Batgirl #14 Review

In this comic review of Batigrl #14, Cassandra threatens her team’s mission by being tempted with revenge!

BATGIRL #14
Written by TATE BROMBAL
Art by STEPHEN SEGOVIA
Cover by REIKO MURAKAMI
Variant cover by TIRSO
$3.99 US | 32 pages | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 12/3/25

This review contains spoilers

As Batgirl #14 begins, Cassandra sees Kalden and saunters forth to kill him. Tenji intercepts, snapping her out of her vengeance-laden headspace, unsure of what’s real and what isn’t.

Angel Breaker is leading point on locating and destroying the poppies. Cass notices that Aruna has disappeared, and quickly finds her gathering poppy seeds for herself to bring back to Nyssa. Enraged by the hypocrisy of Nyssa’s goals, the two begin scrapping, while Jaya and Tenji are discovered by the guards. Angel Breaker manages to set fire to the poppies, and explosions burst all throughout the area. As Batgirl races to rescue her friends, she sees visions of Shiva haunt her decisions and taunting her character.

As our heroes flee, Kalden reports to an unknown leader upon a throne, informing him that they allowed Batgirl and the others to believe their mission was a success, which will lead to the fall of Samsara.

Analysis

First and foremost, big props to Stephen Segovia for the solid artwork in Batgirl #14. He had our girl looking slick throughout the issue, especially when she donned her Batgirl mask. The action was clear and expressive, and had more impact that Miayazawa’s has displayed in the past year. Segovia is a great fit for this book.

As for the writing, I’m enjoying the focus back on Cass’ mentality, her motives and her heroism. Seeing the (predictable) hypocrisies and betrayal of Nyssa and having a crisis of conscious is right at home with her inner conflicts all throughout the book. It was also nice of her to go from yearning revenge to being stalwart in doing right by the people of the Unburied, noticing the women and children and taking into account their actions towards those innocent people. Tate Brombal is not the best writer who’s ever written Cassandra, but he understands her completely, and in a book with a crowded supporting cast, he makes her stand out above the rest.

Batgirl #14 is a decent issue, but one of my larger problems from the first year of the series crept back to the forefront of my annoyance – the dialogue. Everyone sounds the same in speaking with this flowery, portentous manner that just sounds fake coming out of anyone not one hundred years old. Jaya calls Aruna “Shape Changer”, Aruna calls Batgirl “Daughter of the Bat”, and later Jaya “Healer” (that last one, I don’t even get why). It all reeks of placeholder dialogue for character who deserve better characterization than this. It feels like bog-standard martial arts dialogue from the mid-20th century, and while Batgirl herself is spared most of this rubbish, everyone else sounds the same. Angel Breaker, less so because she’s annoyed and separated from the rest, but along with members of The Unburied, it’s like I’m reading a script from something that would play on the Hi-Yah streaming channel.

It’s a problem of characterization. We don’t really know much about Jaya or Angel Breaker or even Aruna after the last couple of issues. This is Brombal’s time to define them better during this mission, but they don’t stand out. It’s also problematic for Tenji, who isn’t more than the young, optimistic fighter who continually sucks in getting into trouble. What stopped me in my tracks however was his jag on heroes killing people. I don’t disagree that they shouldn’t, but we don’t know that to be his belief system. Can it be inferred as Bronze Tiger raised him away from Shiva? Sure, but Shiva would of course try to persuade him otherwise. Is there none of that conflict of upbringing in him, a’la Damian Wayne?

Ultimately, Batgirl #14 is still alright, but I’m looking forward to Cass being free of these tagalongs and either going back to Gotham or being by herself for a while. I feel this book is threatening to kill reader’s investment because I am not caring about Samsara or Aruna or even Tenji enough to care whether or not it’s destroyed – because we just learned of its existence two months ago! We’re reading this book about Cass, not about new characters and locales. None of these new elements have earned our (or my) investment or interest beyond how Cass feels about them, and for the most part she doesn’t feel much.