Batgirl #9 review

In what seemed in the beginning to be an interesting and different take on a talon in Batgirl, played out quite differently.

The issue starts off with a young girl in 1944 Japan. She has left home, and seems to live at a boarding school. She is amongst many other young girls creating letters. These letters are attached to bombs which are planned to explode in different parts of America. The story transitions to Gotham City two years later. Mr. Haly finds himself a new aerialist who has tape over her face, and cannot speak because she does not have a tongue. Her name is Mary, and she proves to be quite an interesting character. We then move into the battle with the female talon Batgirl is facing. She notes it moves like Nightwing, and she gives us some background about what she has been investigating that night. She continues to fight, and finds a weird piece of paper after the talon vanishes. Looking like a man from the flashback with the young aerialist Mary, a man drops a talon coin near Jim Gordon. In a great fashion, the man questions whether Jim can survive as traumatic an event as Barbara could. As Barbara returns home, she gets something to eat, and remembers the piece of paper the talon left reading it. She gives us a history lesson on its use in 1944’s Japan. As Gordon calls his daughter to warn her of the talon threat he received, he walks outside police headquarters to find Gotham being bombarded with parachutes and bombs attached to them. Batgirl tries to get there in time but does not get there in time to stop the headquarters from blowing up. The talon then shows up, and the two women fight. She is quite scared as she has never fought someone like that. Her mask falls off as more bombs bombard the city. In a strange turn of events, it turns out to be the little girl from Japan. As Gordon gets to the top of police headquarters, he turns on the signal to find a talon has replaced the bat. Batgirl is upset about that, and she certainly has reason to be.

This is the first ever comic Gail Simone has wrote in which I found hard to follow. My first complaint is if Mary is that young girl, how the heck did the young girl get to America and why were their eyes different? I was greatly confused by that, and then the talon turns out to be that young girl from Japan when the young girl named Mary chosen to be a talon seemed to be African-American. Whatever. The writing was confusing, and it seemed Mrs. Simone was trying to do too much. Ardian Syaf however goes to town with this issue. As always, his art is great but Mrs. Simone really lets Mr. Syaf go to town illustrating this issue. This is the best work he has done on the series thus far. However, it’s unfortunate it is Ms. Simone’s worst work on the series……