Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #5 – “A Candy Full of Spiders”! In the previous installment, it’s Christmas Eve and instead of taking a night off, Barbara Gordon decides to work even harder than Santa Claus and lure Mirror into a ramshackle carnival so that she can use the funhouse mirror for her ironic punishments. She beats him up and breaks his mirror face! With Mirror out of the picture, Batgirl goes back to her apartment to try to celebrate Christmas but then her long lost mom knocks on the door. Eeek! She was clutching a Christmas present. What do you think is in it? Maybe it’s a candy full of spiders!

Whatever the goddamn shit THAT is.

Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #5 [March, 2012]
Written by: Gail Simone
“A Candy Full of Spiders”

“Introducing Gretel… She’s sickly sweet and sadistic!” claims the cover tagline. Oooohhhh boy! Sickly sweet and sadistic Gretel?? How much for this comic book, I’ll pay $3,000!

I’m on page one and there’s no sign of sickly sweet and sadistic Gretel yet, but there’s a full-page of Batgirl’s asscheeks akimbo as she swings around the city. “As a rule, I don’t believe in ghosts” begins her internal monologue. AS A RULE, she says, which means she has made “not believing in ghosts” important enough in her life that she had to settle the score once and for all on an official basis. “Even though,” she continues, “twice in my life I’ve felt like one.” OOOHHHHHHH MAN, HERE WE GO. MORE VAGUEBOOKING FROM BATGIRL. Ughh. Where’s Gretel?

Yeah, just as I thought, she’s whining and crying about BEING SHOT again. Get the fuck over it. Oh wait, she changes gears all of a sudden and talks about the Whittaker mob family, who was around when she was Batgirl the first time and used to be allied with the Falcone mob family. Is this shit supposed to mean anything to me? What happened to Mirror? Talk about Mirror, Batgirl, not some Tony Soprano bullshit. Ughh. Where’s Gretel?

Batgirl flies to a scene where, supposedly, some Whittakers are shaking down some couple in their car for $3.38. She starts whooping some Whittaker ass and taking some Whittaker names. One guy starts a little rooty-tooty-point-and-shooty at her, but she is unphased this time (unlike Issue #1 where she froze up in the hospital and that cop got killed and that other cop is seeking revenge, yeah, unlike that). Once she thinks she has the family incapacitated, Daddy Whittaker whips out some guns and shoots his family members in the head. Batgirl is stumped and nauseous, tries to get Daddy Whittaker’s attention but he leaps off the bridge while saying “forgot my shower cap” and falls on his way down into the river. Batgirl snags him with her Batrope before he actually doth fall into the water, and while she tries to hoist him back up someone sickly sweet and sadistic punches her right across the face in a beautifully bloody full-page spread.

Look out! Danger is here, and Danger buys her hair product in the grocery store baking aisle!

I thought Gretel was going to be Batgirl’s mom, but it’s actually some green-haired woman wearing a fencing outfit and a popped collar. While Batgirl is rendered temporarily incapacitated, the couple that was being shook down for $3.38 takes over on trying to hoist Daddy Whittaker up with the rope for some fool-ass reason. Gretel advances on Batgirl with a saber-type weapon, and Batgirl is like “fucking FUCK this” and boots her right in the face. Gretel barely reacts, and she keeps saying stuff like “you’re not going to ruin my moment, Batgirl”, so maybe Batgirl should just sit this one out for a few minutes? Always trying to be the hero. Kids these days.

Batgirl compares Gretel to a heroin addict, but we the audience know that she’s actually SICKLY SWEET AND SADISTIC. There’s this panel where she seems to be sucking up the cold air and getting her jollies from it, and then she walks away leaving Batgirl perplexed and smeared with blood. The $3.38 couple are still trying to rescue some dickhead that will probably kill them once he’s safe. Issue #5 is weird. A CANDY OF SPIDERS!

Sidebar: Didn’t I just read this whole Mirror story arc with the guy’s dead family and the god-playing psychopath? Didn’t Batgirl’s mom show up at Christmas? What the fuck is going on now? Why is there a crime family I’m supposed to know all of a sudden? What does this Gretel chick have to do with anything? ANSWERS. I WANT ANSWERS. NOW.

How many times am I going to groan loudly while reading Batgirl comics? 338. 338. 338.

End sidebar. Batgirl has a choice to make: follow the weird lady or help the weird couple save the weird crime family head. Why doesn’t she just go home?? Easy choice for me! Order a pizza and catch up on episodes of The Expanse?? She decides to finish pulling up Mr. Killed His Kids and he’s raving and smiling. “338. 338. 338.” Probably the number of DC comics I’m going to have to read before I accidentally stumble upon a good issue. Ha! Batgirl is discomfited and walks away regretting even being involved in anything in the first place ever at all. She sounds like me.

While sitting under some “DON’T GENTRIFY GOTHAM” graffiti (and I have yet to see one single non-white person so far other than Alysia the roommate, not counting my readthrough of the Court of Owls in the New 52 Batman series where I saw literally nobody BUT fuckin’ white people constantly), Batgirl ponders the strange encounter she just had with the Whittaker family and why the dude just gunned down his kids and jumped off a bridge. She doesn’t think about Gretel for some reason. I’m wondering more about that, personally. I’m also wondering if we’re even in the same decade anymore in the timeline compared to last issue! Go talk to your mom, Batgirl.

