Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "burnside"

Batgirl, Volume 1: The Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Issues 35-40 of the New 52 version of Batgirl and represented a radical change in direction for the character after Gale Simone's run on Batgirl.

The book finds Batgirl settling into college life at Burnside, a sort of Silicon Valley area filled with high tech jobs. I like the underlying idea of Gotham City not being this strange monolithic zone, but having various suburbs and surrounding communities with their own distinct personality.

The story finds Batgirl becoming a celebrity driven by others claiming to be the Batgirl of Burnside. Eventually, she figures the only way to have any control over this social media driven insanity is to actually take her own part. This puts her on the outs with Black Canary.

The book raises a lot of issues including the nature of celebrity and reality TV culture in the real world as well as the undercurrent of narcissism present in so much of it. At the same time, it also wonders in-world whether superheroes are good and what you can gather from the book is that there's a narrow line that can easily be crossed (and Babs does it in this book.)

The book is not without problems. It has a few moments where you wonder if this is really a superhero book with all of its focus on social media and online dating profiles. Babs has some out of character moments. The big one that stands out is when she gets totally wasted at a party and actually puts a lot at risk.

Perhaps, the out of character stuff can be explained by Barbara's justification for her decision to enjoy the glow of social popularity: She's had so much hardship that she's owed it. In some ways, It's understandable. It's comparable to the lightening of Daredevil under Mark Waid. There are differences, mainly that Babs' change seems to have negative consequences and we end the book not entirely sure who she's going to be at the end of it. In addition, the confrontation of her darker time is more sudden. While I'm not entirely sure, I like Cameron's approach to Barbara I do have to respect it.



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