Y'know what? Batgirl is really boring. Barbara Gordon only became an interesting character once she took up the role of a heroic Shadow Broker.
So fuck it, let's discuss the 20+ years of when Babs was actually cool. Favorite Oracle stories? Hopes of her returning to her glory days?
The central conceit that always made Oracle unrealistic was her consistent refusal to take the opportunities provided to become un-paralyzed. I've never talked to any disabled/paralyzed person who would do that, for any reason.
I think there's plenty of potential in the idea of Barbara as Batgirl AFTER her time as Oracle, and both Simone and CamStew's runs touch upon that potential slightly.
Simone's run is unfortunately completely joyless, and the main success of the Burnside era is the fact that it's a welcome happy upturn in Babs' life.
One of the problems with Babs is that her time as Batgirl is essentially absent in modern continuity, having spent the entirety of the modern age as Oracle. It's so far in the past that we can no longer feel its impact on her as a character.
I really wish the Burnside revamp had simply been set in the past, before her crippling. This way you get the best of both worlds, and can depict Barbara as a happy-go-lucky college student in the old days while still having her stronger, more mature characterization in the modern day. But Marvel and DC seem to be allergic to having stories set in the past ever since the 80's, which is a really outdated way of doing things these days when continuity and cross-title synergy are much less important than they have been for the past few decades.
Eh. That's one of those things you just have to let slide when you want to yell stories about a disabled character in a setting with all manner of shit that could help. Especially when the entire point, both in-universe and out, was to make the best of really shitty circumstances.
Besides, you could always come up with whatever excuse why a treatment wouldn't work. Damage is too severe, risk factors too high, etc. Outright curing her condition would always have come off as a cheap copout. You let Moore pull the trigger, so you gotta deal with the consequences.
>Simone's run is unfortunately completely joyless
Considering Simone has always been one of Oracle Babs' most prominent supporters, that's hardly surprising.
And yes, one of the main issues plaguing the character right now is that she's gone full womanchild. I miss when she acted like an adult.
Oracle>>>>>>Batgirl. Fixing her legs was a mistake, she was a stronger character while in the chair. She proved you didn't need to put on a mask and punch goons to make a difference.
I've always responded to this by saying TKJ just shouldn't be canon. I don't think Moore ever intended it to be canon, and I also really don't like the way it twists around Batman and the Joker's relationship. THAT part is very hard to fit into the mainstream DCU.
While TKJ did the Babs shooting for a cheap dramatic moment, you got to admit it leading to Oracle was probably the best thing to come from it
This. She actually had compelling stories and did cool shit while in that chair. Kind of ironic how a thoughtless fridging turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to her. Thank you, John Ostrander.
Thing is, it was always really ambiguous as to whether TKJ was supposed to be canon. Every time it came up, it was generally agreed that the Joker shot her, but not necessarily in that specific story.
Barbara's shooting isn't the thing that bugs me about TKJ being canon. It's THIS. I am a turbo-autist about the idea of Batman laughing at anything the Joker does. It shouldn't happen. Period. Batman should not find the Joker funny--ever. The only exception would be in an Elseworlds story, which is what TKJ should be.
Oh. Well, fair enough.
I liked how Beware the Batman just jumped in and made Barbara into Oracle right away.
I wonder if they would've crippled her had the show gone on.
It was because she was a representation of disabled people and didn't need her legs to be a formidable cornerstone of the DCU. It's not rocket science.
Honestly, the BEST course of action, going forward, would be to make Babs back into Oracle and just not cripple her again. Being crippled is somewhat distinctive but it's not absolutely necessary for Oracle. What's necessary is that she's really, really good with computers and has an eidetic memory.
You could even go further and add an infiltration element to her if she can still walk. Kind of like the Grayson comic, but with Babs all by herself, a one-woman electronic warfare unit. There's even potential there for a story where she starts to maybe amass too much power/influence and it begins to worry Bruce.
Oracle and Batgirl seem so starkly different in character now it kinda sucks to get rid of one just to have the other.
How bout moving the Oracle character to someone else? How bout Silver Age Bat-girl Bette Kane? She's not doing anything right?
That was pretty great, yeah. They probably would've crippled her had the show continued, if only because it provides an easy character plot to work with.
The disability angle is not absolutely necessary, no, but it is nice to have. A big part of Babs' development was learning to live with her condition, so while not strictly needed, it will be missed.
Though you are absolutely correct in that DC has missed an opportunity with her being able to walk again. They have had two storylines so far about how Babs needs to put Oracle behind her, and it comes across like they see it as something to be ashamed of.
