Batgirl #1 (of 6) - "Redemption Road, Chapter One: Square One" (Writer: Adam Beechen, Penciller: J. Calafiore, Inkers: Mark McKenna and Jonathan Glapion, Colorist: Nathan Eyring)

Batgirl was recently brainwashed by Deathstroke and her father David Cain, and manipulated into killing. Now, although she's promised not to kill anymore, she has decided to break that promise, once she tracks down those two men.

Here's the thing. I enjoy Batgirl, as a character, at least as she was in her own series. When One Year Later happened, she was portrayed horribly - not just in terms of having become a villain, but also because the person who wrote her seemed to be ignorant of basic facts about the character. That writer was Adam Beechen. So it does seem a bit of a slap in the face to fans, to be given a new Batgirl miniseries, but to have Beechen be the one to write it. If they don't buy the mini, it'll be read that there's little interest in the character. If they do, it'll be read as support for Beechen's work.

So, how is his work? Well, to be fair, it's not as bad as it was before. It's clear that Beechen is at least trying to redeem himself somewhat. He also makes a few more mistakes that suggests he still doesn't understand the character (by suggesting that she had to make a vow to stop killing before being given her Batgirl life, when in reality she'd decided never to kill again long before she met any of the Batfolk). But he's trying. One of the big ways you can see he's trying is that he crams in a big, long, convoluted story for everything that happened since before OYL up until this point, that is supposed to explain all the contradictions, mis- characterizations, outright mistakes, some of which are Beechen's and some due to a lack of editorial communication (so that Beechen's already written some more Evil Cass moments set to come after she's been supposedly redeemed).

It's clumsy and awkward exposition, and not especially friendly to new readers, but I do appreciate the sentiment behind it, the desire to clean up mistakes and straighten out continuity. Unfortunately, in doing so Beechen commits two big mistakes. Either of them on their own might have been forgiveable, but together they make the problem worse.

Firstly, he changes some of the more interesting aspects of the Cassandra character off-panel, by suggesting that in her year away, she was taught to read and speak English better, which supposedly explains her talkativeness in her appearances in Robin, and her ability to read. Except, her difficulties communicating, because she speaks with the action of body language and combat, are a big part of Batgirl. There's been dialog suggesting that it's not as simple as just "she needs to learn to read" but that her brain is structured differently so that it's harder for her to learn than it would be for anybody else. Her whole concept is based on the (admittedly dodgy, but acceptable for a comic book) idea that she was screwed up by being brought up with no language except combat, and so has difficult communicating in any other way.

Without this part of the character, she's just a trained assassin who's now a good guy. A problem she has been struggling with throughout her series, and one of the more defining aspects of the character, is tossed off to the side, off-panel to help cover up for his own mistakes. It'd be like a writer covering up a plot which hinged on Wolverine calmly and cooly fighting someone who'd just killed all his friends, by saying that he'd been going to anger management therapy to deal with his berserker rages, and doesn't get mad anymore.

Compounding this is that it really didn't solve the problems. Even with Cassandra having learned English in the past year, we still have the big gaffe of her having lead Robin into a trap using a Navajo code language that he recognized and said Batman taught both of them long ago. The explanation doesn't fix that. The OYL issues also, if I recall correctly, stated that the rest of the Bat family hadn't heard from her in months, which makes the idea that Alfred helped teach her English and reading unlikely. If you're going to retcon and ignore part of the past, you might as well ignore the parts of the plot that required her to have mastery not just of English but of reading as well. Other writers have written Batgirl as being not-very-talkative once again, as though ignoring the specifics of Beechen's run entirely, and that might have been the better approach here.

Aside from this, the issue isn't too bad... it's well drawn, and there's a decent amount of action. But I don't have any confidence in Beechen's handling of the character, so I don't think I want to stick around to see the rest. DC should either have gotten somebody else to write the mini, or Beechen should have been willing to ignore most of what he'd written before. It's a bad sign when "evil clone" is still a better explanation for inconsistencies than what was offered.