Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batgirl (Vol.4), Issue #1 – “Shattered”! Hey, “Shattered” is the last song on the Rolling Stones’ 1978 album Some Girls. Girls. Girls girls girls. Batgirl! Coincidence? Oh fuck yes, of course it’s a coincidence, dingus. And it’s barely even that.

Before delving into comics I was only vaguely aware of the comic book industry’s tendency to “come up with new ideas” by mixing and matching adjectives with humans of various ages and sexes. Batman. Superman. Wonder Woman. Superboy. Catwoman. Batwoman. Supergirl. Catman. Superbat. Wonderboy. Manwoman. Batboy. Catbat. And now Batgirl. And what better place to start than the New 52 reboot of Batgirl? Yeah, that’s right, I’m sticking with the New 52 for a while. A long while. Suck my dick.

I know literally nothing, NOTHING, about Batgirl. A little research shows that she’s been around since 1961 and that there are many different Batgirls. The New 52 Batgirl is one of them! And that’s all I know! Maybe they should make a movie about it. Oh wait, they are! But I hate movies! Time to read.

Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #1 [November, 2011]
Written by: Gail Simone
“Shattered”

Prologue! A mysterious gloved hand is holding a list of white-people names like “Nicholas Hall, Jr.” and “Graham Carter” and “Ellen Degeneres”. We are outside of some luxurious house that looks like it would be quite haunted at night. A man is watering the lawn. The mysterious figure approaches. “You survived the sinking of your transport ship off the coast of Portugal during routine maneuvers in calm conditions. Twenty-seven of your fellow sailors did not.” says the mysterious figure to the man, who is named Graham Carter like a real white-ass white guy. After Carter asks who this person is and what they want, the figure OPENS HIS/HER TRENCH COAT AND FLASHES HIM! HAHA! TAKE THAT GRAHAM CARTER! FEAST YOUR EYES. And then he/her takes the hose that Carter was watering the lawn with, sticks in his mouth like a penis, and drowns him with it. Prologue! Next on the list is white-girl Barbara Gordon (BATGIRL?!). Shattered!

Aha, yes! Barbara Gordon. Batgirl! Commissioner Gordon’s daughter! She wears all the costumal trappings of your typical Bat Man except her long, red hair flows freely behind her. Quite unsafely, I’d think. It looks like it would get caught easily on a powerline or a fucking blimp or something while she hops around the skyline. Perhaps we will see this blimp disaster in a future issue??

The real story starts at a random high-rise apartment where a bunch of ruffians in generic Halloween masks are holding a father and daughter hostage. A home invasion by the notorious Brisby Killers! Some punk kids who pick families randomly out of phone books and murder them. How sweet and charming! Before the kid in the ghost mask can even say “Boo” (like a ghost), Batgirl suddenly crashes through the goddamned window and fucks up, like, four of the bad guys immediately.

KRAK. UNNGHH! Sexy.

The ghost guy is still pointing a gun at the victim’s head, but Batgirl knows what to do! She throws a piece of plastic shaped like a bat at him! HAHA, YEAH, THAT-wait, nope, the ghost guy rams into Batgirl and they both crash through another window. Now he’s hanging on to her, and she’s hanging onto the balcony. She’s a bit embarrassed, I guess she hasn’t Batgirled in a while and she’s out of practice. She presents a heroic exterior, but all these panels are filled with inner monologue such as “My legs are shaking” and “I gotta pee”. Not exactly, I’m paraphrasing. The family calls the cops and the villains are shuffled away. Of course, the family, all shook up like a can of Michael J. Fox, is heartily expressing their gratitude toward Batgirl. She, however, has some issues. Why be a hero if you don’t want the accolades? Isn’t that why everyone else does it??

Backstory soliloquy time! “I’m not Batgirl. Not tonight.” she says, MYSTERIOUSLY! Not Batman’s best student. Not Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes anymore. Tonight she’s Barbara Gordon, daughter of Jim Gordon the Police Commissioner, who remembers that her home was also invaded three years ago. Barbara Gordon, who remembers that the Joker shot her in the stomach while he was wearing beachy touristy clothes! She couldn’t walk for three years! But now she can, and I guess the very first night that her legs worked again she decided to don her Batgirl get-up and smack the shit out of some punks? Why not walk to Subway or something? Taco Bell?

What a great disguise! I couldn’t even tell! Wow, what a chameleon!

Actually, she moves out of daddy’s house and shacks up non-sexual style with a roommate (who looks like a Sonic Youth album cover) in an apartment in a bad part of town (isn’t ALL of Gotham City the bad part of town?). “I’m kinda an activist” the roommate says, showing Gordon a wall where she painted “FIGHT THE POWER!” in too-neat letters. Roomie helps Gordon unpack her van and notices the wheelchair lift. She says snide things about the wheelchair lift while Gordon pretends not to be insulted. I like this roommate.

Two cops are in a hospital room keeping an eye on ghost boy who is recovering from, I don’t know, trying to do a murder? Meanwhile, the mysterious figure from the beginning of the comic who gave Graham Carter a mouthful of hose cum walks into the hospital and starts killing hospital staff for no reason. The cops, hearing the ruckus, are like “What the devil?” and the call for backup. Batgirl, on the other side of town, has her trendy flip phone all app’d up to receive the texts that her dad gets on HIS phone, which is cool and I hope there’s a whole story arc in this series about her discovering that her dad is frequenting Thai ladyboy brothels. Anyway, she is alerted to the brouhaha down at the hospital, so she puts on her Bat clothes and gets on her Bat bike and scoots along the way! She’s, uh, kind of tactless about it.

Watch out, superhero coming through! I’m just plowin’ through motherfuckers at the hospital! No time to waste, gotta save people!

Mx. Mysterious Trenchcoat Mafia storms up to ghost boy’s hospital room. “Theodore Rankin. You should have fallen. You’re on the list.” Batgirl is in the elevator trying to ride up the fucking thing on her big stupid bike. When she finally gets up to the room, “Mirror”, as the mysterious figure is apparently called, aims a gun at her stomach. She has some inconvenient PTSD flashbacks, we see Joker wearing his dumb hat and shirt again, and she freezes up while the cops yell at her. Her hesitation gives Mirror the time needed to shove the kid out the fucking window! Justice! Mirror is a good guy after all I think!

One of the cops accuses Batgirl of murder just because she froze in fear and let Mirror kill the kid. That’s dumb.

Final Thoughts

Interesting enough! I like flawed heroes, and Barbara Gordon seems quite flawed. I thought at first that maybe Joker killed a fetus and ended a pregnancy, but now I don’t think that’s quite it anymore. I want to know the story behind Joker’s wack-ass hat, shirt, and camera!

I don’t have much else to say yet other than bring on Issue #2, Gail Simone.