Hell, she still has her tech skills, but she doesn't even really use them that much. What a damn waste.
>formidable cornerstone of the DCU
I miss this so much. Oracle's absence just leaves all kinds of questions of where all the non-wealthy heroes are getting all their equipment and information. She was a one-woman hero support hotline, and now she's just some generic street cape.
Actually there is one character who'd be perfect for the role. It get him to be outside being just a "Robin" he'd actually trying to establish a life before Oz took him.
Then you have Harper and Luke be his back-ups to help along when he does his day-to-day stuff.
The only time he steps out for difficult cases and the realizes how well he gels with Cassandra as a partner (he's the brains. She's the brawn) or Kon/Bart/Cassie try to do a superhero all-nighter where then he tries to be rebellious and Damian busts him then rats on him to Alfred or Bruce. So you have that rivalry still there.
Tim's supposed to be the one who's trying to have a life outside being a vigilante (also of the Robins he's the more straight-laced compared to Dick, Jason, or Damian). Play that angle up of him being the straight-guy (oh the irony) to their or Cassandra's antics.
He's lost that edge when DC decided, "NO HE'S GOTTA BE BATMAN!" What Tynion started to do is one step toward this direction. Which is the sad thing about Tynion he has good ideas, it's just the execution SUUUUUUUCKS. Save Basil. Based Basil is the only non-flaw subplot he's done good. Cassandra he sort of messed up by losing focus at the end of her arc. Should have ended with dapper Kate, Bruce, and Cass at the ballet. Not Bruce brooding over the computer again.
>There's even potential there for a story where she starts to maybe amass too much power/influence and it begins to worry Bruce.
I can't be the only one who thought, back in the day, that at some point Bruce and Barbara would go to war. Their tug-of-war over Cass always made me wonder what it would be like if either of them decided the other had to go for the greater good.
>purple rain cover
Nice
In other news I want to eat Oracle out.
You know for a rushed changed mess This mini was supposed to cure Babs of her disability. the covers were freaking fantastic.
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She can not be paralyzed and STILL be Oracle
this artist drew that famous page of Cassandra. DC still hasn't gone for the trinity and have this artist do fanservice for Stephanie.
I doubt it would ever come to that exactly, but Babs did get a touch shady and controlling every now and then, so it's not implausible that she would use her power and influence to sort of skew things against those she felt were getting uppity.
Exactly, and that's what makes the idea so cool. "Shady and controlling." That's exactly how Bruce likes to behave, especially in the mid-aughts Batbooks. That's what makes it so neat: the idea that not only Dick, but Barbara too is a lot more like Bruce than she cares to admit. But whereas Dick as Nightwing has always been a lonely vigilante on his own, Barbara's got an empire just like Bruce, and what's more, she can tug at the loyalty of some of his subordinates, most notably Cass and Steph. Tim would PROBABLY stay loyal to Bruce if there was a throwdown, but even he's not guaranteed.
In that mid-00s climate in the Batbooks, it's a thing that COULD have happened, and it would have been neat to see happen. Plus it would have been a far more organic and logical "break the Batfamily" storyline than some of the versions of that idea we've gotten over the years.
Its similar logic to pic related
You could intentionally limit your activities, but its unlikely someone with talent and ambition would do that.
So her value as the go to information broker to the superheroes is less important than running around rooftops in cosplay looking for petty crooks to beat up.
I would have liked to have seen her go the Kingdom Come Batman route and build herself a robot army of Batgirls myself. Maybe have herself a power armor in reserve when she has to get her hands dirty.
The time babs almost became Batwoman. Before the creation of kate.
Well obviously that's one possibility for how the war ends: Batman vs Mecha-Batgirl in a throwdown. The other possibility is Bruce and Barbara just meet for coffee somewhere and they argue with each other, then one of them springs a trap on the other.
Poor Cass. That is if she and Barbara knew each other in this universe.
Insofar as I'm basing all this off the Batbooks in the mid-00s, obviously that setup is the status quo at the start of all this. So, as I see it, Tim automatically declares his loyalty to Bruce, and of course Alfred does too. Steph either does the same to Barbara, or Barbara wins her over relatively easily. That leaves Cass as a prize for Bruce and Barbara to fight over. Her and Dick both start things off conflicted, and they bounce back and forth as things get tenser and tenser.
My gut tells me that both Cass and Dick would side with Bruce in the end, but I can entertain arguments that Barbara could get them both, too.
>Batman should not find the Joker funny--ever.
