Barbara Gordon: Breakout #3 // Review
Prisoner 682281 is ordered to get out of bed for roll call. The guards will beat the hell out of them if they’re not up and out. It’s not going to be easy for her. She’s still pretty seriously wounded...though they clearly consider her healthy enough to be in with the general population. She’s going to have to recover while continuing to dodge threats in Barbara Gordon: Breakout #3. Writer Mariko Tamaki continues a prison drama with the original Batgirl that is brought to page and panel by artist Amancay Nahuelpan and colorist Tamra Bonvillain. Tamaki’s story continues to find its own shadowy appeal in the third issue of the series.
The prison is pretty simple. And Barbara Gordon being Barbara Gordon...she’s memorized all of the specs: 28 floors. 500 cells. 287 men. 165 women. And yet there’s something almost breathtakingly underwhelming about it even though there are electrified fences and surveillance cameras everywhere. In spite of it all, someone was able to sneak-up on one of the best crimefighters in all of Gotham City and nearly kill her...entirely without showing-up on any cameras. Something is clearly unsettling about the whole situation. It’s something dangerous.
Tamaki alternates the story between contemporary life for Barbara as a prisoner and a specific investigation that she was doing with Nightwing and Cass some time ago. The direct connection between the two settings isn’t totally clear, but it clearly means something to Barbara...and it’s something that she still doesn’t completely understand by the end of the third issue of the series. This makes for a really interesting detective/mystery dynamic that makes Tamaki’s story one of the more interesting to come out on the comics rack this year. Tamakis’ sophisticated handle on the precise idiosyncrasies makes this one great.
Nahuelpan does a brillain job with the contrast between the Batgirl flashback scenes and the contemporary Prisoner 682281 scenes. In prison, she’s bandaged, beaten and suffering from massive amounts of pain. As Batgirl, she was gorgeous, glamorous and totally aware of everything...except for the one detail that was most important to her investigation. The intensity of the suspense and the drama are cleverly framed forr the page by Nahuelpan with moody, immersive atmosphere that is cast over everything by the nuanced colors of Bonvillain. There’s a scruffiness about the darkness of the prison that contrasts against the sleek elegance of Batgril and company during her investigation in the flashback panels.
Barbara Gordon is fascinating. She’s had so many different lives over the years...and she’s essentially managed to stay herself through each of the different incarnations...at least three of which seem to be present in the current DC Universe. Tamaki would be really, really good at delivering an ongoing Barbara Gordon series that found her moving trom Babs to Oracle to Batgirl and back. Barbara is so many things. Tamaki has got a solid handle on the essence at the central appeal of all of them.
