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Collecting the nine issue series written by Dixon and Beatty and drawn by Marcos Martin and Alvaro Lopez, this is an attempt by Dixon to re-write continuity into his preferred history of the Batverse...

Chuck Dixon is obsessed with the idea that Babs Gordon is the one true love of Dick Grayson. Perhaps he's Xenophobic, I don't know, or maybe Kory's hair just bugs him. Regardless, for almost all of Dixon's run on the batbooks, he's tried to keep Dick and Babs hooked up together, and in this case, he uses the ability to re-write history to make the ties between them even stronger than we've had previously.

I like Chuck Dixon the writer, but I think he got badly burnt out on the subject of Bruce Wayne and his cast, especially on Robin towards the end. The year one format gives him a chance to refresh a bit, and he takes full advantage of it (either that, or Beatty had a strong hand in the writing).

The basic idea is that Barbara Gordon wants desperately to fight crime like her dad, but is blocked by several things: gender, height, and overprotective father, to name a few. Despite all this, she opts to join the vigilante set that haunts Gotham's skylines, learning as she goes and trying to find her way in the world without the help of Batman.

We see her strive for her goals and watch as Bruce yet again brings another child into the fold, a pattern he has yet to break and yet always decries when something goes wrong. We see her come into her own as a crime-fighter, and we look at it all with eyes that know the Joker lurks, ready to break her life.

And that, I think, is why this works so much better than most shoe-horned continuity shifts. Despite my dislike for Dixon's love plot, he otherwise does a great job of making Barbara a likable, strong character that is doomed to experience tragedy and we all know it. This is not a re-imagining of Batman, Superman, or even Nightwing. This is making us want her to succeed and yet knowing she will (temporarily) fail, all at the same time. It's the best Year One Story I've read, and definitely the best of the ones written or co-written by Dixon.

Trebby's Take: A good, strong, story and no overly annoying continuity changes to scream about, save the Dick-Babs one. Highly recommended, I enjoyed this one a lot.