Batgirl: Future's End

[espanolbot]

The issue begins two years from now, at Barbara Gordon's wedding. Having met a nice cop by the name of Steven Harris, she decides to get married on a rooftop in her fair city, with Alysia and other folk in attendance... unfortunately, Babs attempting to be happy leads to an oddly Jonny Lee Miller-lookin' James Jr to show up, who tries to make Steven jump to his death under threat of shooting Barbara.

Babs tries to rush James to tackle the guns from his hands... only for Steven to leap off of the roof to save her without a moment's thought, to surprise of even Jr. This, naturally, leads to Barbara beating him so hard that she dislocated his eye-socket, broke ten of his bones and had to have five cops drag her off of him. Steven's death proves to be the straw that breaks the camel's back in Babs' case, as this moment becomes when she stops being Batgirl and falls out of love with the city...

Five years from now, and we have an appearance by the League of Batgirls! They work for Bette Noir, the Black Beast, and have shown up at a chopping shop to close it down. Unfortunately for the criminals there, they don't seem receptive to Steph's charms, meaning that someone's going to get their ass beat.



Tiffany (the 12 year old sister of Lucas Fox) says that Steph must be the goofiest girl she's ever seen, only to be corrected by Cass, who says that she's actually the bravest. After Steph stops the criminals with gooparangs, Cass tells her that she uses too many weapons, leading to her BFF to say that she hasn't lived until she covers "two men in goop". This actually gets a smirk from Cass, though Steph says that it was intentional.

Our trio of heroines head back to base-camp, they theorise that only one man would have the drive and force of personality to make a move like this on Gotham: Bane.

We then cut back to what Babs did after Steven's death. First she worked undercover in most of Gotham's syndicates, and managed to take down a majority of the big players in the city after learning what she wanted from them... but after that she sought out Bane to get him to teach her how to BE him. She stayed with him for a while, building up enough trust for him to give her a cache of venom, fully expecting her to come and assassinate him and take his place (as is only right and proper).

Babs however ended up chickening out at the last minute, and now Bane has returned to Gotham to finish their business together. He demands a meeting with Babs, saying that he has hidden six bombs around the city and WILL blow up some highly populated areas if she doesn't show, which she begrudgingly agrees to do so.


Heh, the shadows seem to be homaging Cass' original mask, nice. And it also implies that her backstory is essentially the same, even if it happened offpanel.

Interestingly, Bane seems to be written like he was when he was in Secret Six, which makes sense considering who the writer is...

Babs meets Bane on one of the bridges leading out of Gotham, where the supervillain decides to say that the reason why Babs came to him was that she was hoping that she'd somehow upset him so that he'd put her back in her wheelchair, that her husband's death made her want to retreat back to the time before she met him.

Babs says that this isn't true, and points out that Bane is just trying to carry out his usual MO by trying to break her mentally as well as physically. Doesn't work though, as Babs decided a long time ago that she wants to live, regardless of how good or bad it might become. She beats up Bane, say that she never actually took venom, that she managed to make herself like him on her own without having to resort to drugs... a fact that actually manages to break Bane's spirit to the extent that he agrees that she's won. Just as he falls unconscious, he drops the detonator... but luckily it's on a timer which has to be released for ten seconds prior to exploding, so...


Huh, this issue was... unexpected, and not just for the Cass and Steph cameos. It sets itself up like it's going to be a Grimdark Future version of the Batgirls... but not only are the later BGs in character, but the overall tone is a lot more hopeful than you'd think also.

I approve of this issue, which surprises me, considering the tone of a lot of the prior Babsgirl series drove me off after a couple of issues following the reboot. I'd like to seem more of this team, of failing that at least more appearances by these characters together (might be hard in Tiffany's case though, what with her being... seven or so in the current DCU).

I kind of get the impression that the issue was meant to be a bait and switch between making it seem like the kind of Batgirl story that Editorial wanted Gail Simone to write and the sort that she wanted to write herself (this lead to arguements, understandably, and was responsibel for the grim tone of most of the series).

And if anyone is interested, I'm currently running the Annotated DC blog, where I go over the references and homages to various DC works across different types of media. I know that some folks here follow it, so I thought that I'd post a link in case anyone else is curious. :)
http://annotateddc.tumblr.com/

Comments

[falkner]

Kind of off-topic, I guess, but is there a reason you started that kind of blog on Tumblr instead that on a platform with a viable comment system?

[mrstatham]

Tumblr's comment system is essentially it's reblogging system. Plenty of people hold conversations that way.

