Unless Firebug was hired by James, the cover to this issue falls directly into pet peeve #2, since James doesn't "strike" in this issue. He does, however, reveal that he knows Barbara's secret identity, though, to be honest, I can't say that I'm really surprised.
This story is actually about Batgirl and the GCPD trying to round up Joker's crew and Fawkes, who replaces Simone here, does a good job showing how Barbara's approach differs from her Bat-family colleagues. Whereas Bruce has no real problem doing the GCPD's job for them, Barbara does her best to empower the GCPD to collar the thugs themselves, recognizing it as an important symbol. However, when Firebug use these moments to attack the arresting cops, Barbara gets involved.
It is actually unclear if Firebug is working with James. It's entirely plausible, since it makes sense that James would be feeding the locations to Firebug. Otherwise, Fawkes doesn't make it clear why Firebug is attacking, particularly why the attacks seem connected to Joker's crew. He does appear to have medals on his chest, so he may be a former cop on a vendetta against the GCPD. I guess we'll see.
Overall, it's a decent issue. Fawkes uses a fairly heavy-handed narration by James that weighs down the comic significantly, but the story itself was fine. I'll be happy when Simone returns, though.
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