"Steph vs. Gravity: The Eternal Battle," in Batgirl (vol. 2) #16, by Bryan Q. Miller (writer), Dustin Nguyen (penciler), Derek Fridolfs (inker), Guy Major (colorist), Travis Lanham (letterer)
The second half of Steph Batgirl is the stronger half. Having mostly settled establishing Steph's bonafides, Miller focuses on more one or two-part stories, plus some simmering background threads that eventually come to the surface. A fair number of the one-shots involve bizarre plots and team-ups, which gives Stephanie plenty of opportunity to make snarky comments or jokes. Working with Supergirl against a bunch of movie Draculas brought to life. The team-up with Squire in London to preserve the Greenwich Mean. The Valentine's Day issue where she and Klarion try and get Teekl laid.
I really wanted to use a splash page from that last one, but there weren't any. *sad face*
Miller incorporates a few new villains, nobody that's really top shelf, mostly hired muscle for a mysterious mastermind. But it's better than just throwing her up against Two-Face or whatever. It occurs to me, I don't think she ever got to deal out any payback to Black Mask for the whole "nearly torturing her to death" thing. Although maybe that was because Catwoman shot him? I vaguely remember that. Thumbs up, Selina.
Dustin Nguyen handles art chores on 4-5 issues, and Pere Perez handles most of the others. Both their styles are a bit simpler than Garbett's, a bit looser with their pencils (Nguyen much more so than Perez, though). It works well though, since Steph's adventures are not more light-hearted necessarily, but "kooky" might be the right word. Or odd, and Nguyen's art captures that somehow. You can have odd villains, or a bunch of guys in stupids hoods and masks trying to act like a death cult, and it can look intimidating, but not so much that it's whiplash when the guys in hoods turn out to be a bunch of goobers. It can work for dark and mysterious, or for comedy.
No comments:
Post a Comment