Batgirl #16 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

This issue is odd, mainly because I'm not really sure where we end it.

This issue begins more or less how'd you expect it, with Barbara struggling to keep herself from killing Joker since he has her mother hostage.  But, then, James appears and a few things happen that bring us in a different direction than we seemed to have been going.  First, James tells Barbara that their mother is safe, which allows her to go wild on Joker.  Interestingly, Simone doesn't let us learn if Barbara would've killed Joker, since James chloroforms her before she can do so.  We then learn that James made a deal with Joker to give her to Joker in exchange for his mother.  I'm all good until this point.  In fact, I thought James was a great addition to this issue, really ramping up the tension (as he's wont to do).  I particularly loved the part where James impresses Joker.  Snyder made it very clear that his James was the once and future Joker in his DCU "Detective Comics" run and Joker himself seems to realize that in this moment.  I loved that.

But, I don't get where we are at the end.  Joker was going to cut off Batgirl's arms and legs as a "wedding present," so it's possible that it's her limbs under the domed plate.  It's possible, but, unlikely.  Since Penguin and Two-Face recognized whatever is under the dome in "Batman" #16, it seems pretty obvious that it's a head of someone familiar.  Maybe it's Barbara's face, but I sort of doubt that they'd recognize that.  So, if Joker didn't do anything to Barbara, it raises the question why he didn't.  James clearly interrupted whatever Joker was planning for Barbara and maybe Joker was just bluffing about cutting off her arms and legs; if you're working under the theory that he knows that she's Barbara Gordon, then it makes sense, in a Joker way, to threaten to do to her something that she couldn't undo, like she "undid" her paralysis.  But, he's been talking about the "role" that she has to play in his final fight with Batman.  Why would James' interruption change his plans for Barbara?  I guess we still have time for Snyder to reveal that plan, but I felt like this issue, and Barbara's own arc with Joker, ended fairly abruptly, jettisoning a lot of the story that we've seen to this point in the rush to set up "Batman" #17.