“Am I Being A Jerk Right Now?” – Review Of Batgirl #10

Barbara Gordon finds herself questioning her approach to crime fighting as issue #10 of Batgirl opens. While punching out one of a handful of local thugs attempting to boost expensive cars at a fundraiser being held in the low rent Cherry Hill neighborhood, she asks herself, “Am I being a jerk right now?” Rich folks show up with their pricey vehicles in an area of town where the people have nothing, as if purposefully tempting those on the down and out to do wrong, and Babs helps them out with a punch to the face. Is she part of the problem?

Of course, that’s a giant oversimplification of the economic, cultural, and legal forces at work in poverty stricken urban environments, but writer Gail Simone is willing to at least posit the question as to how poor neighborhoods could improve their quality of life and decrease their crime rates. Sure, her question includes the potential of assistance from masked vigilantes, but it also begins to broach the larger issues of community involvement versus gentrification. As someone who moved into a neighborhood that is undergoing a slow process of gentrification, I must admit that Simone has my attention with this topic. As more folks like me move into this neighborhood, I worry that the quirky little things that drew me to it to begin with will begin to vanilla out: the ethnic grocery stores, the mom and pop hair cutting businesses, the porn stores. Yes. In the age of the internet, I somehow live in a neighborhood with two “adult entertainment” stores.

But, with the nifty local amenities, there is still a sketchy element to the area. The first time Rob and I had guests out to out place for New Year’s Eve, they were greeted by the sight of a wino pissing on one of our neighbor’s front steps. I’ve had my car side swiped while its been parked on the street and was unlucky in trying to find witnesses due to language barriers. Oh, and did I mention the porn stores?

As satisfying as it might be to dress up as a giant bat to terrify the local drunks coming out of the Salvation Army across the street in hope that they remember that the nearby stoops are not for pooping, I suspect that I’d eventually run afoul of the law. So, I must wait for gentrification to continues its slow process of squeezing folks out renewal. Since Gotham seems to take a broader view to the whole masked justice thing, what answers to the problem of decay in urban neighborhoods does Gail Simone uncover?

Barbara Gordon does a little soul searching and considers ways to “monetize asskicking”…along with spoilers…after the jump.

Gail Simone touches on a variety of real life solutions for fixing neighborhoods that have all met with varying degrees of success depending on who you ask. Gentrification classes up a neighborhood at the expense of those who are already living there, who may not be able to afford continuing to live there after the process completes. Community involvement is great for creating a local base that will repair and clean up the area, for as long as you can inspire them to remain involved. Heck, even the masked “hero” patrol has begun to gain some measure of popularity (or notoriety). The problem with masked vigilantes, however, is the potential that they may break the laws they are trying to uphold in the name of “justice”. Barbara encounters just this conundrum in issue #10, “All Sung In Their Beds”. While trying to determine whether her own actions as Batgirl are helpful to Gotham in the larger scheme of things, she encounters a group of vigilantes with broken moral compasses, The Disgraced, who are willing to maim and kill in order to mete out what they feel is justice. Led by a mysterious figure called Knightfall (heh, Knight. Dark Knight. I see what you did there, Simone.), The Disgraced feel that the current crop of Gotham protectors hasn’t taken far enough steps to clean the crime from the streets.

The Disgraced are very clearly drawn by penciler Alitha Martinez, with inks from Vincenten Cifuentes, to be the same individuals who run the security detail for local heiress, turned community organizer, Charise Carnes. Carnes herself has a questionable past, as she spent time incarcerated (probably at Arkham) for allegedly killing her family, before she won her freedom on appeal. We discover in the story that she’s pretty bitter about having been accused of something she claims to have been forced to watch. Oh, and she keeps a naked, eyeless guy who is covered in cuts in a cage with no hope for death or release. She sounds charming. And balanced. Martinez pencils some solid panels with expressive characters and easy to follow storytelling.

I think Gail Simone and I both saw the same episodes of "Dexter".

Of interest, within The Disgraced, we seem to have what appears to be an Amazon and a Hawkgirl knockoff (a real Thanagarian? Who knows?). The powers of Knightfall herself and her other gray haired lackey are so far unknown. It would be interesting though if the members of this group have all been drummed out of other organizations for being a little too…extreme. I also have to wonder why Bruce Wayne doesn’t have his eye on Charise as a potential area of concern. They run in the same circles and that sort of thing would be in his wheelhouse, even if the New 52 is supposed to take place in an earlier timeline than the previous books.

This new arc definitely has my interest and I’m please to see the story head off in a new direction. With all the Bat books tied up in the Night Of The Owls event, I was beginning to get fatigued. Hopefully, this new story will continue the potential it is demonstrating in this issue.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to affix a scarewinocrow to my front steps.