YMMV / Batgirl (2011)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Regarding Barbara, and whether she's an intelligent and strong young woman regaining her confidence to overcome trauma or whether she's massively overconfident and not nearly as strong or clever as she thinks she is, instead blundering into situations she's not nearly equipped or prepared to handle.
• Anvilicious: Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher's run can be very preachy, especially concerning social media culture and popularity. The character Liam seems to be a spokesperson for this.
• Awesome Art: Batgirl's redesigned costume by Babs Tarr was generally well received by critics and fans alike. It garnered tons of fan art in just a day after it was revealed.
• Broken Base:
  • For some, bringing Barbara back as Batgirl was a great idea. For others, it's still one of the worst ideas to come from the New 52. Judging by the reaction to Barbara's new Batsuit in Tom Taylor's Nightwing Infinite Universe book, it hasn't abated a decade after it happened.
  • There are a few camps divided over the direction of the Fletcher/Stewart run. Some absolutely loved it, and found it welcome after Simone's rather dark and grim run. Others think the new Barbara acts out of character, at least compared to pre-Flashpoint versions. Some find that the number of social media references and trendy slang to be a bit excessive. Some just miss Oracle, and think that Stephanie Brown as Batgirl could just as well fulfill this new role. Even then, most critics seemed to agree that although the book might not be for them, they hoped this new direction would succeed with its target audience.
  • Though generally well-received, the new costume had some detractors, due to the belief that it's far too impractical for Barbara at this point in her life; if she was a new hero or the book was about her early days, the suit would be fine, but for someone who's spent the last few years of her life operating as a superhero, has access to Batman's tech, and has been through this much crap in her life, the new suit just looked impractical (her original suit was armor whereas this was a jacket) and ill-fitting.
  • Barbara's return to being Fun Personified. Alongside the outfit, this brings more fuel to the fire to the fans that want Stephanie Brown back (namely by saying that DC seems to be trying to turn Barbara into an Expy of Steph).
  • The bickering between Dinah and Barbara, somewhat carried over from the end of Birds of Prey, has upset some readers who miss their friendship. There are some who believe Barbara has not apologized enough to Dinah for what she did (burning down Dinah's home, among other things), and others who think Dinah has been overly aggressive and catty. It does not help that Dinah is quick to take some of her anger out on Barbara's roommate. Thankfully, the two started to mend fences and have since stopped bickering with each other.
  • Alysia and Jo's wedding has set off a three-sided debate in the fandom. On one side, of course, are fans who are happy about the development and are celebrating it as a sign of progress at DC, which previously vetoed a story in which Batwoman would have married her longtime girlfriend. Another side, of course, are fans who complain that Fletcher and Stewart shoved her aside, only to bring her back for the sake of headlines, reducing her character to a gender identity. And then there's a third side who like Alysia and Jo, but feel that Stewart, Fletcher and Tarr are just creating a pretense to send Alysia and Jo away once and for all while avoiding further accusations of transphobia.
• Complete Monster: Vol. 4 issue #0—"A Fire in the Heavens": Harry X is a Serial Killer put away when the RCMP discovered a well full of dead, trafficked women, all of whom Harry killed because "they gave him sass". Harry has his followers break him out of prison, gunning down numerous cops in the process, and as he's freed Harry tries to rape and murder Barbara Gordon, while also trying to kill her young brother.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Between fans of this run, the Stephanie Brown Batgirl run and the Cassandra Cain Batgirl run, particularly as fans believe the latter two were erased from continuity to better suit Babs' return.
  • Between Gail Simone's run, and Brenden Fletcher/Cameron Stewart's fun. Fans who loved Simone's run think that the Fletcher/Stewart run is shallow hipster trash that made Barbara dumber than her previous iteration. Fans of the new Fletcher/Stewart run claim Simone's run is joyless, boring, needlessly angsty, and too gritty.
  • The below-mentioned Joker variant cover, as well as the book's initial focus on The Killing Joke, resulted in something akin to this between Batgirl fans and Joker fans, particularly the more feminist-minded members of the former and the more extreme members of the latter. After the former complained about the cover, the latter responded with buckets of harassment and hate-mail, and now its hard to find a Batgirl fan who has nice things to say about Joker fans as a result.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In June, 2020, it came to light that Cameron Stewart had a history of predatory behaviour towards young women in their teens and early 20s; in retrospect, the fact his Batgirl run involved Barbara being presented as much younger than she was and acting like a teenager now feels very creepy on his part.
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • Barbara's love interests haven't been received very well by readers, who find them either awkwardly shoehorned, or just boring. Some readers just want her to hook up with Dick Grayson again. In Simone's run, Ricky was first introduced as looking like a 16 year old. When Ray Fawkes turned him into a love interest, Simone retconned his age to be 19. Some still found it to be Squick.
  • A common complaint over the recent arcs is that Barbara seems to be caught in an endless parade of love triangles. Her relationship with Luke Fox comes across as forced and sudden, with many readers feeling like Luke comes across merely as a stopgap love interest until Barbara falls for Dick Grayson again.
• The Scrappy: Batwoman, for a number of readers who didn't appreciate her "barging in" and curb-stomping Babs in her own book.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Suffice to say that Babs didn't have it easy from issue one, all Batman-related titles have gotten a very hard dose of Wangst from at least since Death of the Family, which made things exponentially worse for her. This got to the point that Gail Simone decided to quit the book, because she felt that a lighter tone would be beneficial and her editor would not let her go that way. Fortunately or unfortunately, shortly after she quit, the Batbooks got a new editor, who hired a new creative team that is selling their run on the idea of making Batgirl fun. Gail Simone, while acknowledging that it's a bit of a gutpunch to quit her dream job only to have the reason for her quitting quickly nullified, has been very supportive of the new team.

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