Barbara needs to go home.
Creative Staff:
Story: Hope Larson
Art: Rafael Albuquerque
Colors: Dave McCaig
Letterer: Deron Bennett
What They Say:
“Beyond Burnside” part four! Batgirl realizes too late that she’s fallen right into Teacher’s trap! If she’s going to get to Shanghai in time to save Kai, she’ll have to track down this mysterious new villain and end things once and for all.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Considering the attention that Batgirl gets for a range of reasons and the general social media following, I’m at a bit of a loss with the series at this stage. I love the character, her personality, her crimefighting, her smarts, and just her as a whole. But taking her out of Burnside and away from what her usual haunts are is something that could really go either way. And I don’t think it went in a good way at this point in the arc. She’s been traveling the world and getting into trouble along with growing her skillset in brief and very limited ways and we’ve had awkward material with Kai that just made it even more complicated. The bigger problem is that we’ve had such uninteresting opponents and a less than clear narrative that when we get it in this installment it’s just a moment of “meh” and little more.
Essentially, Kai’s being sought after for a dead he did to transport some materials through his body to a buyer and it’s gone all sorts of wrong along the way. We get that and the reasons why he’s being targeted and how Barbara is caught up in it by looking after him. But the book has taken us on a whirlwind tour of locations in Southeast Asia that it’s just a blur without anything that feels grounded and concrete. She’s hopped from place to place and deal with different foes, including the “construction crew” students that are doing all of this for their teacher, and none of it feels like it has any real meaning to it. They’re just trappings with no truly defined aspect to them that makes it engaging. The best villains are those that you can understand and even sympathize with in their motivations. Here, we’re just treated to shells of characters.
Realistically, after reading this issue twice, I’m lost as to the point of things here. When we get things about study guides, teachers, and students of this particular “art” that’s going on, it just comes across in all the wrong ways. The saving grace for the book at this stage is pretty much Albuquerque’s artwork as he has some great sequences with some really dynamic elements to it, especially with how McCaig colors Batgirl’s outfit. She gets to show some great intensity at times but also some beautiful panels of surprise as she copes with twists and opponents that I have to love Barbara all the more – especially when she puts Kai in his place as Batgirl. But that can’t salvage the issue as a whole and it’s just rendering this arc so far as pretty unmemorable.
In Summary:
At this stage I’m sticking with the book primarily to see if we get Barbara back into more familiar settings, give her something resembling a life, and provide more foundations for her. The world trip is an idea that works for some books and characters, and this is one of them, but with it being a monthly series and without the strong narrative that it needs, it all just comes across as uninteresting as a whole. The small slivers of enjoyment are there, particularly in the artwork, but that can’t carry the book for very long and I know my interest is waning more than I’d like at this stage.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 26th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
