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.

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #3 – “A Breath of Broken Glass”! In the previous installment, Batgirl aka Barbara Gordon aka Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon aka Gordon “Sting” Sumner aka Gordon “ALF” Shumway aka the Gorton’s Fisherman followed a lead on Mirror’s identity and discovered that Mirror was some guy who survived a car bomb that killed his whole family. This didn’t sit well with him, and now he wants to kill everyone that should have died as an act of kindness and mercy because he has nothing better to do with his time. Batgirl, who also has nothing better to do with her time and doesn’t seem to even have a job or a steady income or anything, wants to thwart this douchebag. BUT, this douchebag put a bomb on a train, so she has to go take care of that first.

Other things happened too! Barbara Gordon dates her physical therapist and I think he’s going to die in a few issues! A warrant is out for Batgirl, I guess, and the Commissioner might be ok with that? Does he have a beef with Batgirl? Did Batgirl shit in his coffee once? And what’s up with Barbara’s new roommate? Is she, uh, is she seeing anyone? All these questions and less will be answered!

Batgirl (Vol. 4), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Gail Simone
“A Breath of Broken Glass”

Batgirl is second-guessing her desire to stop evil-doers, since this Mirror guy is pretty evil as far as doers go. She’s on her way to find the bomb-train so she can…uh, do something about it? She probably doesn’t even know what she’ll do yet. Mirror gave her an earpiece so he can talk to her while she goes off to do the superhero thing. “His whole motivation seems to be that he doesn’t think anyone should believe in miracles,” Batgirl narrates, morosely, “He says miracles are a lie–just a cruel prank. He’s wrong. I know he’s wrong.” You know what, if this comic series starts getting Jesus-y then I’m bowing out post haste! Of course, Batgirl only thinks this because she was shot in the stomach and rendered a paraplegic for only three years. So she wants to prove him wrong? Who cares? Go home and watch TV.

Batgirl lands on the runaway speeding train on the elevated rail. She bends over in front of a window and asks the operator if he can stop it or do anything. No. Batgirl is like “fuck”, anchors herself to the train with her grappling hook, and whips around the side to crash into the train through a window, effectively shattering harmful, sharp glass all over the already-traumatized passengers like some sort of huge asshole!

The left button is the “Never Find the Bomb On Time” button! Hah hah hah hah haaaaaah! The right button is for ordering nachos!

While Mirror taunts her via one-way walkie-talkie technology, Batgirl calls out for Rupert Ansell, the man who should have died on the train tracks a few months back and the reason Mirror is trying to bomb a train in the first place. Once she finds him, she orders the rest of the passengers to leave that particular train car. After they all leave, Batgirl sucks Ansell’s dick! Ha! It goes on graphically for the next nine pages! Haha! Wait, no, she doesn’t suck his dick, but Ansell does think she’s trying to make some moves on him at any rate. While Ansell just stands there bewildered, Batgirl attempts to connect the dots out loud to Mirror about why she’s on his list: she was supposed to die hanging on the balcony while stopping the Brisby Killers. ERGO, she needs to die ironically because Mirror likes to spend an extraordinarily unnecessary amount of time setting up and following through on making sure these people die similarly to how they were supposed to die. ERGO, Batgirl can’t be blown up, and so Mirror can’t kill Ansell while she’s on the train as well. Did I get all that right? Bleh. APPARANTLY, though, Batgirl forgot one thing…

…YES, the good Samaritan takes the train running in the opposite direction! Take that, Batgirl! (??) (???) Boom.

Goddamnit, I always, always, ALWAYS, forget about the good Samaritan! Grrrr!

Two hours after train go blowup, we see Detective McKenna frying eggs at home while bugging Commissioner Gordon who probably has better things to do than to tell one of his police detectives, AGAIN, that she can’t work right now. McKenna is like “fine” and hangs up, but she’s probably going to do some police work anyway because these kinds of comics do not mirror reality on a believable level whatsoever. Where I come from, cops don’t even do police work while they’re on duty. Barbara Gordon was already standing at the office door waiting for her dad to get off the fucking phone already, looking worried and numb. The Commissioner asks what’s wrong, Barbara’s laundry list of worries runs through her head but she doesn’t tell him anything. For secret identity reasons. What I’ve learned about comics so far is that secret identities are important because…… uh. Anyway, Commissioner Gary Oldman tells Barbara to be careful and cuts and runs to follow a fake lead that Batgirl gave him. Barbara wonders why everyone worries about her all the time. Probably because people keep trying to kill her? Yeah, gee, I wonder.

