Sidekicks to the Rescue

Batgirl #8

Stephanie has her big meeting with her ex-boyfriend — Tim Drake, now calling himself Red Robin. He’s angry that she’s back in costume risking her life again, and she’s angry that he keeps treating her like she’s useless. But the League of Assassins apparently followed Tim back to Gotham, and they’ve targeted a heck of a lot of people for death. Stephanie and Tim put on their fancy dress duds to go visit a ritzy party where the assassins plan to attack Dr. Leslie Thompkins. They manage to rescue Dr. Thompkins and the other partygoers by stomping on a dozen of Ra’s al Ghul’s assassins… but there are a heck of a lot more assassins running around Gotham tonight…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Very nice action. Great characterization and dialogue. And lots of excellently funny stuff, including the robot drones programmed to speak like fortune cookies, Stephanie’s absolutely perfect zing on the Red Robin costume, and the wonderful patter between Stephanie and Tim.

Red Robin #10

I went ahead and picked this one up because it’s the second part of the story from “Batgirl.” In the aftermath of the big fight, Steph gets to meet Tim’s most recent ex — Prudence, a bald killer for the League of Assassins who’s been assigned to kill Batgirl. So to Tim’s amazement, his “completely useless” ex-girlfriend beats the professional assassin down. And it comes out that Tim was a recent leader of the League of Assassins himself, which doesn’t go over very well with Stephanie. Then a bunch of stuff happens that I had a little trouble following. Vicki Vale is in there, for some reason, and Lucius Fox’s daughter, and a bunch of assassins in funny costumes.

Verdict: Thumbs down, solely because I didn’t know all the background players. The thing Marvel does excellently that DC doesn’t even attempt is putting recap pages at the front of every comic. You don’t increase readership by making things too confusing for new readers to catch on to.