Dick Grayson Gets No Respect

Picked up this week's comics, vented at manager a bit about DC's upcoming reboot, we'll purge my pull list in September and start over. He said he was thinking about putting together a "If you like X, you might like Y" list for DC titles for folks like me looking for something else to read other than mainstream DC. I told him I'll buy more toys there with the money I won't be spending on comics.

Still trying to wrap my mind around this whole mess, especially when related to my favorite characters.

Babs/Oracle has probably been the most blogged about. I've lost track of most of the posts, but, many folks feel as I do, that losing Babs as Oracle and getting her out of the chair means DC loses something special. There was a Batgirl before Babs -- Betty Kane -- and when Babs became Batgirl, I didn't know why Betty couldn't have been given a better, bigger role, but Babs won me over. I liked that she was a librarian, which I became! But I think Steph Brown is my favorite Batgirl. But there's only one Oracle and Babs created that persona. She earned that special place in the DCU and come September, that will be gone.

But Babs isn't the only one being forced into a younger, less developed state. Think about poor Dick Grayson. With the character assassination done to poor Roy Harper (the only good from the reboot is that the damage done to Roy the last year or so will be undone, it seems, though I probably won't like what he'll be, either, in the new DCU), I refocused my comics character lust to Dick Grayson who'd been forced to play second to Roy in my heart. It's been clear for years that the PTB at DC don't like him. But finally, with Bruce supposedly dead, he got to become Batman, keeping the cowl warm til Bruce's return. And here's the thing...

If Dick had stayed Nightwing, I would be okay about him being Nightwing again in the reboot.
If Bruce had returned and Dick went back to being Nightwing, I would be okay about him being Nightwing again in the reboot.
But he did become Batman and Bruce did come back and let him stay on as Batman and coming up with the Batman Inc concept so there could be more than one Batman. Dick earned that cowl and he deserves to keep them.

So, two scenarios come to mind in the reboot: Dick goes back to being Nightwing, still a mature man in his 20s, very experienced, whether or not he's ever been Batman, and I'll get to read new Nightwing stories...
Or... Dick is Nightwing, having recently given up being Robin, and I'll have to read all over again about Dick finding his way on his own as this new hero called Nightwing. Sorry. Been there, done and read that. I want to read about a hero leaving his mentor and going out on his own, gaining experience, yadda yadda yadda, I'll find another character to read about.

The second option sucks. The first isn't much better because I preferred reading about Dick as Batman, mentoring Damian, than reading about Nightwing, a solitary hero with a mostly screwed up personal life because he keeps neglecting it to be a hero.

My LCS has a 5 title minimum for a pull list. So far, I've got:
The Lone Ranger
Zorro
Criminal
The Spirit (if it continues)
Doc Savage (if it continues)
Batwoman (because she's still new enough to the DCU to not be much affected by the reboot, I think/I hope)
At least, I've got the minimum covered, but a few extras, just in case, would be a good idea.

As for today's haul...
Nice ending on the BoP story (Birds of Prey 13), with a cameo appearance by Catman. I was happy to have something to read that isn't part of Flashpoint. Yet.

Batman and Robin 24 indicates this title will go out with a whimper, what with Jason Todd taking over, relegating Dick and Damian to guest roles in their own book. Have I mentioned how much I detest Jason? The main reason I don't want to read the coming title with Roy in it? Yeah, I figured I had.

Booster Gold 45 continues the Flashpoint storyline, which I've completely lost interest in now that the reboot's been announced. I guess this was okay. I felt pretty meh about it.

Oracle vs Batgirl

Comments on this post over at Has Boobs, Reads Comics led to these comments of mine, long enough to warrant a post here methinks:

I'm heartsick about many of the changes, including Dick becoming Nightwing again, but this has me besides myself. I work with blind and visually impaired people and others who can't read standard print, including quadriplegics. I know how powerful a symbol and role model Babs as Oracle is and I know how so many people don't just get to start over or leave that wheelchair behind. I hate that DC is going backward. Just. Hate. It.