Oh wait, finally, we tie back into that story. We are treated to the scene four hours ago: Mommy dearest shows up at the apartment. “Don’t you recognize me, Barbara? I’m your mother.” And it looks like either Adrian Syaf and Vicente Cifuentes had a problem drawing that day, or ol’ mom’s been drinking hard early in the morning. Yeesh. Anyway, she asks a hesitant Barbara if she can come in, and Alysia is all like “HEY, HI THERE MRS. G, COME ON IN, DO YOU WANT A DRINK, LET’S PULL OUT THE PHOTO ALBUMS, I LOVE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO YOUR HAIR, BARBARA REALLY FILLED OUT NICELY DON’T YOU THINK SO, ROUND IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES, IS THAT CHANEL NO. 5 I SMELL?” Barbara suggests she and her mom take a stroll outside.

Ol’ Mama looks like she’s been hitting the spiked eggnog a little too hard.

Barbara and her mother are drawn identically here, so I’m going by the color of their coats. Yellow Coat is awkward and uncomfortable, and Gray Coat is polite, but inquisitive. Yellow Coat gets some muffins at the bakery, Gray Coat asks Yellow Coat how her father is doing. Yellow Coat says Commissioner Gordon is fine (let’s pretend he’s wearing a Rainbow Coat!). Gray Coat says that she’s moving back to Gotham. Yellow Coat gets snippy and tells her to go fuck herself in a nicer DC Comics Rated T for Teen way. I’m guessing Gray Coats goes and fucks herself because the scene ends.

Commissioner Gordon gets Detective Melody “I’m Gonna Get You For This, Batgirl!” McKenna on the horn. Batgirl is tied to a triple homicide that happened downtown! You may remember this happening a few pages ago in THIS VERY COMIC BOOK! I mean, you might remember. McKenna doesn’t look like she reads comics at all. He asks her to get the fuck back to work, and McKenna is more than happy to.

Back at Batgirl HQ, Barbara is mulling over the meaning of “338” and Alysia talks about how her friends are downtown protesting Bruce Wayne’s urban renewal project for Gotham City. She turns on the TV to the news, which shows a crowd holding “OCCUPY GOTHAM” signs. How very topical! Barbara sees an address behind the news reporter: 338 Green Lake Drive.

Man, all I can think about is how the hell Gretel keeps that white suit so clean. I’d have it on for ten seconds before it was covered in spaghetti sauce and grass stains and mud and blood and radioactive waste and feces.

Barbara Gordon is Batgirl again, and she makes her way downtown while asking herself these nagging questions: Who is Gretel? What is the real significance of the number 338? What’s a candy full of spiders? Batgirl thinks that Gretel is going to kill Bruce Wayne, and she has to stop her before she does! Urban renewal! We need to Make Gotham Great Again! MGGA! Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is in his fancy-schmancy millionaire playboy limo and his driver is grinning devilishly while saying “338”. He drives off the road and plows right into a fence at a Wayne Renovations construction site. Gretel’s there outside the construction site with her saber, still wearing the white tracksuit but she has pink hair now. Wayne’s driver is going cuckoo bonkers, holding a crowbar and saying “Come on out and take your medicine. Medicine. A bashed-in skull prescription, Mr. Wayne.” Pretty tight writing right there, I have to admit. Batgirl makes short work of Mr. Possessed Driver when she swoops and kicks him right in the face. A lot of face hits today, I see. Since ol’ Brucey got wanged in the head a bit after the fence crash, he was probably unable to go full-Batman on anyone at the moment. Batgirl’s on her own.

As Batgirl kicks Possessed Driver’s ass, she notices that he doesn’t seem to feel any pain, but delivers blows to him anyway as he yelps out sounds like “Gghuk” and “GAK!” and “Wooophh”. Someday I’d like a job writing this kind of stuff for comic books. Here, let me try it now: “Frruuupp!” “Prhhrhhhnnn!” “Weeeee!” “Grnt!” Batgirl thinks Gretel is thwarted, but she is unphased.

BECAUSE MOTHERFUCKING BRUCE WAYNE SUDDENLY LEAPS AT BATGIRL WITH A CROWBAR! 338! 338! AHHHHH! GRNT!

Final Thoughts

What the fuck is going on, really, I mean seriously? Seriously. Should I abandon any notion that this is tied into the Mirror story whatsoever other than it’s happening six hours later? Why are we shoehorning that Bruce Wayne dipshit into things now? Why was that whole scene with Barbara’s mom just a garbage bag full of nothing? What kind of title is “A Candy Full of Spiders” anyway? When are Barbara and Alysia going to have pages upon pages of graphic sex??

At least the 338 stuff is interesting. One more issue left of the so-called “story arc”, here’s hoping that it wraps up nicely in a neat little package. I’m going to go eat some Cheez-Its now. Bye.