Batgirl #21 // Review
Cassandra needs to solve the murder of a girl she can’t remember. It’s something that she’s being prompted to remember by Doctor Forget-Me-Not--a man with the face of a flowering plant who seems to have her at a disadvantage. This might seems strange and surreal and nightmarish, but it’s something that she’s become quite accustomed to by the time she’s reached Batgirl #21. Wtiter Tate Brombahl continues a journey into Cass’s past with artist Stephen Segovia and colorist Rain Beredo. Though the twist at the ending couldn’t have possibly ben more obvious, Brombahl does a pretty good job of telling a story.
Cass is disoriented. However, it's not like she hasn't been in that state before. She knows what she's doing. She knows how to make some sense of out of the whole situation. The better I understand a part of the past. Maybe to figure out what happened. It all plays out in a distant dream. She's incapable of changing what had happened. But something had happened. And it's really only a matter of time before she's able to work out what had happened. She just needs to follow her own instinct. Her own logic. A detective in her own mind.
The basic essence of Brombahl’s story honestly isn't too terribly interesting. The idea of a girl who's been trained to kill fighting another one is the type of story that's been running through Marvel and DC for a long time. There's nothing terribly original or captivating about it. However, the journey into the past, and the search for answers within the mind of the detective is still really interesting. And it ends up being a lot of fun engaging in solving a mystery that seems wrapped up in memory alone. It's kind of a fun detective story.
Segovia’s art really sells the fascination of the story. The visual reality of Batgirl walking through her own memories and making observations is actually kind of fun. The contrast between her and her mind and the world she's exploring, comes across really vividly in the artwork without amplifying it too much. Berdo’s colors do a good job of creating a dreamlike world that's still very much grounded in an earthbound sense of street level violence. So it ends up being a lot of fun. And it is strikingly well executed on a purely visual level from beginning to end. .
As much of Cass’ story as has already been told, she remains very mysterious. If not a complete mystery. And so it's fun to continue to explore the mystery that's resting and lurking somewhere in her past. There's still a lot that can be done with that even though it's been pretty exhaustively explored. There are elements and aspects of it that can continue to capture the imagination. Brombahl does a pretty good job of finding a little queue in her past that continues to show that not all of the depth of her psych have been explored entirely.
