There’s something powerfully unsettling about seeing a character you’ve grown to love get to experience a moment of total happiness when you know in the next moment it’s going to be taken away.

In the first few pages we see what is clearly a dream or hallucination of a life Barbara Gordon wouldn’t mind having at all – a quiet home life, living with Dick Grayson, her up and walking and hosting a warm family dinner with her father, Tim Drake and Damian in attendance.  Over the course of the issue the scene evolves into a battle of wits and wills between Barbara and the Calculator taking place inside her head, but it’s these opening pages that really struck me.

There’s a wonderful tone to Batgirl that bring me back every week. There’s a line this book walks between being dark and funny that it manages to pull off week in and week out.  It’s this mixture that allows that opening sequence to work and have an emotive impact. There manages to be both jokes and genuine character beats, with each allowing room for action in each issue.