OOoOoooOOOOOOOoohhhh, pierogis!

Instead of being careful like Commissioner Daddy said, Barbara puts on her batclothes and flutters off into the night again because people in comic books don’t sleep for 46 days in a row. She heads over to the vehicle impound lot to recover her Batbike that she had to abandon in the hospital after, as you recall, she drove right inside the building and into the lobby elevator. Two seconds after she finds it a voice behind her goes “Stealing from the cops now, are we?” It’s Nightwing, AKA past-Robin, AKA Dick Grayson, AKA the 9-year-old superhero. Batgirl pretends that she knew Nightwing was following her this whole time, but she’s a filthy fucking liar. Nightwing was probably following Batgirl because he has a Robin-sized boner for her. Ah, apparently the feeling is mutual, because he sits behind her on the Batbike and wraps his arms around her as they plow through the closed gate of the impound lot…and she all like “yeah baby”. Her internal monologue talks about how she used to not like him in the past, but she can’t believe that these days. That’s kind of a bummer, because I’d much rather read a story where Nightwing and Batgirl fight like 5th-graders. He pulls on her hair, she kicks him in the dick. That kind of thing.

So Nightwing is worried about her, which Batgirl finds annoying because she was just complaining that everyone worries about her all the time. I starting to sense a pattern here that all these fucking MEN need to shut the damn-hell up and let Batgirl do her thing. Where’s Batgirl’s roommate? Get her in here instead! She’ll leave Batgirl alone. Nightwing asks her if she’ll be able to take Mirror on by herself; Batgirl responds by kicking Nightwing’s legs away from under him and grappling away! Ah, young love. *farts*

We cut to a flashback scene with Barbara and Dick talking to each other at what I assume is a Wayne Manor charity event. They flirt and shit. Well, they don’t shit. Maybe someone shits. Anyway, the point is they like each other but apparently they can’t be together? One of those tales as old as time, eh? Woody Allen and Soon-Yi made it happen! Jaime and Cersei Lannister? Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia? Am I implying that these two are also somewhat related! I hope so, that would be a funny twist!

We cut back to the present day, where Batgirl and Nightwing are playfully leaping around buildings in a game of superhero grab-ass. I feel like this has been going on for 10 pages. Come on, Gail Simone, who wants romance in their superhero stories?? GIRLS?! Just kidding, I’m basically a girl. Maybe it’s because I don’t care about either of these characters yet? I hope they get hit by a blimp during their fancy-free escapades.

Young love! The delicate dance of attraction! The push and pull! The punching and kicking and screaming!

Wait, something happens that still satisfies my cynical cravings for schadenfreude! Batgirl starts beating the tar out of Nightwing. It turns out their version of “flirting” really is just kicking the piss out of each other. Now that’s the kind of love I can relate with! After the tussle is over, Batgirl reiterates that she doesn’t want people to worry. She wants understanding and respect, not pity and comfort. She says that she’s going about this alone, and Nightwing can’t deal with that then she’s kicking his ass to the curb! Away with the zero, get yourself a hero, girlfriend. Nightwing begrudgingly acquiesces to Batgirl’s wishes and does a provocative pose as one final “get a good look at THIS because you’re not seeing it anymore!” before he fucks off into the night.

The judges give it a 10 for presentation, but a 4 for flavor.

Final Thoughts

Every single character sure is stubborn. Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon, Detective McKenna, Nightwing, Mirror, George Costanza, Jack Shephard, Jack Bauer, Jack-Be-Nimble. I suppose it could go either way, but my prediction is that Barbara Gordon will prove herself right about being able to handle everything on her own, despite all these worrywart white-knighting MEN in her life that may think otherwise. You can’t really name yourself “Batgirl” without being treated like a girl, whether you’re 12 or 42 years old. I’m guessing most Batgirl stories over the years handle the heroine like a precocious, yet naively flawed individual.

There seems to be more to it than even that, though, which makes me still wonder if it will indeed go the other way. She’ll be proven wrong, she’ll bite off more than she can chew, and she’ll have a problem she won’t be able to get out of so easily? There’s nuance to this series that’s drawing me in. I think whatever happens, I’ll be surprised. Or not! Maybe the Joker will pop up and blast her in the gut with a shotgun this time! He’ll be wearing assless chaps and a cowboy hat!