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.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #4 – “An End to Dreams”! In the previous installment, a whole lot of story was crammed into some meticulously-illustrated panels, yes indeed. Mirror is trying to kill people who should have died by killing them in a way similar to how they should have died. Batgirl tries to catch Mirror at his own game, but Mirror knows how to play his own game better than Batgirl, so a train blows up and Batgirl is forlorn about failing. Later, she meets up with Nightwing who she used to fuck. No, sorry, this is a “Rated T for Teen” production. She meets up with Nightwing who she used to “play chess with” and after a few panels where Nightwing “puts her in check”, Batgirl “steals his queen” and then Nightwing “tells Batgirl to go eat shit” and flies away. Got me? Ugghhhhh, ok, so Batgirl insists that she wants to work alone and she’s tired of everybody worrying about her, including but not limited to, uh, the people who really care about her.

And that’s it! You’re all caught up! Let’s get a move on.

Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #4 [February, 2012]
Written by: Gail Simone
“An End to Dreams”

With the cover art showing Batgirl kicking Mirror right in his stupid mirror face, I’m guessing that we’re going to witness an EPIC BATTLE of GOOD VS. EVUL, one where Batgirl earns herself seven years of bad luck! Uh oh!

Batgirl is in a wheelchair getting yelled at by another non-Batgirl Barbara Gordon, who is standing on two legs. Mirror is there too. The band is back together, it seems! Non-Batgirl Barbara Gordon is asking Batgirl why she thinks she deserves this miracle, the getting-up-and-walking-around miracle. “WHY CAN’T YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR, BARBARA?” Barbara says to Barbara while Mirror’s mirrors are all around her. She wakes up.

Nightmares all the time and Barbara chalks it up to survivor’s guilt. ‘Tis Christmastime, and Barbara’s roommate (Jonesy! No, Alysia, it’s Alysia) is spread-eagled in front of the glowing Christmas tree in the middle of the night. She sits on the floor with her, and Jonesy starts talking about Christmas in Singapore and her desire to make a living painting and cooking. All the while, Gordon’s inner monologue keeps talking about how lonely she is and how she rarely opens up, but feels like opening up now. So I think Barbara’s gonna fuck Jonesy in front of the Christmas tree. Sorry, it’s Alysia, her name is Alysia.

Wait, what?? Big secret! BIG SECRET! You can stick around for one more sentence! GAHH!

So Jonesy asks Gordon what the best Christmas present she ever got was, and Gordon begins the answer with “My mom walked out on us when I was just twelve years old…” so I bet Jonesy/Alysia is regretting that question already. But, she ends up instead talking about last year’s Christmas when Commissioner Dad told wheelchair-bound Barbara that there was a healer in South Africa! Once Alysia realizes that the wheelchair she saw while Barbara moved in (from Issue #1) was actually hers, Barbara wishes she hadn’t started talking about it in the first place. Alysia feels the tension in the room so she is like “haha uh hey so uh I have a secret too”, but Barbara gives me some blue balls with this goddamned response: “gotta go, see you later”. It’s like 2am, Gordon, you can hear your roommate say one more sentence before you fuck off. Maybe she has a collection of her murder victims’ teeth that she keeps as a necklace? Maybe she wants to bone you? Goddamnit. I want to see some bonin’.

Batgirl prances around the snowy urban landscape in the dead of night in search of Mirror. I was going to make another crack about Batgirl never sleeping, but since we just saw that she has nightmares I guess I’ll leave her alone about it for now. Bah.

Elsewhere in the city, an alley crime is happening! Maybe they should remove all the alleys in Gotham City, I’ll run that one by the Commissioner since he and I are like this *motions finger penetrating a circle over and over*. A well-dressed socialite-type couple is being shaken down by some rude thugs with iPhone apps that tell them where Bat-related superheroes in the city are at the moment. I guess the app doesn’t check for Batgirl because of possibly misogynistic reasons? She swoops down on them and starts fucking them up. Merry Christmas you filthy animals! Ha! Home Alone! After she makes short work of these scoundrels, the couple is pleased and thankful. A superhero’s job is never done, I suppose, unless they die!

