The result is a sickly feeling in the audience's stomach the whole time if there are moments we might laugh, we get the sense they're only fleeting. Simone plays the story with equal parts horror and intentional camp the Joker's harebrained scheme to marry Batgirl might be something out of the wacky Silver Age, if not for the Joker slicing off Barbara's mother's finger and offering it up, wedding band and all. There's plenty to enjoy in Batgirl matching wits with the Joker, but the initial scene where an unarmed Barbara thrashes three invaders in her home, turning Killing Joke on its head, is undoubtedly cathartic for both the character and the readers. Simone's Death of the Family serves as something as a sequel to Killing Joke, the confrontation between the Joker and a newly-recovered Batgirl that we probably should have seen twenty years ago (though it was worth the wait).

There is blood and danger and horror on every page of this book as riveting as Scott Snyder's main Death of the Family book was, Simone's 'tie in' rivals it page for page.Īs controversial as returning Barbara Gordon to the Batgirl cowl in the New 52 was, it has afforded Gail Simone the opportunity to introduce to modernity the character we didn't realize we were missing all along - to write Batgirl Barbara Gordon as if she'd never disappeared, as if The Killing Joke were just a storyline for the character to surmount. Simone's Batgirl is a series that started strong and has just grown stronger, and Death of the Family is the strongest chapter yet. And it collects the issues during the span of which writer Gail Simone was fired from, and then rehired to, the Batgirl series.Īnd despite a number of factors that would derail any other book, it's pretty darn near perfect. It includes a sizable component of the latest Batman crossover and the tertiary 'Requiem' event.

It's a thick hardcover, collecting seven issues, an annual, and a short story.

Batgirl vol 3 death of the family