What I Bought 12/8/2010

While I was running this morning, I wound up arguing with myself about whether the word "impediment" existed. I was sure it did (and I was right), but I was pronouncing the first "e" differently than you do with "impede", so I started to think I was making up a word. I wasn't though, just overthinking it. In other news, DC's website listed Rebels as coming out this week, and it didn't, at least not at my shop. It did that last month too, said it'd be out the 2nd Wednesday, came out the 3rd instead. It does mean next week will be a decent haul (by my current standards), but it left this week a tad bereft.

Batgirl #16 - Steph starts the issue on the run from the cops. Turns out Newton, the college student killed last issue, had a cop for a dad. And since the presence of a Batarang obviously meant Batgirl did it (as opposed to any of the half-dozen other folks in Gotham who use Batarangs), Gotham PD is out for blood. Steph does elude the police, with a little help from Detective Gage, but has an unpleasant surprise waiting at school the next day. With an assist from Oracle and Proxy (Wendy), Steph tracks down the real killers, and gets cleared of a murder charge. Sadly, the bad guys have a superfast ace up their sleeve, and this'll be a new challenge for Stephanie.

I like Steph's fairly cavalier attitude to being chased by cops. She does enjoy being Batgirl, likes the adventure (to her detriment at times), so she probably can't help but be a little flip. I like Gage trusting his instincts, and Batgirl's internal narration (which occasionally becomes external). I laughed at Wendy trying to use her wheelchair to guilt the campus cop into leaving her alone, plus her 'Oh, no - Not campus jail!!!' line, while Oracle listens in, frustrated. It was kind of sick, but the fact some of the students turned Newton's death to their benefit rang true. I was a college kid, then I taught them, and some kids will seize any excuse to duck assignments. I especially like that Miller messed with my expectations. I thought this whole arc would be Batgirl dodging the cops while trying to prove her innocent, but that's been wrapped up already, so the focus can sit on capturing the real bad guys.

It might be I'm just more accustomed to it, but I'd enjoyed Dustin Nguyen's art more this issue than I did last month. He didn't do the more exaggerated style he used at the start of Batgirl #15, which I loved, but his, I guess "typical" style worked better for me. I'm really impressed by how much expression he can convey with relatively few lines. I'm interested to see if, not that we know the bad guys have a speedster, Nguyen will continue to portray that how he did this issue. It was just one panel, but it was interlocking black and white triangles as a background, while Steph and the cops are shown all being hit in the same shot, while the handcuffs are falling off the bad guys. Basically we never see the character, just the effect.

Frank Miller did something kind of like that with Barry Allen in Dark Knight Strikes Again. You didn't see Barry run; it was more one panel he wasn't there, the next he was. Or one panel they're in a government facility, the next they're in Utah. Like observing a planet not by actually seeing it, but by its gravitational tug on stars and planets you do see. It probably won't go that way, since I think Nguyen drew it that way to keep it a surprise, but you never know. For the record, that's not my observation about Barry Allen. I read it in a David Brothers' post on DKSA on 4thletter.