Broken Frontier

With Bruce Wayne back in the picture, Batman Incorporated has spread its crusading cape across the globe. Stephanie Brown, the Batgirl who donned the cowl when the dark knight disappeared, has now been drafted into this army and has begun her new assignment: take care of the United Kingdom alongside Knight and Squire. On day one, villainous Orphan wants to control Greenwich Mean Time; can the dynamic duo of Batgirl and Squire save the world in the nick of time?

Stephanie Brown's Batgirl days may be nearing an end, but the show must go on. Taking her out of her college setting as the previous issues have focused on, Stephanie Brown is now Constance Aberthine, student abroad. Coupled up with Squire on an impromptu mission, Stephanie has to juggle the worlds of Batman Inc., her own superhero-dom, and even having a normal life at times.

Miller has fun with both Batgirl and Squire, alongside the concept of a Gotham Girl being displaced to London. Squire gets to have a few jokes at Batgirl's inexperience and awkwardness to a new country, and their differing ways of tackling secret identities garners a laugh. Likewise, Perez obviously enjoys drawing the girls and imbuing them with character, and Dustin Nguyen continues to knock it out of the park with covers.

The action and pacing are great; the book moves at a good pace with only one page needed to take Stephanie out of her current status quo and move her to the new one proposed in Batman: The Return. With the action moving soon after and the plot resolved, the book is the epitome of what a single-issue story should be; it was succinct, still had progress towards the book's goals, and yet read perfectly fine on its own. This is a great start for the rest of Stephanie Brown's run, however short it may be.

With the future of the Batgirl mantle up in the air with the big DC relaunch later this year (with Barbara Gordon apparently returning to the role), it's a shame to see such a book meet an inglorious end soon enough. Miller and Perez have fun with Stephanie, and have definitely made her an enjoyable and relatable character in her own right.

Thankfully, this book avoids some of the problems that other DC titles have had in the current climate, in that it doesn't feel like it's spinning its wheels waiting to get dumped or going crazy clearing house before it's completely gone. If anything, the book feels like it's actively trying to evolve the character and her place in the greater Batman storyline, enhanced even more so by the continuation of her greater plot being in Batman Inc. It's been a great book, it's a great issue, and it will be one of the sad casualties of the greater good.