Generally speaking I tend to avoid company-wide crossovers. Readers of comics will not be surprised at my reasons – the need to buy more comics than usual, most of which are uninteresting to me; the loss of continuity in the monthly title; and the general poor execution of the stories themselves where the sum is lesser than its parts. Despite this hesitation, I decided to pick up the Batgirl entry for the DC wide event of Futures End. Futures End is not so much like most crossovers, more like the year-long stories of 52 or Countdown, so it maybe bode better for its chances in terms of being something a bit better.

In terms of crossovers, one of the most difficult aspects is the story. Sometimes the crossover entries are placed at the end of story arcs in the titles, but all too often enough they are placed in the middle of ongoing stories, destroying the fluidity of the storytelling. This is not the case here, and in fact Futures End is not so much out-of-place here as the entire series is getting a new creative team as of the next regular monthly issue. Thus far in the New 52 I have only been sort-of following Batgirl, having read about 5 out of the 35 issues, never enough to get me to pick it up full-time but occasionally with a decent story (although with some sometimes amazing cover artwork). In this regard it is not too hard for a casual reader to pick up this issue and to figure out what is going on, even not having followed most of Futures End thus far. This approachability to the story is somewhat pointless though, as the story itself is somewhat lacking.

I won’t go into too many of the details for the story itself, but the story is sort-of a play on Barbara Gordon’s eventual change into Oracle, although the name Oracle is never mentioned here. The one-time physical damage of the Joker’s bullet takes a different form here, causing Barbara to hang up the cape and to lead the League of Batgirls from afar, similar to the pre-New 52 format of Birds of Prey.  It is nice as well to see so many Batgirls collected together here, but this is as far as the good stuff goes. Mostly this is a kind of a What If …? scenario where the question asked is kind of absurd – what if Barbara Gordon became like Bane? The writer maybe deserves some praise for trying something different, and the artist deserves some recognition for portraying a female version of Bane, but the end product is lacking. It is a What If? Question that need not be asked and the fans of the series might be wondering why they bothered. Instead fans might want to just wait an extra month for a change in direction in Batgirl with the introduction of the new creative team.

Story: Gail Simone Art: Javier Garron
Story: 6.2 Art: 7.0 Overall: 6.5 Recommendation: Pass