[falkner]

That's why I specified 'viable'. I don't think Tumblr's reblogs are a good way to communicate at all.

[espanolbot]

Works pretty well in my experience, plus it's a good way of posting and distributing a lot of stuff quickly among a lot of people.

[janegray]

The little girl reminds me of Chibiusa.

It's actually a good thing, I liked Chibiusa.

[icon_uk]

If DC editorial's apparently somewhat dictatorial approach to the DC line; from vetoing plots, way too many events detracting from ongoing individual series, to the near-mandatory Jim Lee designs (which has not even led to a unified look, but a uniFORM look) was producing vastly improved sales I could see why they're keeping it, but I really don't think it is... I'm hoping things like this are the cracks in those walls showing so we there's room for more variety.

[ablackraptor]

I've checked the sales a few times in the past, and last I checked, they make about two thirds of what Marvel makes (so about 3-4 billion dollars a month shorter), and have been declining since the reboot hit. They had a sales boost with the reboot (since stores needed to stock up on the new number 1s), and their September specials to boost sales do give them a quick boost, but every other month they're constantly down what Marvel makes, despite Marvel both publishing less titles a month than DC does, AND having a more relaxed grip on their creators.
So yeah, this hasn't vastly improved sales at all. Its kept sales static, but on a slow decline, with only temporary pickups every September for their specials.

[zapbiffpow]

So the Steven dude died? Man, these heroes and their loved ones...

[lieut_kettch]

I think it's deliberate that the originator of the term Women in Refrigerators put a man in the Fridge this time.

[espanolbot]

He died stupidly being an idiot. Babs even says so.

[q99]

Huh, the kind of Batgirl book I've wanted for years :)

Think I'm gonna get this issue.

[wtfomfg2]

I'm really liking that they made Cass older here. However unlikely it may be, there's now a chance that a writer could introduce her in the present day stories.

[ablackraptor]

I had mixed feelings on the issue when reading it. Babs' fiancé killing himself was really stupid, and the way Barb spoke to each of the girls would have carried more weight if we saw her interactions with them more, but I liked the way the Batgirls were depicted, and the final sentiments worked for me. Shame this couldn't have been an actual ongoing, preferably with Oracle rather than Bane!Barb; it would have been fun.

[mrstatham]

This. It's cute and all, and Simone has a much better grasp of Steph and especially Cass than I expected, but the interactions mean nothing because of the lack of context or build-up. It's like dropping someone into the last five minutes of the Matrix and expecting them to care when Trinity confesses she finally believes and Neo finally becomes The One. We'd have nothing of the preceding however many minutes of movie to really justify that. This doesn't look like a bad issue by any means, but.. Really, it means about as little as the Huntress/Canary/Batgirl team-up from the last story. There's not enough to justify this, and the larger plot with Bane distracts from, frankly, the more interesting stuff with the Batgirls.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

So wait, does this tie in to that story where Terry came back in time after everyone got killed in the future? I've lost track of that one, didn't even know it was still going on.

I'm not sure all of these are in the same continuity

[yap]

I suppose Barbara taking down the Riddler from within could still tie into his immunity deal by the Detective one shot. Definitely my favorite of these so far, far less dystopian and I was happy to see the hat from Anarky's original costume.

[obsidianwolf]

Yeah it does. These issues show the status quo of the heroes in the future Terry is stuck in which is five years into the future of the Nu52 (until this event raps up then we can assume all of these futures will be gone)

[shadowpsykie]

I'm not crying! YOU'RE CRYING!

*runs away*

[writeofway]

I'm perfectly willing to believe that the complete insipidness of the first couple of pages were a sharp dig at the direction the editors wanted Simone to take the book and the rest is her giving them the middle finger to it. Mostly because those wedding pages were absolutely gut-wrenchingly stupid.

"And because he was Steven, he jumped, to save me. Because he was strong, and kind...and dumber than any man has any right being."

[mrstatham]

I don't know. Simone's perfectly capable of dropping clangers, frankly. Like her ending of the Death of Oracle story, which basically had Oracle saying "Okay, so I won't be called Oracle and I've pretended I'm dead but I'll still be operating in exactly the same manner as Oracle and I'll have to hope that people just don't recognise the hallmarks of my work, even though the bad guys have an equally smart hacker person out there who has a mad-on for me. The only real difference is that I now won't be helping other heroes, even though that makes me look dickish and I haven't really played that role in a couple of years. Yes." so to see this basically say "I stopped being Batgirl because of one tragedy but then for someone reason was utterly supportive of three young women using my mantle even though it brought me so much pain," does not surprise me at all.

