Comic Reviews by Walt

Home Again, Home Again

Writer: Kevin Vanhook
Pencillers: Julian Lopez & Fernando Pasarin
Inkers: Bit & Hi-Fi’s David Bryant
Colorist: Hi-Fi
Letterer: Steve Wands
Assistant Editor: Harvey Richards
Editor: Michael Siglain
Cover: Guillem March
Publisher: DC Comics

We open on a view from outside Barbara Gordon’s new apartment building, as residents all react to flickering availability of power. We then move into seeing Barbara interact with her father, some other allies, hacker contacts, and so on, showing us much of what makes up the life of Oracle as she adjusts to being back in Gotham City after being gone for quite awhile.

The story isn’t bad, though I’m not terribly enthused by it. Nothing really blows me away…in fact, a couple points actually strike me as extremely cliche. There’s a point that’s brought up several times throughout the issue that screams foreshadowing to me (and cliched foreshadowing at that). Additionally, what happens with one of Barbara’s hacker friends seems laughably unrealistic to me, like a plot point jammed in because there was no other way to have such a point occur otherwise.

The art’s not bad. It seems vaguely generic at points, but comes across smoothly for the most part. Aside from some…questionable angles…you could really find a lot of art in comics out there that is far less appealing. What we have in this issue works for the story, and fits.

The way the foreshadowing pays off in the next two issues will really inform how integral this series is to the Battle for the Cowl story as a whole. For now, this seems to be at least a nice tie-in that takes the context of the overall story and is telling a smaller aspect of that story with a particular focus that needn’t include the entire Bat-verse.

Could be much better, but not a bad read if you’re interested in the character or having all the tie-ins and such.

Story: 7/10
Art: 7/10
Whole: 7/10

Filed under: Battle for the Cowl (Event), Comic Reviews 2009, DC, DC Universe, Oracle: The Cure | Tagged: Barbara Gordon, Batgirl, Batman, Battle for the Cowl, Bit, Comic Reviews, David Bryant, DC, DC Comics, Fernando Pasarin, Guillem March, Harvey RIchards, Hi-Fi, Home Again Home Again, Julian Lopez, Kevin Vanhook, Michael Siglain, Oracle, Oracle: The Cure, Steve Wands |