartoon turtle survive?!

The backup story is the first glimpse we get of the new “Green Arrow” series.

Convergence: Batgirl #2

It’s Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Tim Drake vs. the Flashpoint versions of Gorilla Grodd and Catman!

The backup story is the first glimpse we get of the new “Prez” series.

Verdicts: We had some good stuff and some bad stuff. Let’s unpack this thang.

First of all, the Batgirl story is the one I was looking forward to the most, and it was just not good. While I liked the fact that she solved the issue’s dilemma through brainpower, the rest of it was not worth the paper. Confusing, badly illustrated, not well written, poor characterization. Of all the characters here, Steph probably needed closure the least — the end of her regular series was actually very well done and emotionally affecting. I would’ve enjoyed this one more if we’d gone with a good ending for Cass, instead of a tacked-on romance between Steph and Tim.

The rest were much better. The Nightwing/Oracle story was probably the best, but it was written by Gail Simone about some of her favorite characters, so that was certainly to be expected. The romance subplot didn’t feel tacked-on — in fact, it was at least, if not more important than, the entire battle against the Hawks.

Superman’s story was fine, but it was stronger as a combination of a great Lois Lane story and a nice story about the more hard-edged Flashpoint Batman finding something he was willing to care about.

The Question’s story was great just because it’s wonderful to see Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner working on these characters again.

Flash’s story was alright, but not all that spectacular. I was just glad to see Flashback survived — I take it the Zoo Crew has been taking it on the chin in the other Convergence books.

Of the sneak-peeks we get of the new series… not a lot of them really appeal to me. I’d had high hopes for the Prez and Starfire series, and they just don’t look very interesting. The Doomed series looks somewhat interesting — I knew nothing about it before — but it still stinks like ’90s Image to me…

So the first of the “Convergence” miniseries came out this week, and most of the stuff on my pull list all showed up at once. So hey, we’re gonna try to clear these outta here as quickly as we can.

We know the general premise, yes? A mysterious entity (Pssst! It is Brainiac!) had kidnapped many cities from old versions of the DC Universe or alternate universe variants. For the past year, they’ve all been held beneath domes, and the various superheroes under the domes have been deprived of their superpowers. Now the domes have been removed, everyone has their powers back, and the champions of each city must fight other champions, or their realities will be destroyed. And the first crop of books focuses on pre-Flashpoint characters, just before DC ruined everything with the Reboot.

Convergence: Batgirl #1

We start off with Stephanie Brown as Batgirl, Cassandra Cain as the Black Bat, and Tim Drake as Red Robin. Stephanie has been designated Gotham’s champion, despite the fact that she hasn’t worn her Batgirl costume in a year — Cassandra and Tim would be much more capable than Steph would. They start training her but are all soon dragged off into the desert where they’re attacked by the Catman and Gorilla Grodd from the Flashpoint universe.

Convergence: Superman #1

Superman has been without his powers for a year, but he’s been dressing up in a simple costume to fight crime Batman-style. Lois Lane has been assisting over a radio headset. Lois is also pregnant and due any day now. Once the dome is down and Supes has his powers back, he ends up tangling with Captain Thunder, Cyborg, and Abin Sur from Flashpoint, while the skinny teenaged Flashpoint Kal-El heads for Lois, believing her to be his Flashpoint benefactor.

Convergence: The Question #1

Renee Montoya is trying to help keep things under control in Gotham, running around without her mask. Harvey Dent is running around with half a beard, beating up thieves — and his two-headed coin is only flipping good side up lately. The Huntress doesn’t really approve, but she’s not going to get in the way. And Renee is still going out nightly as the Question — and meeting up with Harvey, too. He wants to kill himself, but he can’t do it as long as the coin keeps flipping on the good side. But when the dome comes down, he decides to find a Two-Face in another city who’ll finally kill him.

Convergence: Nightwing and Oracle #1

After the Flashpoint Hawkman and Hawkgirl kill off the Justice Riders‘ Earth, they get sent after our Gotham, where Oracle is giving Nightwing her cyber-assistance in crimefighting. Mr. Freeze has lost his edge from long imprisonment under the dome, and Nightwing is worried that he’s losing his edge, too. Dick Grayson asks Barbara Gordon to marry him, and she turns him down, just before the Hawks make their appearance and offer a bargain — if Barbara surrenders the city, the Hawks will take a dive — Gotham will live, the Hawks’ home will be destroyed, and the Hawks will take over Gotham. Nightwing plans to fight them, but Oracle has her own way to make war.

