Batgirl #13 Review

Here is my first review of this weeks comic books! I actually only have a couple of books at the moment due to a late delivery with my other books. However, I am anticipating them coming tomorrow, so there will be 2-3 reviews put up for tomorrow afternoon. Enjoy!

Firstly, let me just say that this cover is incredible. It acts as a handy check list for all the "Death of the Family" books, and it just looks so so cool! The Joker really does look like a total badass. However, the main man himself is not included in this book, most probably due to it being a prologue for the forthcoming story arc.

The first thing we see is a bloody and beaten Batgirl crawling along the floor as Knightfall stands over her triumphantly. We then get a brief back story explaining why Knightfall punishes criminals for their actions, followed by a pretty intense fight between the two women. After this, Knightfall gets escorted away and all is well and good. As you can see, not much has happened yet to set up the big story arc, and while reading it I was starting to feel a little frustrated as I only really bought this issue due to the fact that it was a prologue. Don't get me wrong, Batgirl is a great title, and I am collecting it in trade format. However, I was expecting this issue to be more orientated towards The Joker, but I guess that is just personal preference.

The last few pages do go on to set up the forthcoming events with a couple of nice set pieces. Firstly, we see Barbara get a terrified phone call from her mum, as three men with joker masks storm through her front door. We then see Batgirls' first three villians of the New 52 era being released from their respective prisons with one mission in mind: Kill Batgirl...

As you can probably gather I was not really amazed by Batgirl #13. I was expecting it to be tied a bit more closely to the "Death in the Family" story arc, but oh well! If you have been reading Batgirl all the way through from the start, then this issue will obviously slip really nicely into the ongoing story. However, if you are collecting the trades like myself, or just picked it up due to the very heavy advertising campaign, then you may be left feeling a little disappointed.

6.5/10