Art by Robbi Rodriguez
Colors by: Rico Renzi
Letters by: Dave Sharpe
Cover art by: $5.99
Release date: November 29, 2022
Batgirls 2022 Annual delivers a Batgirl-version of Freaky Friday when Cass and Steph mysteriously swap bodies while investigating a murder involving Kyle's neighbor. Meanwhile, Lady Shiva and Cluemaster pay a visit at the worst possible time.
Is It Good?
Batgirls 2022 Annual sets up the next phase of the Batgirl arc with character cameos, body swaps, and a lot of slice-of-life fluff. Is this Annual worth the extra pages and the extra cover price? Not really, but it could be worse.The plot centers around a little status quo shakeup for the cauldron. Babs is moving back to the Clock Tower, so Steph and Cass get the Loft all to themselves. After a little (a lot) of downtime, Steph learns about a crime in Kyle's neighborhood that sounds fishy. When Cass and Steph investigate, they learn the League of Assassins is in town. When the duo heads out from the crime scene, Steph stops to save a cat in a tree and gets a strange coin in return from the cat's elderly owner. Later, the girls joke about the ups and downs of their lives and decide to flip the strange coin to trade places for a day.
The next morning Cass and Steph find themselves body-swapped, and they have to navigate the murder investigation and meetings with their respective parents in opposing bodies.
If that plot sounds like a lot of meandering and convenient coincidences, that's because that's exactly what this annual is - meandering and convenient coincidences. There's nothing big or remotely special about this issue. It reads like Batgirls #12.5 with too many extra pages of slice-of-life filler.
Robbi Rodriguez's art is generally good and preferable to Corona's style on the main title. That said, we caught several copy/paste panels where only the dialog or a minor area was changed. On the main title, where time crunch is a factor, some copy/paste is inevitable. On an oversized, overpriced annual with a guest artist, that's a no-no. Further, Rico Renzi appears obsessed with pinks and purples that make the coloring look awful in several panels.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Bits and Pieces:
Batgirls 2022 Annual sets up the next phase of the cauldron's adventures with an out-of-nowhere body swap, character cameos, decent art with bad coloring, and a lot of unnecessary slice-of-life scenes to pad out the pages.
5.5/10
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