NEW TEAM ON BATGIRL

Batgirl, starting with No. 35, is more “hip,” saith David Betancourt at the Washington Post. New writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher focus equally on Barbara Gordon’s social life and her costumed crime-fighting life. And she’s moving to a new neighborhood — “a younger, hip part of the city where texting is the first option for communication; hook-ups are random and frequent; major crime includes tablet theft in coffee shops (and there’s lots of coffee in the issue). ...” And a new artist, Barb Tarr, with an “energetic art style, brings a new twist to classic designs” for wardrobe and the like.

The new Batgirl lives up to Betancourt’s hype persuasively. And it doesn’t take long to get us into the new ambiance: on page 3, Barbara (“Babs”), having awakened with a hangover from the previous night’s party in her new apartment, wanders into the living room in her sleeping costume — a t-shirt and panties — and, encountering a new, male, face among her female roommates, quickly tries to cover herself up (her lower self). Cute. And very natural. Then it develops that she and the bare-chested Adonis were “all over each other last night.” Did they hook up? Did they do the deed?

Apparently not, as it turns out. But this opening sequence certainly sets up a whole different atmosphere for Batgirl’s adventures.

And from there, we get a short mystery with Batgirl defeating a taller, heavier male miscreant at hand-to-hand combat.

Then, just to get us to return for No.36, Babs learns that somehow the Internet has divulged her crime-fighting identity.

Tarr’s art is refreshingly crisp and clean, a nice bold flexing line. The girls’ (young women’s) faces are pert and cute (although lots of noses look alike), and together with Steward, who (it sez here) handles the breakdowns, Tarr constructs a two-page panorama of the party scene last night to show Babs wandering figuratively, imaginatively, through the crowd, as she tries to remember what happened and who was there, hoping thereby to figure out who might’ve swiped her computer. Excellent novelty. And a good storytelling device, too.

Yes, I’ll be back.

But I’m not sure “hip” is the right word to use in describing Batgirl’s new life style. “Hip” derives from “hipster,” and the notion belongs to Norman Mailer who, a half-century ago,  conjured up the term while writing for the Village Voice (unless memory deceives me, which it sometimes does). All of which assigns “hip” to a generation much older than those depicted in this book.

“Millennial” might be better, lately defined as embracing anyone born between 1980 and 2000. Or maybe Net Generation, the mobile-dependent people.