Convergence: Batgirl #2 Review

writer: Alisa Kwitney / artist: Rick Leonardi, Mark Pennington/ DC Comics You ever really build your hopes up about something because maybe, finally, this time it will work out and be perfect and everything you dreamed, only to have them dashed? Enter Convergence: Batgirl #2, The Love Song of Stephanie Brown. Right off the bat (no pun intended) this issue has some strange art inconsistencies within panels, with Red Robin’s mask appearing with eye holes then not, Blackbat’s gloves turning into magically repairable fingerless versions of themselves, and her hair looking more like someone splattered some ink blots near her head than hair. Then there come the flashbacks. One page we see Cass, Tim, and Steph about to fight Grodd, the next we flashback to the previous day where we basically rehash parts of issue #1. Flash-forward, Catman explains why he and Grodd entered the portal together (some cobbled together story about Grodd massacring Cape Town before Catman escaped to Gotham of all places for weapons). Flashback just to tell this side story. Flash-forward because Grodd is beating up Cassandra Cain (which may actually be the most infuriating part of this comic for me because it chooses to ignore that canonically Cassandra has fought metahumanoids before and held her own, if not won). It’s a bit of a mess.

It only gets worse when you throw in an earthquake so Tim has to conveniently catch Steph, leading to some forced romantic plot about how they supposedly still have feelin…