What do you think?
Rate this book
Batgirl: The Bronze Age #2
Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2
Now, for the first time ever, Gotham's greatest heroine's adventures are collected in this oversize omnibus collection, Batgirl: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2!
These hard-to-find 1970s tales featuring Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, are now recut and collected in their entirety! In these stories, Batgirl teams up with heroes including Robin and Red Tornado, and faces villains including Killer Moth, the Cavalier and Madame Zodiac.
Collects stories from Batman Family #12-20 and Detective Comics #481-519 and Batgirl Special #1
These hard-to-find 1970s tales featuring Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, are now recut and collected in their entirety! In these stories, Batgirl teams up with heroes including Robin and Red Tornado, and faces villains including Killer Moth, the Cavalier and Madame Zodiac.
Collects stories from Batman Family #12-20 and Detective Comics #481-519 and Batgirl Special #1
576 pages, Hardcover
Published April 2, 2019
2 people are currently reading
58 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 26, 2019
This volume rounds out Barbara Gordon's career as Batgirl for a couple decades and a half. These tales are primarily 8 page backups from Detective Comics with a few from the Batman Family title, with Robin along for the ride in a number of them.
Here we see the end of Barbara's career as a US Representative from Gotham City and her move into a position with an advocacy group that gives her a new set of supporting characters. There are hints of a budding romantic relationship, but nothing comes of it when the strip gets a new writer with Cary Burkett. Burkett has some of the better stories, but there is this lingering theme of Batgirl being incompetent and gripped with uncertainty about her abilities. This flies in the face of her earliest adventures, and doesn't make a lot of sense. Batgirl makes a lot of mistakes and has to be bailed out by various others in order not to be killed.
This collection culminates in the last story, the Batgirl Special from 1988. DC uses a female writer, Barbara Randall, who wrote a couple of the last Batgirl stories in Detective, to usher out Barbara Gordon as the Darknight Daughter. In Randall's introduction, she recounts how DC had decided to allow Alan Moore to have the Joker "blast her spine out" in his upcoming book The Killing Joke, so Randall was allowed to write Barbara's swan song, where once again she battles the demons of doubt, egged on by a childhood friend who thinks Barbara isn't up to being Batgirl for some reason.
Randall's introduction paints a shitty picture of DC, especially editors Dick Giordano and Len Wein, who told Moore to "cripple the bitch" after deciding Batgirl was an expendable character. This blatant misogyny is not surprising, but marks a rather ignominious ending to the first DC female "copycat" hero to be her own person and not just a romantic interest for the main male character. (Supergirl was not a romantic interest for Superman but was still mostly a derivative character at first.) At least Randall seemed to have planted some seeds for Barbara's future as Oracle, as in the last story Barbara states she'll be happy to help the super-heroes out, just from the sidelines (and perhaps anonymously) using her computer.
Regardless, this is still a fairly enjoyable look into Bronze Age DC, and we're fortunate to get the complete Batgirl canon published in these two omnibi. Most of the art is by Jose Delbo, who was a workhorse at DC in the '70s and '80s - not splashy at all, just dependable and consistent. The last two stories from Detective are from the great Trevor von Eeden, who helped design Black Lightning with Tony Isabella, as well as penciling a great Green Arrow mini-series and the first few issues of the experimental Thriller series. His Batgirl looks very Starlin-esque and his layouts are beautiful to see.
Definitely worth reading for all Bronze Age DC fans as well as fans of Barbara Gordon and/or Batgirl. It's best to read Volume One first, as some of the plot setups begin there.
Here we see the end of Barbara's career as a US Representative from Gotham City and her move into a position with an advocacy group that gives her a new set of supporting characters. There are hints of a budding romantic relationship, but nothing comes of it when the strip gets a new writer with Cary Burkett. Burkett has some of the better stories, but there is this lingering theme of Batgirl being incompetent and gripped with uncertainty about her abilities. This flies in the face of her earliest adventures, and doesn't make a lot of sense. Batgirl makes a lot of mistakes and has to be bailed out by various others in order not to be killed.
This collection culminates in the last story, the Batgirl Special from 1988. DC uses a female writer, Barbara Randall, who wrote a couple of the last Batgirl stories in Detective, to usher out Barbara Gordon as the Darknight Daughter. In Randall's introduction, she recounts how DC had decided to allow Alan Moore to have the Joker "blast her spine out" in his upcoming book The Killing Joke, so Randall was allowed to write Barbara's swan song, where once again she battles the demons of doubt, egged on by a childhood friend who thinks Barbara isn't up to being Batgirl for some reason.
Randall's introduction paints a shitty picture of DC, especially editors Dick Giordano and Len Wein, who told Moore to "cripple the bitch" after deciding Batgirl was an expendable character. This blatant misogyny is not surprising, but marks a rather ignominious ending to the first DC female "copycat" hero to be her own person and not just a romantic interest for the main male character. (Supergirl was not a romantic interest for Superman but was still mostly a derivative character at first.) At least Randall seemed to have planted some seeds for Barbara's future as Oracle, as in the last story Barbara states she'll be happy to help the super-heroes out, just from the sidelines (and perhaps anonymously) using her computer.
