Last Friday I managed to get all the books I hadn't so far for this month, plus a couple from last month I hadn't managed to pick up. It's a mixed bag, some good, some that we'll have to wait and see, some I shouldn't have picked up. So let's start with the last category first!
Yuki and her friends make it to school, where the principal is both excited at the possibility of Yuki winning trophies for the school, and terrified about "Coach Sayjack". OK, Double Dare reference, fair enough. But there's a distraction to Yuki in the form of cute boy new student Zach Slater. OK, Saved by the Bell reference, less encouraging. Meanwhile, the panda returns to its temporary dwelling beneath a bridge to find hoodlums wrecking his shit, including his bamboo plant Lucy. So the panda whoops their butts. Finally, some violence! Then the final page cuts away to some mysterious masked figure with antlers who has seen something concerning.
Here's the thing. I bought this on the promise of the panda fighting or otherwise attempting to take revenge on the girl that hurt it. Instead, we're getting nearly blind (I think) Jewish teachers who talk about how the War of 1812 is correlated to Onyx's debut album Bacdafucup, and angsty teen romance. Also, I'm almost certain "putz" is not spelled "puts." But OK fine, setting the parameters of the fictional universe, and I'm sure the creepy janitor perving on high school girls, and the high school girl with the tarantula in her locker will both be important to the plot at some point, but it's not what I'm here for.
Also, they've now explained the panda can move around in public because it somehow looks like an old man to everyone else. Actually, they didn't explain it so much as there was one panel from the perspective of the hoodlums where the panda is clearly an old man. At least we can say Misiurak and Jones aren't holding the reader's hands.
The brief fight was enjoyable, and there were a couple of panels that were funny. And the story might get somewhere interesting eventually, but I won't be there if it does.
Let's dispense with the everything I don't care about quickly as possible. Rosenberg and Benjamin have a story about Grifter using Leviathan (ugh) to trick Lucius Fox into granting him access to all of Batman's files so the WildCATS (hangs head) can have them. For only the best of reasons, no doubts. Or the stupidest, given Rosenberg's typical level of writing. Zdarsky and the shitton of artist are on the penultimate chapter of a Batman/Red Hood team-up against some guy who used his wife's research to make a drug that makes people hallucinate stuff that makes them happy. Fitzpatrick and Ortega are on the story that, in its next chapter, reveals Tim Drake is bisexual. Good for him. I mostly noticed his old private school roomie Bernard doesn't look a thing like Pete Woods used to draw him. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, and Bernard was the one with a drinking problem who hid liquor in mouthwash bottles. He's a generic blonde kid now.
Which leaves us with the Batgirl & Spoiler story. They're playing video games, which Cassandra is apparently bad at. Barbara asks them to look into a case she'd been working on, about someone who erases evidence of crimes, but leaves a burning red card. Red card means you're out of the game in soccer, right? They travel to a hurricane ravaged convention center, and find the person. Spoiler immediately attacks her, while Batgirl plugs a flash drive she spots into her suit (?) and learns the young woman was investigating the murder of someone who emigrated here that was covered up. Since the Gotham police are useless as always, the "Wildcard" has left it in the hands of the Bat-family.
It's a weird sensation, to lose track of a couple of characters for a few years, and when you come back around, you don't entirely recognize them. Not so much Spoiler, who still seems reasonably upbeat and energetic, but also impulsive. Batgirl, though? Watching Cassandra Cain call someone else brash and bare-knuckled, while at the same time, pausing to check out a random flash drive is a little strange. Not quite, "Captain America kicking a puppy," but it's definitely unexpected.
I mean, I can make an inference. I'm a fan of serial American comics; we're always willing to do the work to try and explain/excuse stuff like that. No-Prizes and all. It's been a while since I've read anything new with Cassandra in it, so she's had time for growth. Bennett writes her as clearly much more comfortable talking and teasing Stephanie and using phrases like "brain worms". She's even trying to stretch the reference, when she remarks that "bee in your bonnet" is close to "brain worms", a "centipedimeter". I think it's a reach, and feels like Bennett trying too hard to be clever more than anything, but taken at face value, represents major progress for the character in her grasp of the language. So, other aspects of her personality could change as well.
Or, Cass was able to read the woman's body language and understood she wasn't a threat. Although in that event, wouldn't she have made more of an effort to stop Spoiler from attacking?
Boo's art is nice. Very expressive, kind of like a looser version of Amanda Conner's work. It works better in the talking parts than the fighting parts. I don't understand, for example, how Spoiler punches a computer monitor, but ends up with glass in her palm, rather than her knuckles or the back of her hand. But the body language when the two of them are just sitting around teasing each other and playing video games is good. Those first couple of pages were easily my favorite part of the story. Just Steph and Cass, hanging out and being pals.
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