Batgirl #30

When is Marguerite Bennett going to get her own comic book and stop stealing Gail Simone's paychecks?

I really do hope Bennett gets her own monthly comic. I'm hoping it'll be a buddy road trip comic starring Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. They can travel around the country, Lois following leads to bring down dirty politicians and expose illegal habits of mega corporations like Monsanto and Sunkist. And Jimmy Olsen is tagging along searching for American Cryptids! Holy fuck, I think I should be pitching this comic book to DC instead of telling it to a bunch of internet nerds!

I'm surprised by the cover of this issue. Why is Batgirl fighting a monster? And why is she fighting a man? Isn't she supposed to fight females that mirror one of her insecurities?! I suppose The Midnight Man might be a story that her mother told her so that she'd eat her vegetables. Also so that she'd never fucking sleep again.

Mrs. Gordon: "Dear. You know if you don't eat your vegetables, your pee won't smell funny. And if your pee doesn't smell funny, how are you going to keep The Midnight Man from sneaking into your bedroom at night and marrying you and having you in a wifely fashion?"
Barbara: "MOTHER! I can't believe you would say such horrible things?!"
Gordon Family: *Eats in silence for a minute*
Barbara: "Is he cute?"

After reading the first page, I might not be so far off about The Midnight Man!

Aubry is so cool! Pronouncing "cliché" with the accent on the "i"!

This is where I remind everybody about that Japanese game of solitaire hide and seek that scares the shit out of me every time I think about it. I think about it so much that I have a feeling I'm going to do it one day. And you'll all know what day that is because the blog will stop and you'll be seeing some crazy ass news story from Portland about a man that was murdered by a teddy bear.

When I was a senior in high school, my cousin was having a slumber party with a bunch of her friends. I was hanging out because of the female friends part! They decided to play Bloody Mary, so I took a turn and went in the bathroom by myself. I took a razor and sliced open the top of my fingers on one hand. Then I made a scuffling sound and a panicked noise and stumbled out of the bathroom holding my bleeding hand. I told them all that I touched the mirror and a woman's hand with long nails reached out and clawed the backs of my fingers. Everyone was completely freaked out and it was glorious.

These kids play their Midnight Man game but nothing happens so they go to sleep. Please! Nothing happens! That's always what happens when something happens! Instead of erasing the door like smart people that understand the importance of rituals would do, the kids just go to sleep on the floor around it. I suppose they wanted to be The Midnight Man's first meal when he came into our world! Idiots.

Elsewhere in Gotham, we learn that Batgirl runs around with an EMF Detector. Interesting. I never had Batgirl pegged as a complete nutcase crackpot. When the EMF Detector malfunctions and begins beeping like crazy, it leads Batgirl to a nearly empty house with a yellow door traced on the floor and four healthy meals lying in their sleeping bags.

Batgirl is thinking about Dick Grayson in the past tense, so I guess the rest of the world really thinks he's been killed by The Crime Syndicate! I have no idea when the final Forever Evil comics will be hitting the shelves though, so I can't say for sure what happened to Dick. I mean after Luthor killed him and Batman probably revived him but doesn't tell the rest of the world that he's been revived because how can Dick Grayson be Nightwing if Nightwing continues to fight crime after Forever Evil? Keeping Dick Grayson dead is pretty much the only way to protect Batman's secret identity as Bruce Wayne. Although somebody should tell Batgirl at some point!

If Nightwing is dead, that means Tim Drake is the only Robin left that hasn't been killed! And he might as well be dead after the way Scott Lobdell treated him.

These are the filthy things going through Barbara's mind just before The Midnight Man crawls through the chalk doorway.

Good thing Batman taught his Bat-Family not only how to break kneecaps and swing from bat-grapples but also how to defeat spirits from other dimensions. I'm sure he just threw that shit in so he could joke about it later with Alfred. But now that information (if it's true and not just a Bat-Joke) is going to come in handy! Batgirl needs to get her hands on some sage to defeat the evil spirit! I would think that if she's running around with an EMF Detector looking for supernatural bullshit, she'd also have some sage in her Utility Belt to poison any spirits that she found.

Since Batgirl seems prepared to find spirits but not to destroy them, she's lucky the parents of one of these kids keeps sage in the kitchen. She uses it and her knowledge of horror movies to defeat The Midnight Man. Because the monster in the horror movie is always defeated by the virginal woman. If you're a man, forget it. Dead. If you're a woman that has given in to the awesome temptation of carnal desire? Forget it. Dead. If you're an adult of any kind and you weren't in a previous iteration of the movie franchise? Forget it. Dead. But if you're a girl in a batsuit that's only ever kissed one boy (and not even a whole boy at that!), you have a fairly decent chance of not only surviving but defeating the psychotic killer. You just have to make sure that you never encounter this same psychotic killer again though. Because that would mean you're in the beginning minutes of the sequel and you're fucked.

That's because the movie isn't over yet, stupid! Because now's the part where you think you're safe but you've got to make sure, so you turn and he's standing there staring at you, face to face. Then he looks at you and smiles and says, "Tag. You're it, Sweetie."

I can't believe Batgirl Narration Boxed even more than when Simone is writing this comic! Babs wouldn't stop thinking about Dick and the other Robins and how she was different than the Robins and how she was a bat and how she watched horror movies and how Dick watched with her and blah blah blah blah! Shut up already, Batgirl! I get it! You wish you could have at least gotten to third base with Dick before he died!

Batgirl #30 Rating: No change. The real action is going to be when The Midnight Man's sequel happens! And it will happen since Batgirl mixed flowers and whiskey into barrels of yellow paint being used to draw the lines on the streets of Gotham so that they make a gigantic door! I say it was Batgirl who did it because she ended her section knowing she shouldn't do something but also loving the thrill! So it's definitely not some dangerous mystic enemy of Batman's at all that wants to summon a giant version of The Midnight Man! It's definitely Batgirl because she wants some answers! But she'll never get them because she's going to die two pages into the next Midnight Man issue.