Stephanie Brown

Like Barbara Gordon’s agile mind, writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher tend to balance several plot threads in each Batgirl issue, and this one is no exception. The three main ones are real estate developers using teenagers in various street gangs to drive out tenants so they can gentrify Burnside, Stephanie Brown aka Spoiler getting a bounty put on her because she witnessed Eiko Hasigawa (Catwoman’s lover during Genevieve Valentine’s run on the book) executing mob leaders, and also her continued lapses of memory, which might have led to a scientific breakthrough. Although, Stewart and Fletcher’s plot has a lot of moving parts, it comes organically out of character relationships and the dark, lovely world they have crafted through thirteen issues with artist Babs Tarr, colorist Serge Lapointe, and other collaborators.

After last week’s blockbuster opening, Batman and Robin Eternal #2 has a little bit of a sophomore slump as a mysterious assassin almost beats Harper Row (aka Bluebird) to death until she is saved by Dick Grayson and a silent, deadly Cassandra Cain, who runs off to do other mysterious things. After the extended action scene, most of the issue is Stephanie freaking out about Dick being alive along with a flashback of Batman and Dick Grayson as Robin fighting the Scarecrow with some twisted, horror influenced art from Paul Pelletier and Tony Kordos and a bendy, trippy color scheme from Rain Beredos. This sequence makes up for a mostly lackluster fight scene between the mystery attacker, Cass, and Dick in which Pelletier starts strong with a kinetic double page spread of a full bodied kick from Cassandra Cain before pulling back from the action and even using storytelling shortcuts that diminish potential acrobatics from Grayson.