Convergence: Speed Force #1

Wally West has been stuck powerless in Gotham with the rest of the Justice League, along with his children Iris and Jai. When the dome comes down and his powers return, he takes a high-speed tour of the other kidnapped cities. He gets to watch the Justice Riders’ home get atomized, then visits a bunch of other worlds, eventually picking up a new superspeed friend, Fastback, from the Zoo Crew! But they’ll all have to deal with the murderous Flashpoint Wonder Woman next.

Verdicts: Well, now, let’s add all this up.

First, I really hate the “We have to murder all these people to save our planet” plotline. It’s lazy. It’s not something that any legitimate superheroes would do, because it’s exactly the kind of scam that comic book superheroes prefer to find a way around, usually by beating up Brainiac instead of each other. And it’s short-sighted — is there any good reason to wipe out characters as awesome and fun as the Justice Riders? Only if you’re Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee, and you can’t stop thinking like a ’90s Image comic.

I liked getting to see Stephanie, Cassandra, and Tim again, but large chunks of the story bugged me bad. Steph had finally become an excellent superhero at the end of her series — now she’s struggling to do anything right, which is a severe backslide. We also don’t get to see her mother at all, and she was a great character. And I felt Cassandra and Tim were also a bit mis-handled.

Having said that, there are lots of good things here. Revisiting the pre-Reboot non-sucky DCU is a very good thing. Tom Grummett drawing the Flash and his kids is a good thing. Gail Simone writing Oracle is a good thing. Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner working on the Question again is a very good thing. Guest appearances from Two-Face, Starfire, Helena Bertinelli, and Fastback are all good things, too.

Altogether, I’ll give these a tentative thumbs up. I reserve the right to switch that to a thumbs down if DiDio is just going to kill everyone off but Flashpoint and the Reboot just to laugh at everyone’s tears.

Batgirl #40

The villain who’s been messing with Barbara Gordon’s life has been revealed, and it’s… Barbara Gordon? It’s actually a computer program taken from Barbara’s brain algorithms soon after she’d been shot and paralyzed. The program is angry, resentful, and fueled with a Batman-esque desire for vengeance and a Joker-esque desire for mass murder. She’s controlling Riot Black with cyber implants, and she’s invited a bunch of people who she’s decided have a very slight chance of someday causing crime to Burnside Square so she can kill them all with a hacked military satellite. Can Batgirl and her allies save Burnside from destruction?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fantastic art, fantastic story. Love the way this ties so many elements of previous stories together — not just plots, but plenty of characters make prominent appearances. Most of Barbara’s supporting cast shows up at Burnside Square, all tied by Cyber-Babs by extremely tenuous strands to possible future crimes. Batgirl’s solution is a combination of face-punching, acrobatics, and brain work — I only wish she’d been able to do her own hacking, instead of leaving it to someone else.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #12

Old Loki has escaped and bound Teen Loki so he can tell him what the future holds — how Old Loki triumphs over everything, destroys Midgard, and humiliates Thor — so when his younger counterpart hears how it all went down, he’ll be inevitably drawn to the dark side. When everyone considers you, now and forever, no matter how much good you do, as only the God of Lies, why not just go full-on evil?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s not a bad example of how labeling someone can help force them into a path they may not want to go down. If everyone expects you to be evil, and treats you like you are evil, at some point, you’ll get frustrated and live down to everyone’s expectations.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Gen Con — the original and biggest gaming convention in the world — does the right thing and tells Indiana that if they enact their bigoted pro-discrimination law, the convention will start looking for a new location.
• Terry Crews is pretty amazing — and he’s very proud to be a feminist.
• Larry Wilmore’s show on race, gender, and superheroes is pretty great — but you have to watch it to see him impersonate Star Wars characters.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #5

First things first: Ladies and gentlemen, that is just about the worst comic book cover I’ve seen this year. Maybe all of last year, too. It’s a terrible, muddy, over-chaotic muddle with a style entirely different from the art between the covers.

Now that that’s out of the way — forget the cover. What we’ve got inside is a just plain wonderful comic book. Or rather, what we’ve got inside is a pretty typical comic — until the last page happens.

While Monica Rambeau experiments with her light powers by adopting the form of the Blue Marvel — in the altogether, as they say in the hipster circles — Dr. Positron, the Marvel’s mad scientist son, shows up for a short brawl with the Marvel, Monica, and Spider-Man before revealing that he’s found his brother in the Neutral Zone, but he’ll need help to get him out. Elsewhere, Power Man and White Tiger go hunting for whoever killed Gideon Mace and run into way more trouble than they can handle. And Luke Cage and Jessica Jones have a meeting with Jason Quantrell, sinister CEO of Cortex Incorporated — and we learn who’s really behind Quantrell’s diabolic grin.

