Well color me surprised! I hadn’t read this series since the early days of the new 52, needless to say it didn’t make the cut and almost two years have passed since I’ve read about Barbara Gordon and her little corner of Gotham City.

After reading all my comics for the week I was jonesing for some more and picked up Batgirl to flip through. Immediately I was taken by the art of Fernando Pasarin – it reminded me of the stuff coming out of the Valent titles right now and that alone I bought the issue and went home to read.

I had forgotten how fun it is to come into a comic late and try and play catch up because what you just read sucked you in. I may not have known some of the characters and situations that these players had found themselves in but that didn’t matter because Gail Simone’s storytelling skills are strong enough to keep you intrigued and in no time you have pieced together enough of the picture that you find yourself emersed in this series and have no desire to let it pass you by again.

Yeah, like I said, color me surprised!

I can’t wait for the next issue to figure out a little more of the mystery developing here.

A few quick bullet points:
– I like how Barbara isn’t using her Batgirl costume to fight in, just wrapping her head in a scarf or something. It gives this book a down and dirty feel.

– another book with Commissioner Gordon has one of the main players. Funny that the main Bat books have been hardly using Gordon at all. Come here to get your Gordon fix!

– the art is beautiful. I haven’t seen much of Pasarin’s work before – That will hopefully be changing very quickly. I’m a fan.

– what? James Gordon Jr. is dead? Killed by Batgirl? How can this be? Isn’t James Jr. alive and we’ll over in Suicide Squad? interesting.

– some aspects of this book felt a little dated, and Simone may have a little trouble making things seem current in the dialog dept. but at this point it’s not a deal breaker.