Best of 2010. Best Character: Batgirl

From Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Batgirl (One-Shot). Art by Pere Perez.

Comic books tend to get very dark. Even more so if the backdrop for the series is Gotham City where the citizens seem fine with the glumness of their surroundings.

But there is one bright corner of Gotham that is explored by Bryan Q. Miller each month in the pages of Batgirl. I came a little bit late to this series, but it’s title character grew on me so infectiously that I’d have to say Batgirl is my favorite character of 2010.

Stephanie Brown’s dry wit and self-deprecating humor keep the book light and make her the most relatable character in the Bat-family. Everyone would love to be as slick and intelligent as the Caped Crusader, but most of us (given the right amount of gadgets and gymnastics know-how) would probably handle ourselves more like Stephanie.

Boy oh boy does Miller have a precise voice for Batgirl. Some recent highlights:

• In the Bruce Wayne: The Road Home: Batgirl one-shot, Stephanie is confronted with a recently revived Bruce Wayne. Her reaction? She slaps him hard across the face and instantly realizes the gravity of her actions and belts off (above).

• In my favorite issue so far, Batgirl #14 (below), Stephanie has a night out with Kara (Supergirl) and things lead, as they always do, to a team-up. It’s Batgirl and Supergirl against a cavalcade of Draculas (don’t ask, just read it). At one point Supergirl hears screams with her super-ears and asks Batgirl “Can you hear that?” Her response: “You’re sweet.”

• In Batgirl #16, when Batgirl’s Batarang fails her, she tumbles to the ground and thinks “And it was only then that young Stephanie truly realized that gravity would forever be her enemy.”

Miller takes great care in writing Stephanie’s dialogue and letting the humor come out naturally when the story calls for it. There is nothing forced and reader never thinks “Why is she making a joke now?”—something that can happen when writing a character known for quips (e.g. Spider-Man, Lobo, Deadpool, etc.).

It has been a pleasure to read Batgirl month after month because the writing is fantastic and, every now and again, it’s nice to have a bit of reprieve from the dark stuff.

From Batgirl #14. Art by Lee Garbett.