Verdict: Thumbs up. No spoilers, folks, but no kidding, when I read the last page of this one, I sat there in Flabbergasted Jawdrop Mode for at least 30 seconds. I don’t know if they can follow up with the promise of that last page, but I’m really looking forward to the next issue now.

Red Sonja #100

Well, it’s not really the 100th issue of this series, but they figure they’ve got the 100th issue to feature Sonja. Sounds iffy to me, but it makes a decent anthology comic. We’ve got creators ranging from Gail Simone to Roy Thomas to Michael Avon Oeming and many more. We get Sonja facing off against spider demons and mutated Rapunzels, we get Sonja taking on an unexpected assistant in a battle against a monster, and we get Sonja meeting one of her own heroes and earning a few wishes.

Verdict: Thumbs up. An incredible variety of stories offered here — some classic hack-and-slash battles, some more introspective stories, and all of them excellent reads. It’s especially wonderful to see a story by Roy Thomas, Sonja’s creator.

Batgirl #39

All of a sudden, everyone in Burnside is after Batgirl — whoever’s running the Hooq app is offering $20 million for her capture, dead or alive. And Barbara is being plagued by weird memory troubles, too. She enlists the aid of Black Canary, then realizes that her brain scan is part of Hooq’s programming — is Batgirl trying to kill herself?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice art and a much more relateable story. This comic’s emphasis on social media and smartphone apps is making more sense now, and it’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.

Silver Surfer #9

Galactus has come to the planet Newhaven, home to the last survivors of millions of worlds destroyed by the Eater of Worlds. Rejected by Dawn, the Surfer heads out to stop Galactus — by surfing the planet’s moon into his face! That gets Galactus’ attention, but he reacts by stripping the Surfer of his cosmic powers, leaving him powerless and adrift in space. Can anyone stop Galactus now?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Outstanding art, as always, from Mike and Laura Allred. Big ups for Dan Slott’s story, too — surfing a whole moon is pretty inspired, even if it’d pretty obviously be something Galactus would shrug off. I’m assuming Norrin will get re-powered next issue — but with this comic, who knows?

Loki: Agent of Asgard #11

Everyone in Asgard is mad at Loki. Loki is very depressed. Old King Future Loki is very mean.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Just a bit too overdone on the woe-is-me stuff.

Astro City #19

This issue has nearly all of its focus on more of Quarrel’s backstory, as she establishes herself in Astro City, saves Honor Guard and is then inducted into the membership, meets and starts working with Crackerjack, and suffers what could be a career-ending injury. How did she survive it and remain a superhero?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m really enjoying learning more about Quarrel. She’s always been a background character, so it’s great to see her step into the spotlight.

Captain Marvel #11

Carol has come back to Earth at Christmas to visit friends. She spends the night at the hospital with her ailing friend Tracy Burke, but she ends up getting captured by Captain Marvel-hating mad scientists Grace Valentine and June Covington, who dampen her powers, kidnap a homeless mall Santa, and prepare to torture and kill both of them. But it turns out the homeless guy has a very big trick hidden up his sleeve…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Probably would’ve been better if they’d released this one before Christmas, and if they’d explained the huge coincidence of kidnapping that specific mall Santa. But I still had a lot of fun reading it. The writing and art were top-notch, just as we’ve usually come to expect with this comic.

Batgirl #38

Barbara decides she wants to make sure no one else is able to coopt her identity as Batgirl, so she starts making sure she gets in social media a lot — mainly, letting fans take pictures of her to put on Instagram — and sometimes, taking selfies of herself fighting crime. Not everyone is happy about this — Black Canary thinks she’s grandstanding and not being a serious crimefighter, while her cop boyfriend thinks Batgirl is just as bad as any villains she fights because she wrecks police investigations. All of this makes Babs want to win over even more people, and she decides to do this by taking down the local bad boy, Jordan Barberi, who likes to wreck things up in his fancy sports car while his lawyers make sure he gets in no trouble. But things don’t work out the way she planned.

Verdict: Ehh, I don’t know. The action is excellent, and the characters are fairly fun. The main problem I’m having with this series right now is that every issue has an extremely strong focus on social media and nightclubbing. More realistic, maybe, for someone about Barbara’s age. But I think a lot of people had an expectation that this title would become more all-ages friendly, and while we’ve got a cooler costume, and Batgirl isn’t a relentless downerfest like it used to be, it’d be tough to find a reason to put this comic in a little kid’s hands when there’s so much in here about drinking and hookup apps. That probably just makes me an old fogey…

Today’s Cool Links:

• A dad reacts to how few comics there are for his seven-year-old daughter. On one hand — it’s not quite that hard to find comics that little girls can enjoy. But the comics industry mostly just doesn’t care if little girls (or little boys) (or grownup girls) (or anyone who’s not a white, heterosexual male, actually) are reading comics. And that’s why so many comics are so bad.
• And speaking of sexism in comics, here’s a rare example of an actually insightful Wikipedia article. It’s definitely not exhaustive, but it has a lot of depressing stuff in here.
• And in lighter news, here’s a cop getting down to a Taylor Swift song.

