Batgirl #22 review

In which Batgirl jets off to jolly old London town and teams up with Squire, greatest heroine of the United Kingdom. Steph has been sent across the Atlantic on Batman Inc business, but she doesn't meet him until the final page of this issue, as she and Squire have places to go, things to do, villains to squash.

Said villain is the Orphan ('always wants some more'), who uses a sword called the Greenwich Mean to stop time as part of a dastardly plan to knobble Knight. Happily, Batgirl and Squire put paid to his ambitions, though twisting time means no one will ever know they saved the day. What does that matter, though, when you make a new friend? Oh, and save the world.

Writer Bryan Q Miller has fun with some British cliches, while putting Steph and Beryl in mortal danger. No, not from the Orphan – who fits in nicely with the lowlives Paul Cornell invented for the recent, brilliant Knight and Squire mini-series. From their flaunting of traffic laws. Teenage crimebusters should not be zooming through London on a motorbike and sidecar without wearing crash helmets.

Mind, Steph does look spiffing in her tourist tat Busby (click to enlarge image).

The dialogue is as zingy as always with this comic, though the script loses a point for misspelling the exclamation 'oi!' as 'oy' – unless Beryl is Jewish. Which she might well be. The artwork from Pere Perez makes a better fist than most of capturing things British. He doesn't quite get the Union Flag the correct way up, but no one ever does. Perez's Squire is a little spitfire, perfectly in keeping with Jimmy Broxton's in the aforementioned mini. The whole creative team does a bang-up job, including colourist Guy Major and letterer Carlos M Mangual. Dustin Nguyen's cover is a winner too. I'd like to make all the people behind this comic honorary Brits. But they likely wouldn't want it.

The big question this issue, one Steph doesn't get answered due to an interruption, is: does UK chocolate taste like US chocolate? 

Nope. It's so much  better.