I am thankful for you doing these reviews... I was ready to starting trying to get some of these issues after finishing the Batgirl Showcase volume... it's definitely slid a way down the priority list.

I'm so glad Dick got more respect in his solo stories once he became Nightwing than in these ones.. though some of the same issues definitely crop up from time to time.

(Batgirl and Robin in October 1981)

Both Batgirl and Robin get dropped out of their respective books for the cover date October 1981. Batman gets a full-length adventure (debuting the talents of Gene Colan) in the Batman title, and Batgirl is replaced by a Tale of Gotham City and a second 4 page Batman story. Whether this was sheer coincidence or an explicit decision to get rid of them, both features return in November.

Detective Comics #508 (November 1981)



"The Attack of the Annihilator!"

Script: Cary Burkett; Wendy Beraud (plot assist)
Pencils: José Delbo
Inks: Joe Giella
Colors: Carl Gafford
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: D

If you had to sum up what made Batgirl a unique hero in the 1960s, you likely would have called her dedicated and resourceful. After all, she did with her own brain and two hands what Batman did with years of preparation and a fortune at his disposal. Yet she still managed to keep up with him and Robin, and she did it all on her own.

If you had to sum up what made her a unique hero during the early days of Batman Family with Elliot S. Maggin writing, it was (again) her dedication and her stubbornness. She played second fiddle to no one, confidently taking on criminals AND Washington bureaucracy on her own terms.

And if you had to sum up what made Batgirl a unique hero at the start of Cary Burkett's run, it was fallibility and (once more) her dedication. Here was a hero who could hit bottom and then work to rebuild herself from the ground up, stronger and more resolved than ever.

That just isn't the character we are getting anymore.





Burkett finished his story of Batgirl's fall and redemption and, with no further direction for the character, seems content to write her like a totally incompetent third-stringer, which totally undermines what he had done with the character earlier:





Both images from Detective Comics #505


We do know that Paul Levitz specifically wanted both Robin and Batgirl de-powered so that Batman was clearly their superior, but now that Levitz is gone, Burkett is writing the character more incompetently than ever. Why?

Anyway, stuck with no idea what to do with Batgirl next, Burkett gets this story idea from Wendy Beraud, someone who has otherwise never worked in comics (perhaps a friend or girlfriend?), and that results in an insultingly generic plot in which a glory-hungry scientist turns himself into a super-powered mutant and begins attacking civilian targets for no good reason. More memorably, Supergirl flies in to help out, ending in the cliffhanger already depicted above.

Really nothing memorable at all about this team-up, beyond our being told (or, perhaps, reminded) that Batgirl knows Supergirl's alter-ego. Not sure where this happened, but it clearly occurred outside of the scope of these reviews. I suppose Supergirl knows Batgirl's identity as well?

Oh, we've still got supporting characters galore, endlessly spinning in their own character arcs that never seem to go anywhere:



but, at the end of the day, what we are really getting is a Cary Burkett who is totally out of ideas for this feature. Hopefully, that will change and we'll get something memorable before Len Wein assumes control of the Batman Office and kills this feature for good in less than a year.

Detective Comics #509 (December 1981)



"The Fires of Destruction"

Script: Cary Burkett
Pencils: José Delbo
Inks: Joe Giella
Colors: Tom Ziuko
Letters: Milt Snapinn

Grade: D-

It was one thing when Burkett utterly tore Batgirl down so that she could build herself back up again, another when he kept tearing her down and having her do a comeback, issue after issue, a third thing entirely when she just utterly started sucking as a hero, and now she's so pathetic and self-depracating that I honestly have to wonder who Burkett thought was going to enjoy reading these stories.

Here, she's calling herself a dope even after rescuing Supergirl from certain death:



...so that she can then proceed to get jealous of the way her plain-clothed ally talks to Supergirl in the very next scene:



What kid is going to look up to this character and want to be like her? What adult is going to care about what happens to her? This character is thoroughly and completly unlikable, as well as the total opposite of the cool, confident, and in control Babs Gordon with which we began this review thread.

Fortunately, she does do two things right in this issue (which is two things more than she did right in the previous two issues): she saves Supergirl (so that Supergirl can then save her), and Burkett has allowed this otherwise now-pathetic wanna-be hero to retain her photographic memory (last mentioned a whopping fourteen months ago):




But how can you maintain a backup feature when the star of that feature is acutely aware that every threat they face is really a job for an A lister who should be coming by any moment now?



It's like Burkett is intentionally sabotaging Batgirl at this point. I can't help but wonder if this is the result of Paul Levitz' interventions. We know Levitz wanted Batgirl and Robin to start looking less impressive than Batman and that Babs lost her seat in congress, her knowledge of Batman and Robin's identities, AND her self-confidence under his editorial watch. He's gone now, but this feature got booted from several recent issues of 'Tec. Maybe these stories are all backlog, written during Levtiz's reign.



Important Details:

- Supergirl builds Batgirl a very basic Batcave beneath Jeff's garage.



Minor Details:

- A terrifying villain with the ability to topple buildings with a thought and to drain Supergirl within an inch of her life flies off, and Batgirl's first reaction is to ask Supergirl to build her a Batcave?



Supergirl has telescopic vision and super hearing. Follow that dude!


- Even assuming Supergirl stopped to use her X-ray vision in order to avoid plumbing, electrical wires, and gas lines...



...where the hell did she get a hydraulic lift from??

Well they know each other's secret identities and seem to get along well enough, but they certainly don't give the vibe of being close friends. Batgirl feels she can request a favor because she saved Supergirl's life, not because they are buds.

And I appreciate the link!

We’re almost up to the issue where I started buying Detective regularly. I think it’s #512. I didn’t think much of the Batgirl series when I was first buying it (except for the Velvet Tiger two-parter).

It was replaced by Green Arrow around #521, which is pretty bad!

I was re-reading my 1980s Batman/Detective collection around 2010 and I read the Batgirl stories for the first time since the early 1980s ... and I liked them a lot better. They’ve definitely grown on me. I think the main reason I’m now such a big Batgirl fan is that the New 52 started a few months later and - because I had just been reading Batgirl back-ups - one of the New 52 series I chose to read was Batgirl.

I can confirm that in their previous team-up (Superman Family #171) they didn't know each other's secret identity.