Tate Brombal lets his art team cook in BATGIRL# 5

THIS WEEK: Gorgeous art and purposefully sparse writing makes Batgirl #5 the series’s best issue yet. Also, we check in on several superhero teams, with micro-reviews of Birds of Prey #19, Justice League: The Atom Project #3, and Secret Six #1.

Note: The reviews below may contain spoilers.

Batgirl #5

Writer: Tate Brombal
Penciler/Inker: Takeshi Miyazawa
Inker: Wayne Faucher
Colorist: Mike Spicer
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Cover Artist: David Talaski

When gifted with a superb art team, smart comics writers know to write less and let their artists show off more. If Batgirl #5 is any indication, Tate Brombal is a smart comics writer. Because this issue is a showcase for artist Takeshi Miyazawa, inker Wayne Faucher, and colorist Mike Spicer.

Previous issues of this Batgirl series featured running first-person narration from Cassandra Cain’s perspective. In this issue, Brombal eschews that narration almost entirely. Instead, he lets Miyazawa, Faucher, and Spicer largely take the reins, and drive the story forward via a series of beautiful, nearly-wordless pages.

Which isn’t to say that we don’t get inside Cass’s head in this issue. We’re quite privy to Batgirl’s thoughts, as she skulks around the Unburied’s secret headquarters (and, of course, gets in a couple fights). But the main way Brombal lets us know what Cass is thinking is via flashbacks to moments from previous issues, interspersed between panels taking place in the present. It’s a much less obvious and much more visually-minded way of cluing us in on Batgirl’s thoughts, and the art team (particularly Spicer on colors) does a great job seamlessly integrating these flashbacks into the running action.

Multiple times while writing this review, I found myself returning to pages from this issue just to look at them – to study the figure work, paneling, and colors. There may not be a lot of words on most of this issue’s pages, but they still say a lot, and that’s a feat to be commended.

(And lest I be called out for forgetting his contributions, letterer Tom Napolitano places what words and sound effects there are expertly, leading the eye through Miyazawa and co.’s artwork. Also, the back half of the story contains two fun lettering gags that really enhance the panels they’re in. You’ll know them when you see them.)

While previous issues of this Batgirl series have been quite good, this issue is a cut above. Brombal placed a lot of trust in his collaborators this issue – not only to tell the story he wanted to tell, but also to convey Cassandra Cain’s thoughts, attitude, and feelings. The art team rewarded Brombal’s trust in spades, and produced an issue that is by far the best of this run. If we have more issues like this to look forward to, I’ll certainly be pushing Batgirl toward the top of my DC read pile.

The Round-Up

• Cass Cain fans are eating well this week, as Birds of Prey #19 also contains some great Batgirl moments. The conclusion of a two-part story featuring guest artist Juann Caball, BoP #19 looks as slick as you’d expect with Caball on art duties (and colorist Adriano Lucas and letterer Clayton Cowles assisting). Writer Kelly Thompson clearly leaned into Caball’s strengths here, providing a fun set of fights and character moments for the artist to illustrate. If you’re like me, multiple pages in this book will leave you laughing out loud, and wondering why no one seems to be able to lock Caball in for a run longer than seven issues. Caball’s work fit Thompson’s Birds like a glove, and hopefully he’ll be back in the future.
• Justice League: The Atom Project #3 continues the series’s run as one of DC All In’s weirder, and thus most interesting, books. A miniseries with one of the silliest premises imaginable (let’s throw all the heroes with Atom in their name into one book) has turned out to be a fairly serious examination of power, pride, determination, and compassion. Writers Ryan Parrot and John Ridley are doing some great character work with Nathaniel Adam, Ray Palmer, and Ryan Choi, and artist Mike Perkins’s shadowy figures and colorist Adriano Lucas’s sci-fi colors mesh well to convey the story’s atmosphere. This is an odd, surprising book that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I have, and I’m excited to see what happens in issue four.
• And finally, a new volume of Secret Six debuted this week, from writer Nicole Maines, artist Stephen Segovia, colorist Rain Beredo, and letterer Steve Wands. This issue relies upon knowledge of and thus spends a lot of time rehashing the events of Absolute Power, specifically as they pertain to Jon Kent, Gossamer, and Dreamer. All three have a lot of baggage that still needs to be unpacked, making them ideal members of a new Secret Six. However, this issue takes a long time to really get rolling, and two members of the team don’t even appear until the issue’s final page. The pacing and early-2000s-esque artwork make this a pass for me, but fans of Jon Kent and co. might find enough to latch onto to carry them through to next issue.

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