[writeofway]

I'm not saying that she is perfect and has never written bad stories before, but this wedding scene seemed so idiotic and rushed that it doesn't feel like something someone as smart and talented as Gail Simone would write unless it was satirical.

[mrstatham]

You say that, but having read some of the past three years worth of Batgirl, I'd beg to differ - even without the editorial interference.

[kingofmadcows]

This was definitely way better than I expected and there's a lot of fanservice. But in the end, it makes me sad since it gives us a glimpse what we could have had if DC wasn't so intent on making everything pointlessly dark and gritty.

And while I do like how they made Barbara physically much bigger like Bane, her costume is pretty bad. It's also a bit weird that she somehow became taller.

[starwolf_oakley]

what we could have had if DC wasn't so intent on making everything pointlessly dark and gritty.

I don't know about "pointlessly." There's sometimes a point to it. Or there should be. The *point* about KNIGHTFALL was that Batman isn't as brutal as he appears to be. Bane wasn't the villain of KNIGHTFALL; Azrael was. (Then the 1990s continued and Bruce Wayne became just as brutal/paranoid/crazy as Jean-Paul Valley, so nevermind.)

Maybe the "point" is superheroes are unhappy at best and near-crazy at worst.

[sindra]

We all caught the Batman & Robin reference, right?


Right??


Okay, good. Let us never speak of it again.

[starwolf_oakley]

I've never quite "got" the whole "James Gordon Jr. is a serial killer all about messing with his father and Barbara." Is it some kind of "Take That" against Frank Miller, as James Jr. was first mentioned in Year One? A look at the "banality of evil", that a serial killer doesn't have to be as garish as the Joker or indiscriminate as Mr. Zsasz? Gotham City took up so much of Gordon's time he sucked as a father?

[espanolbot]

It worked a lot better in the Black Mirror, where he was intended as a foil for Barbara and Dick, in addition to being the answer to the question: "What if a cop as noble and just as Jim Gordon happened to have a son that was the complete opposite, but smart enough to disguise just how bad he could be?".

There he wasn't so much a serial killer, as someone that was as smart as Barbara who was capable of killing or maiming people for real or imagined slights. He wasn't Zsasz, he wasn't a supervillain, just someone who seems like an ordinary person but was an awful, awful person.

There are elements of what could be described as "bad parenting" there, as Jim Jr was shown to be like that since he was a toddler, with his parents and doctors first thinking that he had a social disorder like autism but with Jim initially refusing to do a test to see if he's on the anti-social behaviour disorder spectrum test when the doctors and Barbara Snr. thinking that it might be something else.

Jim thinking that he could do things like "scare Jr straight" by having the Arkham staff put him in an empty cell over night probably didn't help, as that just encouraged him to be more secretative about it.

[jaybee3]

I think making James Jr. a straight-up serial killer/super-villain was one of the worst excesses of the old DCU that they for some reason decided to keep in the DCnU. Yeah, having him be off and sociopathic is one thing but an near-unstoppable super-villain killer?

It reminds of when DC made Sam Lane a xenophobic genocidal mass murderer (remember World of New Krypton) who shot himself and Lucy Lane morphed from former stewardess and married mom to single army officer who becomes SuperWoman in literally a blink of the eye.

Why does every civilian tied to a prominent character have to be a hero or a villain?

[big_daddy_d]

I...surprisingly liked this issue. I didn't think I would honestly. I also find big venomed up Babs to be hot still.

Additionally

[big_daddy_d]

I can see this continuity being a Batman Beyond style series. Think about it. An older, stronger, darker Babs who is half Oracle, half broody in a way that gives Bruce a run for his money..and the fun ass kicking Batgirls. Seriously.. I want this to happen. A TV series or out of continuity comic series.

[jaxjyls]

so is Futures End canon or not?

[espanolbot]

Canon at the moment, when the series finishes... who can tell?

[jaybee3]

If Simone's Babs/Batgirl series had been more like this I would have probably still read it after the first couple of issues. I think you're right in that Editorial influence probably is responsible for the grimdark Dido-vision of DC that pervaded the Batgirl title (and made it hard to enjoy).

Does Tam Fox exist in the reboot (I haven't kept track)? Because I remember that pre-reboot Tiffany Fox was a full-grown woman and older than Tam or her brother. I know everybody has to be deaged in the DCnU but can they at least keep who is older than who consistent or has Flash's meddling even rearranged the timeline of births?

[yap]

Tam Fox was kidnapped, drugged and is now a vegetable.

[superfangirl1]

Aww, I love the hugging at the end.