I think Moore was perfectly aware of this point: a few pages before the Joker asked Batman why he is never laughing at his jokes.
So why did Moore had a change of mind? He isn't the Joker at that very moment: he has a second of sincerity/clarity and seems to be crying under the rain.
Mask comes off, the sad clown realizes the absurdity of his situation and tries to joke about it. Batman mirroring him is the logical conclusion of the similarities shown in the last chapter.
Personal opinion is that Moore at this moment was still obsessed with the recent writing of Watchmen and it influenced him here, not necessarily for the best.
He said in an interview that the editor shouldn't have let him cripple Barbara, which is the closest you'll ever see Moore admits being wrong about anything.
Steph would side with Barbara. Cass and Dick would be the parties who'd be, all open-eyed and be all puppy face saying, "STOP!"
>that bat Venus symbol on the bike
Really
>Barbara's got an empire
This only makes editorial's insistence that she's the one true Batgirl all the more baffling. Like, if this is about waifufagging (which it clearly is), why would regress her into a generic nobody instead of the mysterious and powerful mover and shaker she had been for so long? This the opposite of how favoritism is supposed to work.
Bump.
Cause this is the price of "iconism". For Barbara or Barry to be "iconic" Wally, Cassandra, Stephanie, and Bart must suffer!!
No ideas? No, we'll focus on one and ignore possible other markets of interest.
This actually seems pretty decent IMO. Never really felt like Red Robin was all that necessary with Dick and Damien around and this seems like it give him a better place.
This.
What if Cass and Dick decide everything's stupid and fuck off somewhere else? Like the Thing in Civil War. Maybe they go chill in Metropolis or something.
Fuck, maybe they actually do something sane and talk to Clark to try and get him to stop this bullshit.
He'd only be Red Robin when out doing vigilante stuff now and again. But it really fits Tim better for this current role given the void he has with Dick, Damian, and Jason around. He needs something. This could be that something.
No, her interest in being more valuable is less than in running around rooftops in cosplay looking for petty crooks to beat up.
Babs is a selfish person.
That's also why she has no origin story, she's purely a bored copycat.
The thing that sucked the most about her becoming Batgirl again was that it was pure regression. She didn't get any super powers or unique gimmicks. There are more than enough costumed freaks out there that do a better job than she ever had as Batgirl She just became a selfie taking millennial in an SJW containment book.
Say what you will about how stupid the Injustice stories are but the reasons and methods she had to become Batgirl again were orders of magnitude better than mainstream continuity. Batman's insurgency was completely desperate for font line personnel and she had to go through life threatening super science surgery with the help of Lex fucking Luthor.
As opposed to the Nu52 where she just got better off screen with some unexplained thing in the mountains or some shit. That's fucked when Injustice does a character better justice than the mainline comics.
And yes, it is straight up regression, in such a way where everyone loses. Babs herself loses her unique attributes, fans lose any interesting stories yet to be told, handicapped readers lose their greatest representative, the DCU as a whole loses a key aspect, street level heroes lose the explanation for where they get all their stuff... Really, I could go on, but you get the point. There was simply no benefit whatsoever to downgrading Barbara back to Batgirl. Shit fucking sucks.
Well, then: what SHOULD happen to Barbara?
Let's assume DC tells you you can't recripple her, but you can do pretty much anything else with her.
She's Oracle again. She uses her network to obtain and sequester dangerous items and tech. She is the go to person of not only info but of superhero armaments. She leads a team of young girls dressed as Batgirl while she is at in the back line like their version of Alfred. The book would be called Batgirls.
This She doesn't necessarily need to be in a wheelchair, but she does need to get back in front of a computer monitor.
She's Oracle, she provides supplies and information to other heroes, the Birds of Prey are her agents, she fights crime with her brain and 90s hacker skills. Simple as that.
Have her beat the shit out of the Joker.
I'm not crazy about the direction they went in, but if they really want to break the connection to Barbara's traumatic accident, they need to finally have her overcome it. She needs to fight the Joker and just completely steamroll him. It'll be good for the Joker too, he's been way too overpowered for ages. Guy needs to finally get smacked down from the bizarre urban legend clown god status that's been attached to him, it only makes the "Why don't you kill thd Joker?" meme stronger and that's good for no-one.
You want a DC universe where Babs is still Batgirl, you need to accept that it's gonna be a brighter universe. So have Babs beat the Joker, have old grease paint get thrown in the loony bin for a while, give the audience a nice old-school victory. It's really the only way you can move on from Killing Joke without feeling like you're just ignoring it.