Astro City #18

It’s the beginning of a new storyarc focusing on Crackerjack and Quarrel. The occasion of the retirement of the Black Rapier just reminds everyone that a lot of the classic Astro City characters are getting up there in years. Quarrel and Crackerjack still go out there to fight crime, but a near-disaster against the new Chessmen leaves both of them exhausted, sore, and in dire need of downtime. And we also get the backstory of Quarrel — her childhood in rural Kentucky, looking up to her father, and never suspecting he was actually a supervillain — but eventually taking up his weapons and learning to use them to fight crime…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Not really the kind of story we expect to see in superhero comics, but if anyone would end up doing it well, it’d be Kurt Busiek and Astro City. It’s weird to think of characters like Quarrel, Crackerjack, and the Black Rapier as getting old enough to retire — but just because Samaritan and Winged Victory don’t seem to get old, that doesn’t mean that the more human heroes can’t feel the weight of the years. And if anything’s really distressing, it’s got to be that fans of the series remember when they were in their prime — and that means we’re all getting old, too. Please insert the sadface emoticon here.

Batgirl #37

Before we get too far into this issue, may we all take a quick moment to gasp in joy at this issue’s alternate cover by Darwyn Cooke?

Holy cheese, that’s an awesome cover!

Someone out there is impersonating Batgirl, running around in a sequined costume, helping high-fashion crooks, and simultaneously pushing Batgirl to greater heights of popularity and ruining her reputation as a crimefighter. Babs learns that she’s the focus of an art show by an artist named Dagger Type and pays it a visit with Black Canary and some of her college friends, and this leads to even more confrontations with the Batgirl imposter — and soon to the revelation of her true identity: Dagger Type himself!

Verdict: Good grief, it’s so not very good. I mean, there’s the jaw-dropping stupidity of the reveal — after Gail Simone’s famously trans-positive run on this title, to have the new creative team head almost immediately for an embarrassingly ham-fisted portrayal of an over-the-top nutcase cross-dressing villain — it just doesn’t make anyone look very smart. The creative team has already apologized, but it’s a serious mis-step. On top of that, the rest of the story just feels shallow. It’s Batgirl worried about someone stealing her act, then attending two different art shows, whining about her image, and capping the whole thing off by triumphantly… putting her selfie on Instagram. I’m all for making sure our characters exist in a recognizably modern world, but this all comes across like the celebrity-obsessed superheroes in Grant Morrison’s recent “Multiversity: The Just” issue — and that’s not a good thing.

Today’s Cool Links:

• You won’t hear me saying this often about DC Comics’ gimmicks — but these movie-inspired covers are genuinely fantastic.
• Stephen Colbert takes on Smaug in the best and craziest interview you’re going to see in a long, long time.
• Christmas is coming, and you’ll need something to keep you from arguing about politics with your weird uncle. So here are some free games from Cheapass Games.

Whoa nelly, people, it’s been another rough workweek, ain’t it? But it’s Friday at last, and that means we gotta get us some weekend while we can — ’cause Monday’s coming, and it’s gonna stomp us into the mudhole if we don’t get some maxxin’ and relaxxin’ right now. So let’s get things started with some cartoon butt-whuppin’ and… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from June 2011’s Batgirl #20 by Bryan Q. Miller, Ramon F. Bachs, and Guy Major, as my very favorite Batgirl ever, Stephanie Brown, fights off a superspeedster called Slipstream with a little high technology and a lot of humor.

I really miss Steph, and I hope DC doesn’t end up screwing us all over with her appearance in the upcoming “Convergence” series.

Batgirl #36

Barbara is meeting more of her supporting cast, but runs into unexpected trouble — someone has stolen a couple of experimental motorcycles from the university, so it’s not long before Batgirl has to take on a two girls dressed in weird anime-style costumes who are terrorizing the campus on the bikes. They get away, but Babs realizes they were made up to look like the villains on an old anime she watched when she was a kid. Can Batgirl stop the villains? And why do they think Batgirl herself hired them?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really fun art, full of cool fashions and kinetic action, plus the occasional awesome slow moment — in this issue, Barbara’s memory of watching cartoons with her father is a real standout.

