Batgirl #11 – Tate Brombal, Writer; Takeshi Miyazawa, Artist; Mike Spicer, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: In the aftermath of Cass’ road trip with Shiva, which ended in the assassin’s apparent death, Cass’ life has taken a very strange new turn – as she discovered she had a family she never knew about. Bronze Tiger, Shiva’s former lover, has been raising his own son with the assassin, Tenji Turner, and the highly-trained teenager couldn’t be more thrilled to have an older sister. Cass is more ambivalent – especially because she knows what life awaits him in her circles. Complicating things, Ben Turner was the “trainer” who David Cain had hypnotized into helping him forge Cass into the weapon he wanted, leading the two to have very complicated feelings about each other. There’s a lot of excellent tension packed into this issue, both emotional and other, but it’s interrupted soon – as an assassin from the same cult that killed Shiva comes looking for them both with an offer.
This assassin seems to essentially be a “bloodbender”, using the substance as deadly projectiles. It’s a great visual, but unlike some past villains, she mostly seems to be a plot device and some of her dialogue is really over-the-top. I must have lost track of the number of times she yelled “to the death” in this issue. But her dramatic appearance is followed by a similar drop-in from a much friendlier face, one with ties to an ally who Cass lost along the way. And so this arc wraps, with a new status quo and a new family for Cass, as she and Tenji head out on a new quest. There have been a surprising number of “surprise sibling” stories in Bat-books lately, and I do think this one is executed pretty well, although there are a lot of unanswered questions here. I’m really intrigued by just what direction Brombal is going to take the bond between these two now that it seems Tenji is going to be a regular going forward.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
