Batgirl: Year One
December 8, 2003 | Trades
Batgirl: Year One
Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon, Marcos Martin, Alvaro Lopez
DC Comics
$27.95/$19.99 US (Paperback)
**** 1/2 (out of five)
Batgirl: Year One is positively joyous.
While these look-back-to-a-simpler-time, retelling of an origin stories have been done before, few have been done with the simple delight of Batgirl.
The story of a young Barbara Gordon, daughter of the future police commissioner, is a familiar one. Nobody takes her seriously because she’s short and cute and a girl, to boot.
She wants to be a cop like her dad, but he won’t allow it. So Barbara decides to take a different route. She slips on a mask and copies the world’s greatest detective, Batman.
But a run-in with the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder, Robin, shows Batgirl she’s got a lot of work ahead of her to prove she belongs.
Writers Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon, along with artists Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez, do an amazing job of capturing the spirit of super-heroes. The sheer joy Barbara feels by being Batgirl, in spite of the dangers, radiates from the pages.
Even for comic fans who know Barbara’s character would go on to one day be crippled after being shot by the Joker, it’s hard not to get lost in thoughts of being a kid again, like Batgirl is in these pages, and to imagine the exhilaration of swinging from the rooftops as a hero.
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