Batman: Prelude to the Wedding: Batgirl vs. Riddler #1

by Tim Seeley

[Quirky Cat]

Another prelude building up to the wedding. I’ve been sort of picking and choosing which ones of these I’ll actually read, which I may end up regretting in the long run. I hope they don’t all combine to give us a bigger picture that I’ll end up missing…
Anyway, naturally I had to read the Batgirl one. Having her go up against the Riddler was an interesting choice. I’m sure she’s gone up against him before, but I’m having trouble recalling an exact instance where that happened (and where she didn’t have another bat to back her up). These two characters are exceptionally bright, so seeing them head off against each other was a lot of fun. Naturally there’s a lot of the Riddler’s rambling, but that’s nothing new.
The revelation at the end was probably the most interesting bit about this. What part is Harley going to have to play in all of this? And what about Joker? In the last Batman issue we saw Batman and the Joker in a church, though that scene hadn’t fully resolved yet (in fact we’re lead to believe that Catwoman would be jumping into the fray very shortly). Has Joker managed to go missing in such a short amount of time? What did he do, or possibly what was done to him? I wasn’t terribly interested in his part in this before now, but now I’m just a bit curious.