Regardless, this is still a fairly enjoyable look into Bronze Age DC, and we're fortunate to get the complete Batgirl canon published in these two omnibi. Most of the art is by Jose Delbo, who was a workhorse at DC in the '70s and '80s - not splashy at all, just dependable and consistent. The last two stories from Detective are from the great Trevor von Eeden, who helped design Black Lightning with Tony Isabella, as well as penciling a great Green Arrow mini-series and the first few issues of the experimental Thriller series. His Batgirl looks very Starlin-esque and his layouts are beautiful to see.
Definitely worth reading for all Bronze Age DC fans as well as fans of Barbara Gordon and/or Batgirl. It's best to read Volume One first, as some of the plot setups begin there.
June 5, 2021
This book collects the rest of the pre-Crisis Batgirl stories.
There are two stages of these stories:
1) The rest of the Batman Famiy stories: The rest of Batgirl's solo and team-up appearances in Batman Family were actually pretty fun for the most part. The handling of the Barbara's brother Tony story is a bit weak and some of the team ups get a little goofy. The book features solo stories, stories that direct team ups with Robin, as well as stories that involve Justice League style team ups with various members of the Bat-family who handle their own chapters but come together to battle the boss.
2) Detective Comics and the Batgirl Special: A bit of a bumpy ride on these. After Batman Family ended in 1978, Batgirl got her own solo feature in Detective Comics. Bob Rozakis, who had written for her on Batman family wrote the first three stories including a two-part story that dealt with Batgirl finding Barbara Gordon's lost brother. It was okay as was a silly story about someone getting a date with Batgirl. Then Jack Harris took over...and in my opinion, he didn't get the character and the stories were just lackluster. The best thing in the Harris run was having Barbara Gordon defeated for re-election. It didn't make a ton of sense as Babs was defeated by a feminist who was a stand-in for left-wing Congresswoman Bella Abzug, but the whole point of sending Babs to Congress was the end of Batgirl. Having her be in Congress was more of an impediment than good stories.
Cary Burkett took over and he had a really superb two year run on the character. I'm a little iffy on his decision to have Batgirl decide to quit when she was nearly assassinated, but he managed to work in a lot of good character stuff and tell some pretty solid stories that approached to the height of her stories in Detective Comics in the 1970s.
The final writer was Barbara Kesel, who got to do the last two Detective Comics stories before they were unceremoniously cancelled. The story's okay, but doesn't quite feel right. I feel bad Kesel didn't get a chance to develop her vision of Batgirl. In the two Detective Comics stories, the art of Trevor Von Eeden shines through.
Kesel also wrote the Batgirl Specail which was to be published as a story explaining how she left being Batgirl. I think Kesel did the best she could with it, given that it was an editorially mandated piece which limits options.
Kesel also wrote the intro which told of the sort of her background on the book and the sort of toxic attitudes at DC towards Barbara Gordon with the Killing Joke and the discomfort she experienced. It says something about the DC staff that they didn't respect a heroine like Barbara Gordon back in the day and not something good.
Overall, this is a fun read for all Barbara Gordon fans. It's not quite as good as the first volume, but it's still a very solid read.
There are two stages of these stories:
1) The rest of the Batman Famiy stories: The rest of Batgirl's solo and team-up appearances in Batman Family were actually pretty fun for the most part. The handling of the Barbara's brother Tony story is a bit weak and some of the team ups get a little goofy. The book features solo stories, stories that direct team ups with Robin, as well as stories that involve Justice League style team ups with various members of the Bat-family who handle their own chapters but come together to battle the boss.
2) Detective Comics and the Batgirl Special: A bit of a bumpy ride on these. After Batman Family ended in 1978, Batgirl got her own solo feature in Detective Comics. Bob Rozakis, who had written for her on Batman family wrote the first three stories including a two-part story that dealt with Batgirl finding Barbara Gordon's lost brother. It was okay as was a silly story about someone getting a date with Batgirl. Then Jack Harris took over...and in my opinion, he didn't get the character and the stories were just lackluster. The best thing in the Harris run was having Barbara Gordon defeated for re-election. It didn't make a ton of sense as Babs was defeated by a feminist who was a stand-in for left-wing Congresswoman Bella Abzug, but the whole point of sending Babs to Congress was the end of Batgirl. Having her be in Congress was more of an impediment than good stories.
Cary Burkett took over and he had a really superb two year run on the character. I'm a little iffy on his decision to have Batgirl decide to quit when she was nearly assassinated, but he managed to work in a lot of good character stuff and tell some pretty solid stories that approached to the height of her stories in Detective Comics in the 1970s.
The final writer was Barbara Kesel, who got to do the last two Detective Comics stories before they were unceremoniously cancelled. The story's okay, but doesn't quite feel right. I feel bad Kesel didn't get a chance to develop her vision of Batgirl. In the two Detective Comics stories, the art of Trevor Von Eeden shines through.
Kesel also wrote the Batgirl Specail which was to be published as a story explaining how she left being Batgirl. I think Kesel did the best she could with it, given that it was an editorially mandated piece which limits options.
Kesel also wrote the intro which told of the sort of her background on the book and the sort of toxic attitudes at DC towards Barbara Gordon with the Killing Joke and the discomfort she experienced. It says something about the DC staff that they didn't respect a heroine like Barbara Gordon back in the day and not something good.
Overall, this is a fun read for all Barbara Gordon fans. It's not quite as good as the first volume, but it's still a very solid read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews