Batgirl #23
Story:
Art:

Written by Kelley Puckett
Pencils by Damion Scott
Inks by Robert Campanella
Lettered by John Costanza
Colors by Jason Wright

Published by DC Comics
Price: $2.50

My Verdict: Better.

As we approach the reason that pretty much everybody is still reading this book--Batgirl's promised showdown with the deadly Lady Shiva--Batgirl keeps training as Oracle and Batman talk about the upcoming match...and what it means to not only Batgirl but the rest of the Bat-Family.

Finally, after floundering about seemingly without a direction or a purpose, the book goes back to something interesting: the build-up to the Shiva/Batgirl fight. Ever since the Shiva/Batgirl bout was setup...oh, aeons ago...everyone I talk to wants that to hurry up and get here so we can decide whether or not to drop this thing. The problem has been that without that long-distance arc to play off of, what is there for this book? Batgirl has no regular villains, all she does is run around and pop badguys in the head. This is a crying shame, because her formidable fighting prowess makes for very interesting potential--but of course, no one can seem to realize it.

This is not entirely the fault of the creative team. Between the sorry Our Worlds at War storyline and the even worse Last Laugh, there hasn't been much anybody can do at DC without having to, every three months, write their arc somehow into the DCU arc. Which would be all right if the overall DCU storyline was interesting, but it's not.

Now what IS the fault of the creative team has been that Puckett doesn't seem to know what to do with the book and Scott's pencils have been getting sloppier and sloppier--almost to the point where nobody looks like a human anymore. When Scott's on, his people are interesting slightly unreal versions of themselves--and his composition is pretty sweet. But lately, he's probably been uninspired by the writing just like I have. Good to see they're, at least for one issue, back relatively on track.

We have a few issues to go before Shiva/Batgirl comes to some kind of conclusion, and we still have such lingering seeds of doubt as to whether or not Batgirl's a killer. Plenty of fertile ground to grow stuff in. Just a few months more and we'll see whether or not this team's up to the challenge.