She-Hulk #10

Steve Rogers finally takes the stand in his own defense in the wrongful death suit against him, explaining some information that the jury wasn’t aware of before — namely, that the gang they ran into on that night back in the late 1930s wasn’t any run-of-the-mill mob — it was run by a gas-masked Nazi. But is that going to make any difference to the jury?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a great issue with lots of great speeches, both in and out of the courtroom, and relatively little face-punching. Fantastic art, fantastic writing, multiple fun guest stars. And I’m still deeply disappointed that this one is getting cancelled in just two more issues.

Silver Surfer #7

The Surfer and Dawn explore an utterly starless area of space. They’re lured in by a mysterious beacon, and then Dawn is unexpectedly kidnapped by a hidden monster. The Surfer and his board (Toomie, remember? Best possible name for a cosmic surfboard) are unable to find her. This leads to several flashbacks to their previous unrecorded adventures, including an attack by space hillbillies in which the Surfer foils them by turning their Hostess fruit pies into golden rings. Can the Surfer find Dawn again, or will he have to make a sacrifice he swore he’d never attempt?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’d love this one just for the bit with the space hillbillies and the fruit pies. But the art and storytelling throughout are fantastic, which makes it even better.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The Oatmeal takes on — and destroys — Senator (and turd puppet) Ted Cruz.
• What happens when you drop a feather and a bowling ball inside a vacuum chamber? Physics tells us the answer, but it’s not something that ever really made sense to my brain. Bowling balls are heavy; feathers are light. So it’s amazing to see it actually happen on video.
• YouTube and Patreon are inadvertently making it easy for professional harassers to get rich.
• Ten hours of Princess Leia walking in NYC.
• A few examples of truly awful design choices.

Batgirl #35

Well, people, it’s the Batgirl everyone was waiting for — much hipper, much less grim-and-gritty, and almost certainly much more likely to make Dan DiDio and Jim Lee overdose on Rolaids. She’s got a redesigned costume, cool art, and a new creator team that isn’t beholden to stupid editors to make everything unpleasant and sad. (Gail Simone really should be allowed to make a fun Batgirl comic someday. You know it’d be keen, and she deserves to have some fun.)

Anyway, Barbara Gordon is moving into a new apartment in the trendy Burnside area of Gotham. After a hard-partying first night with the new roomies, she heads out to grab some coffee and ends up chasing down a computer thief. She comes home to find Dinah “Black Canary” Lance on her doorstep because her apartment burned down — and because Babs was storing some of her stuff there, she’s lost almost everything, too. And she and her roommates are all missing computers and phones. Can Barbara track down the thief? And can she somehow stop the mastermind, the scuzzy cyber-blackmailer Riot Black?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I get the impression that DC was a bit freaked out by Marvel’s success at appealing to markets beyond the stale old manchild gang — and it’s nice that they’ve managed to break out of their own old stereotypes so well. Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher are writing a Batgirl who’s less angsty, more realistic, and more interesting, and Babs Tarr’s artwork is definitely unlike anything else you’ll see with the DC bullet on the cover. I really do wish DC had given Gail Simone a chance to write this new more-fun Batgirl, but the new creative team has turned in a fantastic debut issue.

Astro City #16

Super-keen gimmick here and on other Vertigo covers this month — the story actually starts on the cover of the magazine.

This issue focuses on a couple high-school supers — good-hearted energy-projecting hero Starbright and bitter hyper-genius Simon Says. Simon calls Starbright out and offers him a truce — Simon will help the hero capture criminals for 24 hours, and in exchange, Starbright has to bring him the school’s outcasts for… a birthday party? What sort of scheme is Simon Says up to?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fantastic characters, dialogue, plot — and a really nice twist long before the end that makes the whole story a lot more resonant and effective.

Captain Marvel #8

Well, it turns out that Carol’s cat Chewie actually is an alien called a flerken. And she’s just laid a ton of eggs with even more flerkens inside. And aliens are attacking the ship to either cat-nap them or kill them. Can Captain Marvel, Rocket Raccoon, and Tic stop the invaders, save the kitties, and get to safety?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a fairly straightforward story — mostly fighting and lasers and rocketships flying around — but it’s told well, and there’s something about weird alien cats with tentacles and pocket dimensions inside of them that really helps push a fun story all the way over the top.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Squirrel Girl is getting her own solo series at Marvel!
• Cracked has a great article written with the help of a woman who was at Hiroshima when it was nuked.
• Some rare film footage from the Martian invasion in the 1910s.