Batgirl #7 // Review
Cassandra Cain is tenuously boarding a train. She might be more than a little edgy about boarding a train given recent events in her life, but she’s perfectly calm about the whole thing...at least on the outside. And anyway...she’s got a bit of a mystery to follow as she moves her way onto the train and begins to lose herself in a tale of history in Batgirl #7. Writer Tate Brombal enters the history of Cassandra Cain’s mother in a new stsory arc drawn by guest artist Isaac Goodhart. Color comes to the page courtesy of Mike Spencer.
The mystery in question involves a package that she received. There were no fingerprints on the package and she’s been able to determine that there isn’t a bomb in the thing. Still...there ARE risks in opening it onboard the train...particularly as there could be biological or chemical agents inside the package, but her instincts tell her it’s safe so she opens it...only ti find out that it’s got a book inside...something written to her by her mother. And so...just in time for Mother’s Day week, Cassandra Cain is about to embark on the origins of her mother--the martial arts grandmaster known as Lady Shiva.
Brombal takes the bold move of tearing Batgirl almost entirely away from the title character. He just kind of...wants to talk about Lady Shiva...and so he goes into her background. And that’s nice and everything. Very martial arts. Very Kung Fu Theater or whatever. But it’s not a Batgirl story. And while it IS nice to get some idea on the background of the background that raised this particular Batgirl (Cassandra Cain,) it’s not interesting enough in and of itself to feel justified in robbing Batgirl of the central influence of its title character.
Martial arts can be delivered to the comics page in a way that feels powerful and dynamic. Goodhart and company do a solid job of delivering the story to the page in a way that feels strikingly kinetic with respect to the action, but the feel of another world from the other side of the planet doesn’t feel all that present on the page. Nor does the specific nature of Asia in the DC Universe. The best international treatments for the DC Comics page will feel familiar while also embracing a world of dramatic physics, magic and superpowers. Brombal’s script doesn’t give Goodhart a whole lot of opportunity to explore this in a whole lot of depth, so it feels kind of weak.
There’s still the possibility for Brombal and company to explore something truly interesting with the origins of Lady Shiva in the pages of Batgirl, but it really should have been more of a back-up feature than something that was going to dominate the entire issue. As it is, it just doesn’t feel like there’s enough Batgirl in Batgirl. Cassandra Cain is a really cool character. She definitely deserves the center of the panel in her own title.
