Thursday, March 19, 2015

Batgirl: Endgame #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher
Art By: Bengal
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 18, 2015

Silent Night


*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Who's ready for another Endgame tie-in?  Well, I hope you all are because here it is.  Now we all know that the Joker's up to no good as Batman Endgame has shown and one of the biggest things that he's done in that story arc is to jokerize most of the citizens of Gotham with a new toxin that Batman can't find a cure for, which means that the rest of the Bat Family has their hands full taking care of business as they defend their city.  As I hope you all know by this point, this is Batgirl's adventure in keeping people safe as Gotham turns itself upside down.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

When our story begins it seems that Batgirl is very focused on what she's doing because she isn't saying a word and as we continue the adventure we realize that this is a silent issue............ Yeah, for some reason it didn't strike me right away and I felt like a knucklehead when I finally realized.  So yeah, a silent issue where we see Batgirl getting instructions from Frankie.......... kind of like some sort of "Oracle" if you will and her mission tonight is to rescue a bus that is transporting very important people out of Gotham........... Well, over the Burnside Bridge that has been blocked off so the authorities can contain this Joker mini pandemic.  


Even though this book is pretty straight forward with it's silence, I did find myself confused when Barbara makes a pit stop at a building that controls digital billboards and uploaded a video of the Joker laughing to draw away the infected people from the bridge........... At first I really had no idea why she was doing it and maybe it's just because I was cruising along with this book and didn't pay enough attention, I just don't know if this was the right kind of issue to have an artistic moment and decide that it would be silent or if it was done out of deadline necessity alone.  When the jokerized people are lured enough away, the bus comes barreling down the road on it's way to the barrier on the bridge.  It all looks like smooth sailing but Batgirl notices that Tiffany Fox for some reason decided to get on top of the bus and get herself trapped as the jokerized people realize that things are going down on the bridge and surround the young girl.


In the end, Batgirl for some reason wastes a bunch of time by taking a picture of Tiffany, sending the pic to Frankie, who then uses the picture to find out Tiffany's phone number and then sends the number back to Batgirl, who texts Tiffany a smiley bat face as a way to cheer her up and get her to stop crying.................. Even though there are explosives set to detonate making sure that the jokerized people won't be able to cross the bridge.............. So yeah, this whole bit seems kind of useless and a bit reckless when Batgirl immediately goes out and saves the young girl and gets her to safety right as the bridge explodes.  Why waste the time with a text?


That's it for this one shot of Batgirl: Endgame and man was this a strange issue to go silent on.  Like I said earlier, I don't know if it was a conscious decision or if the deadline demanded it but where as the Batman and Robin silent issue felt like it had purpose and enhanced the story, this just felt odd to me.  One good thing about this being silent though is that the art kicks ass in this issue and without word balloons crowding up the place, the art seriously got to shine here.  So even though the art was great, the story was off for me, especially where Batgirl put Tiffany's life in danger by trying to text her an emoticon....... Maybe we'll never see the end to a Batgirl obsessed with her phone.

Bits and Pieces:

While I don't understand the point of this being a silent issue, it was welcomed because the art in this issue was just fantastic.  If you need to get all of the issues that are sporting the Endgame title, then this doesn't really matter because you're going to pick it up anyway, but this is such a quick read that I don't really see the point of it.

6/10

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