“I despise vulgarity”?? You know what I have to say to that? “GUH HHK”. That’ll learn ya.

Batgirl heads over to the graveyard where Mirror’s family is buried. His wife Shandra and his two twin girls Tabitha and Jennipher. Yeah, I threw up in my mouth a little too. Batgirl recaps the whole Mirror-car-bomb-he-survived thing again, except now she says he was a DEA agent and the cartel planted the bomb in his car. Was that mentioned before? Probably, but I’m sure I glossed over it when I was in a fevered frenzy over the Joker’s stupid hat. Batgirl knows that Mirror is going to come back to the graveyard since it’s Christmas Eve and all, so she leaves him a note on one of the snowy graves. He finds it and reads it:

“Mirror. You have no right to be here. You shame your family’s memory with every name you scratch off the list of yours. You were a victim. And now, you are a murderer. And I have no sympathy for you. Millions of people have suffered tragedy, and had the courage to continue living. To kill innocent people to stop your own pain and guilt is the act not of an angel, but of a coward. I have given the GCPD all the names of the targets on your list, as well as your modus operandi. If you want to face me, I will be at Sprang Park near the old Botanic Gardens. You’ll know the building when you see it. Signed, –BATGIRL”.

That shit is weaktoast! Here’s a better note:

“Mirror. Suck my dick! I oughta box your ears, you terrible little sea urchin! You are a slimy little pile! A feckless chump! A quivering stump! A real gutter pigeon from the River Styx courtesy of Mr. Devil himself! Back to Planet Shit where you belong, Sparky!”

Ohhhh shit. Ironic punishment alert! In my business, we call that “writing”.

That’s more like it! It seems Sprag Park is an abandoned run-down carnival. “Look around you, this place is as broken as you are.” Batgirl taunts Mirror only with overwrought irony and poetry, and to add yet another overwrought layer to the overwrought cake of turds, she leads him to the House of Mirrors. There she BLINDSIDES him and starts punching and kicking him, she even gets in an elbow drop to his back. However, just like the other nine fights so far in this series, her initial success is short lived and Mirror grabs her by the scruff. “You used my wife and daughters’ graves as BAIT?” he asks incredulously. Looks like Mirror’s line was crossed! Batgirl knees him right in the jaw, breaking his mirror face (CALLED IT!) and causes him to bleed profusely with what looks more like Open Pit barbecue sauce than blood to me. Batgirl uppercuts his chin with a hearty KRAKOW, which we all know was the capital of Poland until 1596. As Mirror collects his bearings and leaps to attack, Batgirl clicks on a film projector out of nowhere (seriously) and shows him the news headline of the car bomb incident on the funhouse mirrors. He doesn’t like this either. Maybe he didn’t know?? He starts losing his mind a bit, and Batgirl punches him yet again. “We live in Gotham City, Mirror” she reminds the poor sap. Good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. “And people get their miracles whether they deserve them or not” she adds as a bit of an epiphany for herself as well.

We end the issue with Barbara and Alysia opening Christmas presents and then BOOM! A KNOCK ON THE DOOR. BARBARA’S MOM OUT OF NOWHERE. KRAKOW!

Yeah, ok, slow your roll there, red-haired lady. I’ve already got mothers all over town!

Final Thoughts

This is both hamhanded AND hamfisted! So much ham! Why do these superheroes have to make these elaborate schemes in the first place? Of course it always goes their way, but there was a 99.9999% chance that Mirror was gonna be like “Nah fuck that” and skip going to Batgirl’s Carnival of Poetic Justice, leaving Batgirl waiting all night going “buhhhhh”.

It appears that even though the Mirror threat has been neutralized, there’s a NEW threat in town. The MOM threat. Batgirl has already survived a bullet to the gut but can she handle MOM!?! Oh Gail Simone, you sure know how to spin a yarn! Spin it into a sweater of feces. Tell me about Alysia’s big secret, damnit, what about that?

Argh.