What I Bought 8/4/2025 - Part 4

I was traveling on the west side of the state last week for work. While I was at a gas station, I saw a quilt shop across the street. On the sign, beneath the name of the shop, was the tagline, "you screamed, he stopped." Read it, paused. Double-take. Spent a few seconds parsing the meaning. At least, I hope I parsed the meaning. There was only one that wasn't deeply concerning.

Batgirl #9, by Tate Brombal (writer), Takeshi Miyazawa (artist), Mike Spicer (colorist), Tom Napolitano (letterer) - "Batgirl Must Die"? Damn it, did DC switch editorial directions again?

Cassandra finds Bronze Tiger, living on a ranch in Montana. Cass makes the decision to arrive in full Batgirl attire, on a black stallion. Did she rent the horse dressed as Batgirl? Buy it? Did she steal the horse? The horse seems pretty OK with her, but maybe she offered it an apple. Part of Batman's teachings: always have snacks to gain the loyalty of local fauna.

Cass is there to find out about the "Jade Tiger", but as Bronze Tiger seems reluctant to talk, she starts jabbing at him. Verbally, for giving up, for hiding away, for not doing anything to help the world. His response is all his attempts to help made the world worse, so she starts jabbing at him, physically.

Which prompts a young man dressed in green to attack her. A brief fight, and the guy's revealed as Tenji Turner, the son of Bronze Tiger and Lady Shiva. So we're doing the "Surprise! Siblings!" plotline. I find it a little weird Bronze Tiger is trying to ignore the questions about the "Jade Tiger", but as soon as Tenji intervenes, he chooses to refer to him as "Jade Tiger" rather than "Tenji." If you don't want to reveal it, why use the codename she knows?

Tenji doesn't know much about either of his parents' past, certainly not the darker stuff, but he knows of Cassandra (but not that she's Batgirl, or what a Batgirl is, considering he asks if she's a 'cave ninja.') That'll have to wait, because another of the Unburied shows up, looking to kill Cassandra. And two more on their way. Which will at least give Cassandra an opportunity to put all this energy and urge to fight to good use.

Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #4, by John Allison (writer), Max Sarin (artist), Sammy Borras (color artist), Jim Campbell (letterer) - Shauna beating that pinata like it ruined her burgeoning romance with a self-absorbed boy. 

The war between quilt stores is settled with an all-night quilting face-off, which ends in disgrace for both teams, as the old lady declares both their efforts pitiful. 'I see both teams have chosen blind panic as their theme.'

Quilts have themes? I learn something every day.

The hatchet is buried, but the car arson and shop flooding remain unsolved. The shop owners have decided they don't care, insurance will cover it, and they'll cover the cost of Shauna's boat repairs. Shauna, on the other hand, must know who's responsible. Well, if she'd read Bryn's pamphlet, she'd have known, because his submission for poetry slam was in there, and it details the whole thing.

Hooray! I correctly deduced the culprit. Admittedly, I did so by judging off tropes and his general personality, but that's half of what Shauna does, and I pulled it off 3 issues earlier. Ha-ha! Point for Calvin, though Shauna, like a photo in one of those apps, is able to re-frame things so her attraction was actually her subconscious recognizing he was a hoodlum. That bit of mental buttressing complete, she's off to get the boat repaired and return to Tackleford. Bryn's left to be drawn into the pub dads' clique, the poor sod.

Either way, another Allison/Sarin adventure in the books. I know less about quilting than I do baking shows (or baking in general), but I might have enjoyed this more than the first Great British Bump-Off. Smaller cast made things easier to keep track of, and Shauna seemed to have more time to devolve into flights of whimsy and crushing despair for Max Sarin to depict marvelously. And since Shauna spent more time trying to be a double-agent for both sides, she wasn't doing as much investigating, which meant I didn't feel as bad for not being able to put together clues (because there weren't any, forensic evidence apparently not being much of a thing in the Allison oeuvre.)