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A review by harvskhails
Batgirl, Vol. 3: Death of the Family by Admira Wijaya, Vicente Cifuentes, Julius M. Gopez, Gail Simone, Scott Snyder, Ray Fawkes, Jonathan Glapion, Mark Irwin, Juan Albarran, Marc Deering, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter, Greg Capullo, Daniel Sampere
5.0
An emotional, poignant, brilliant volume! One of the best, if not THE best, set of Batgirl comics of the New 52. I loved that it was overall a collection of Batgirl comics that concerned Barbara's two families and the psychotic killers that could break both families. In this regard, I feel like even though the "Death of the Family" title concerns the Batfamily, for Barbara it also had a lot to do with the breakdown of the Gordon family. In my opinion, this volume really showed what Barbara is capable of when she's driven to the edge by those that have broken her in the past (Joker) and those who aimed to break her and her family (Joker and James Jr.) I'm curious to see how the consequences of these two stories plays out.
I really liked Admira Wijaya's art in the first issue of this collection, every panel and page was more like a painting than I comic book but the art being handed over to Daniel Sampere for the most part felt more like a return to actually reading a comic book, especially because the art was still very similar to Adrian Syaf and Ed Benes' collaboration in previous volumes which suits this iteration of Barbara. Greg Capullo did a great job of keeping the artistic style consistent as well for the Death of the Family issues.
I do understand now why people were unhappy with Gail Simone temporarily being replaced by Ray Fawkes as Batgirl writer. Don't get me wrong, Fawkes still wrote brilliantly but Simone has a very significant voice in her writing that you can't replicate, something that Scott Snyder had in his Death of the Family issue. I felt like when Simone returned to writing the comic, the voice of Batgirl she had created for the New 52 was back.
I really do miss this Batgirl costume though, it's my absolute favourite of them all. I'll be sad to see it go after volume 5.
I really liked Admira Wijaya's art in the first issue of this collection, every panel and page was more like a painting than I comic book but the art being handed over to Daniel Sampere for the most part felt more like a return to actually reading a comic book, especially because the art was still very similar to Adrian Syaf and Ed Benes' collaboration in previous volumes which suits this iteration of Barbara. Greg Capullo did a great job of keeping the artistic style consistent as well for the Death of the Family issues.
I do understand now why people were unhappy with Gail Simone temporarily being replaced by Ray Fawkes as Batgirl writer. Don't get me wrong, Fawkes still wrote brilliantly but Simone has a very significant voice in her writing that you can't replicate, something that Scott Snyder had in his Death of the Family issue. I felt like when Simone returned to writing the comic, the voice of Batgirl she had created for the New 52 was back.
I really do miss this Batgirl costume though, it's my absolute favourite of them all. I'll be sad to see it go after volume 5.