BATGIRL Gets New Costume, New Creative Team

It looks like October is a big month for DC Comics, with the recent announcements of a new creative team on Catwoman and Wonder Woman and all-new titles for Klarion, Lobo and Wonder Woman, DC seems to be pulling no punches in revitalizing the New 52 and injecting some much needed energy into their slate of books.

DC just announced today, through MTV, that Batgirl will be receiving  brand new look and creative. Starting with Batgirl #35, writers Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher (Batman Inc.) will be joined by artist Babs Tarr have revamped Barbara Gordon’s costume with an urban re-imagining that ditches the skin-tight body suit that fans have been used.

Brenden and Cameron have been close friends for 15 years so when the opportunity came up to write Batgirl together they jumped at the chance.

Batgirl has really been put through the wringer in recent years – after being attacked and paralyzed by the Joker, her brother turning out to be a serial murderer, the trauma of her family breaking apart and the series of gruesome villains she’s had to contend with, we figured she deserved a break from all that.

Departing writer Gail Simone will be moving onto a new project with DC Comics that will be announced soon.

Just prior to the start of our story she’s pushed to the breaking point and decides that she’s had it with misery and darkness and wants a change. She wants the opportunity to have some fun and live the life of a young, single girl in the city, so she packs up and moves to Burnside, the cool, trendy borough of Gotham, to focus on grad school.

I think that’s the new Louie Vuitton belt!

From what the team had to say about the approach that they are going to take it seems that this title is going to be a very un-New 52 books, focusing much less on super-heroics.

This is also clear from the art as Barbara Gordon looks like a teenager who “just wants to have fun”, I guess. Let’s go party! The team also said that Barbara Gordon will learn “to embrace the spotlight” which the cynic in me thinks this means that the writers are going to trying to be “hip and cool” by incorporating lots of social media elements into the series and possibly make Batgirl a viral media personality or something.

Side note: It seems like the upcoming Teen Titans relaunch will also go with this new youthful, social media, technology thing.

Artist Babs Fletcher describes the team’s take on Batgirl to be a mix of “the best elements of “Veronica Mars” and “Girls”, with a dash of “Sherlock” thrown in for good measure”.

Let me take a selfie!