Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: barbara gordon, Next Level

A Look Inside Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2 (Spoilers)

A Look Inside Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2 by Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan (Spoilers)

Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2 is out in a couple of weeks. But courtesy of an interview with writer Mariko Tamaki, DC Comics shows off some of the Amancay Nahuelpan artwork from the upcoming issue, including who was in the cell waiting for Bargara Gordon at the end of issue 1…

Is it the Grim Reaper? Or is it Director Bones of the DEO, recently seen in another DC Next Level launching title, Zatanna? And what happens next? Well, it's not good. Enough to put Barbara Gordon in the Supermax hospital facility.

Waking up to discover… something. And looks like broken ribs and wrists…

Though she seems to meet someone looking to help. Though Barbara Gordon might be on some serious psychedelic drugs…

And sees her aide in a form only she can conjure.

Might we have a new Batgirl for the DC Universe, banged up in Supermax alongside Barbara Gordon? And back in the courtyard…

She may look worse for wear. But is making new friends. Orange Is The New Bat, etc. And how's her dad taking to all of this?

Not well, it seems…

• BARBARA GORDON BREAKOUT #2 
  (W) Mariko Tamaki (A) Amancay Nahuelpan (CA) Karl Kerschl
  BATGIRL BEHIND BARS! Barbara Gordon is alone, imprisoned, and outnumbered by the very criminals she put away. Without her team, she's going to have to fight to survive on her own. Someone at Supermax has her in their crosshairs. Barbara is being hunted, but she's about to learn that in prison, there's nowhere to hide… Eisner Award-winning writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Amancay Nahuelpan continue to put Barbara through her paces as DC's most surprising Next Level series continues! $3.99 6/10/2026
• BARBARA GORDON BREAKOUT #3 
  (W) Mariko Tamaki (A) Amancay Nahuelpan (CA) Karl Kerschl
  DOES THE KEY TO BARBARA'S SURVIVAL LIE IN THE PAST? Barbara Gordon is just trying to survive in Supermax. Every day brings new danger…and more questions. Can she trust her new friend Sparrow? Has she clocked the real threats closing in on her? And why does she get the sneaking suspicion that there's more to this prison than meets the eye? To answer these questions, Barbara will need to rely on the skills she learned as Batgirl and her own past to ensure she has a future… $3.99 7/8/2026
• BARBARA GORDON BREAKOUT #4
  (W) Mariko Tamaki (A) Amancay Nahuelpan (CA) Karl Kerschl
  WITH NOWHERE TO RUN, WHO CAN BARBARA TRUST? Barbara entered Supermax alone, with no one by her side–so who is the mysterious ally that's come to her defense, and what is their connection to her family? And even with someone watching her back, will she be able to protect the killer's next target? Find out as Mariko Tamaki and Amancay Nahuelpan's DC Next Level smash hit continues! $3.99 8/12/2026

"You, as a writer, are responsible for giving these characters their worst day, and you're also responsible for getting them out of their worst day. My name is Mariko Tamaki, and I am the author of the Barbara Gordon breakout comics.

"Barbara Gordon has spent a lot of her time as part of a team and as part of the best team. The thing about that character that's so incredible is that she is really somebody who can lead a team to victory and works really well with a group of people. She works really well with the Bat team.

"The idea behind this is what if you take that person who's so good at that and you pull them out of that situation and you put them on an island prison in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of people that she has helped put into prison and a bunch of other people whose main goal in life is to do the opposite of help her and have her try to save the day in that moment.

"You get to watch somebody size up their situation and size it up wrong, size up their enemies and allies and make some wrong choices. We've definitely thrown some pretty nasty curveballs at her in this comic. It's not something that's new to her, but I think it's a really lonely thing to be wrong and then sent to your lowest low.

"It's been really interesting to sort of play out within this kind of hamster cage that she's been placed in, her trying out a bunch of things and not having any luck before she has some luck.

"This is a place where Vandal has obviously placed everybody he does not want in the general population. It's not a daycare centre. It's very much a place where you can't raise your hand and have someone help you out. It's a lot of Tuco soldiers who are there to not really help. That's kind of their job, to specifically not help anybody who needs help. It's very Alcatraz adjacent. Even if you got out of this prison, where are you going? It's got all of these nasty things even around it in the water, so there's no escape.

"The thing that's amazing about the comics world is the freedom that you have as an author to really go for it. Especially with a prison story, there are always these tropes. I think we're kind of used to people playing with tropes, but the job is to imagine what the basic points of a story that takes place in a prison are and then to subvert those in some way."

"For me, it's also finding unexpected character moments. These are superheroes, so they're usually pretty on top of their game. It sounds upsetting to say that you want to upset a character or do something that they're not going to be able to respond to or something that's going to throw them off, but that is what you're trying to do."

"Amancay and I worked on Crush and Lobo. The first issue you do with an artist, you're feeling out what it is that they do and there was a bunch of physical comedy in that first issue that we did together and he just nailed it so intensely. Getting to feel out how your artist draws faces, how they draw bodies, how they draw spaces, and the relationship between those things. I have such great faith in his ability to create the space and create the mood and tone of the space. Comics are such a unique medium because it's you telling the story with somebody else, and the idea of where your work begins and where their work ends, there's such a melding of those two efforts. I love what he does, and I feel like I write to it, and I feel like he is drawing to what I'm writing, and it's really incredible."

"The thing that is at the heart of this comic, which I think is the heart of so many good stories, is just survival. It's survival in an impossible situation. You don't necessarily have to know who Barbara Gordon is as Batgirl to know what it means to be put in a scary situation where you're intensely outnumbered. You don't have to know the history of all Superman comics to love a hero. You don't have to know the history of the Joker to love a villain. DC Comics maximises on that so well. You don't have to know the minutia of every version of it to love each individual story."

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