Batgirl #9: Night of the Owls Continues!

[aeka]

I think this is by far the best issue of Batgirl.

I'm being serious.

On 13 November 1944, Japan made fusen bakudan (fire balloons) and sent them off as an attack to the west coast of the US and Canada. One of those bombs devastated a family in Oregon:





Fast forward to the present, and Batgirl not only encounters a Talon, but also a thing of the past:





I actually sympathised with the Talon here. I'm not sure if I was meant to do that, but I felt this was the best Gail Simone has written for this book so far. :<

Comments

[shadowpsykie]

is she saying:

I have mask too, (I) understand?

or

I have mask to understand? either way... beautiful

[lascoden]

The first, I think. Pretty sure the first.

[atom_punk]

Presumably the first given that she was said to have been disfigured by one of the paper balloon bombs seen in the first scan.

I remember reading about this thing with the balloon bombs in history class and thought it sounded a lot like a supervillain plot. I was really surprised to see this of all WWII elements included in an actual comic!

Also confused about why the young Japanese girl was introduced given that she seems to bear no relevance to the rest of the issue. I suppose the book-ended style was poignant (the issue starts and ends with excerpts from the girl's letter to her family) and I can see how it could be showing how chance moments can define who we are and connect us to people we don't even know (Japanese girl's balloon bomb by chance orphans an American girl and sends her into the service of the Court of Owls) but not sure if I'm just reading to much into it....

[espanolbot]

I presumed that the disfigured girl tracked down the schoolgirl who signed her name to the bomb that killed her family, and killed her as an initiation thing.

[atom_punk]

Was that actually shown in the issue? I'm blanking on that point right now.

[espanolbot]

And WW2 had a lot of weird bomb plots, most of them not really working that well. Such as the Russians strapping bombs to dogs and training them to run under tanks... only they used Soviet tanks in the training exercises, so the dogs blew up the wrong ones. Or the American attempt to strap bombs to bats, so that when they gathered together to roost they'd burn down Japanese ships and what not. That plan didn't work either.

[biod]

There were also bat and pigeon suicide bombers, prototypes of weather cannons, whatever the hell the Tsar tank was supposed to be, and of course, Churchill's Aircraft Carrier of Ice.

[glprime]

Ice and wood pulp! :)

My favorite WWII Failed Superweapon might be the spinning death wheel, which looks like nothing so much as a scaled-up fireworks pinwheel.

"Come on, guys! Now you're just fucking around!"

[mrstatham]

I see we still haven't gotten past the 'blithering monologue whininess' stage yet, Barbara.

[eyz]

Gail Simone's finally found her groove on this series~

[beulahbot]

Probably the best issue yet.

[kenn_el]

IIRC there was barely one reference to TKJ, so, yes, this was the best issue so far of the series. Maybe after the Owl tie-ins the writer might lighten up and let us actually see what's awesome about Barbara, rather than telling us.