Product Description: Some people would like to have a new life, but they'd rather not have to die to get it! The recently dead are walking the dark streets of Gotham City, and Batgirl must journey to the Deco canyons of Arcadia to find who's responsible for these creepy reanimations. But Arcadia's spectral avenger, Ghost, is also hot on the trail of the zombie maker, one Malcolm Graymater, and Batgirl had better not get in Ghost's way! And when the murderous Two-Face gets in on the act to reclaim several of his reanimated henchmen, a deadly four-corner showdown headlines the fight card! Co-published with DC Comics.
Good Art... and Little Else I'll begin this review by admitting that I was unfamiliar with Ghost before I picked up this crossover graphic novel to round out my collection, but I went ahead and looked her up on Wikipedia first before making any assumptions about the comic. I am very familiar with the modern iteration of Batgirl, however; far more familiar than writer Mike Kennedy, who apparently barely bothered to research her history before slapping together her bio at the beginning of the trade paperback and proceeding to tell a story that barely resembled the heroine.
"The Resurrection Engine" takes a fairly weak premise of illegal resurrection and indentured servitude and beats it to death with pointless interrogation scenes and dialogue dead ends, making no real points and essentially finding excuses to draw women with big breasts fighting odd battles with one another. I'm sure the Ghost characters behave appropriately, as Kennedy seems very familiar and comfortable with them, but I was reminded of the manga "Batman: Child of Dreams" when it came to the inappropriate stiltedness of the Gotham cast and their highly out-of-character actions. The worst treatment was given to Oracle, with Barbara Gordon (the original Batgirl) being treated as a sort of savant hacker geek rather than the smart, capable information hub she actually is. Where she is highly secretive and protective of her identity in the Batman universe (she trusts almost no one with her name and identity, and rarely meets even her close associates like Black Canary face-to-face), she inexplicably decides to trust Ghost and let her into her lair, trading friendly dialogue pointlessly. Batgirl's origin and abilities are garbled enough that it's obvious Kennedy may have read an issue of her title and a hasty early bio, misrepresenting the reason for her unique abilities and her limited speech capabilities while also trivializing her unparalleled hand-to-hand prowess. The saddest portrayal, however, is reserved for the venerable Two-Face, reduced to an ultra-violent thug who has almost no reason whatsoever to be in this story and seems thrown in simply to showcase one of Batman's villains.
The story itself centers mainly on Ghost and the city of Arcadia, to the point where it seems almost embarrassing that the Gotham characters are involved. The resurrection ideas and the fairly bland sequence of events are just too subpar for the normally emotional and insightful stories one expects in a Batman-related title, reading very much like the punchy-but-vapid comic titles of the early nineties (I kept expecting someone from Youngblood to show up). The art is of high quality, with solid renderings and color, but with such a lukewarm story it really just serves as eye candy to distract from a lackluster effort. This may be what fans of Ghost are used to, but Batgirl readers expect more. I'd advise most of the latter readers to pass on this one, unless you're a completist (like me) who will buy it, read it, and shelve it for good.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Not Available Comics
Trevor