And then:

I'm not defining Oracle by her disability. I think people need role models and she's one of the very few who are positive role models for disabled people. She's a shining example of overcoming adversity and doing something special with her life, even more than when she was Batgirl. I don't want her to be a BatGIRL. I want her to be what she's been: a fully realized awesome WOMAN who has played a vital role for the DC Superhero community. Anyone can be Batgirl; after all, there have been others besides Babs (the first one I knew was Betty Kane) and Steph Brown has filled the role admirably and capably and her costume is awesome! In fact, the current Batgirl is one of the most fun comics DC publishes. And Babs, as Oracle, has been the amazing anchor of Birds of Prey. Why anyone wants to go backward from that is beyond me. Well beyond me.

Finally, Barbara Gordon has been many things over the decades: librarian, congresswoman, Batgirl, Oracle, daughter of Commissioner Gordon, girlfriend of Dick Grayson, friend to Black Canary and Huntress and Zinda, mentor to many young female characters from Misfit and Cass Cain to Stephanie Brown and Wendy/Proxy. Babs in her personal life and as Oracle has touched the lives of most of the characters in the DCU. No Batgirl has ever been able to say that. Batgirl is just another costumed crimefighter. Oracle has been so much more. That's what DC is giving up and they should be ashamed of themselves.

Oracle

I read Battle for the Cowl: Oracle 1 last night and enjoyed it. The art was wonderful. Babs, and everyone else, looked real, and the emotions really came through in the art by Lopez, Pasarin, and Bryant. I liked that for once, someone thought to show how difficult it can be to be disabled, in this case, paralzyed from the waist down. Sure, we've seen how hard it has been for Babs to get around and to defend herself. The Hunt for Oracle did a great job with that. But this showed some more of the everyday sorts of things that have become a challenge. The simple act of taking a shower, for example, was beautifully depicted. Babs has to use her hands to lift her legs in order to pull off and on her jeans and underwear. She needs to sit in the shower and needs something to grab onto to get in and out of the tub. The little things we take for granted are big things for Babs to deal with. Kevin Vanhook showed a real feel for Babs so far.

All of which are why I've never wanted her to regain the use of her legs. It's so important for there to be disabled characters to be role models for disabled readers. Babs, as Oracle, shows you can succeed despite being unable to walk. She had to remake herself after she was shot, from an active costumed crimefighter to a more sedentary hacker to the costumed crimefighting community and as leader of her Birds of Prey. Being disabled is the one minority anyone can join at any time. And without warning.

And much as I see her as confident and don't like her bouts of doubt, I can see that as realistic, too. Things went bad and she took the failure personally. Anyone can doubt themselves and someone with physical limitations might very well suffer occasional blows to her confidence.

The scene with her father rang true, too. After all, I'm a grown daughter of a father still living.

As for the story, Calculator has made himself a major player in the DCU, someone I no longer can dismiss as a lightweight villain.

While I don't want to see Babs walk again (yeah, I know, I sound cruel), I'll accept it if it makes sense in the story and for Babs. What I don't want is for her to be Batgirl again. She's not a girl and that would be a step backward. She can't be Batwoman, because someone else has filled that role. I'd like to see her remain Oracle, but still able to don a costume and go into the field as needed. She'd need another name, though, because she can't compromise Oracle's hidden identity.

I have high hopes for this mini in the midst of the Battle for the Cowl storyline and so far, I'm impressed. I hope I won't be disappointed by the outcome, but as long as the resolution is logical and well done, I probably won't be able to complain. Much. ;)

Barbara Gordon and The Killing Joke: A Clarification

A comment on my post "When is it Gratuitous?" prompted a reply I feel deserves a more public answer than just another comment.

First, the comment that prompted this post:

"Alan Moore didn't revitalise Babs Gordon. John Ostrander did in SUICIDE SQUAD.

When Moore wrote THE KILLING JOKE he felt that Barbara Gordon was expendable and obviously the editor agreed. It was John Ostrander who brought her back from comics limbo."

In going to answer the comment, I found a linkback to this post on Stars and Garters. It says:

"Yeah, it was "after the fact", all right. Years after the fact.

Let's clear something up right now:

Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" did not help revitalize Barbara Gordon.

Suicide Squad did."

and

"Moore, and apparently the Bat-editorship at the time, thought Batgirl was disposable enough to end her career permanently.

"Suicide Squad" writers John Ostrander and the late Kim Yale, on the other hand, thought Barbara Gordon was salvageable enough to re-invent her. They deserve credit for inspiring what's happened since (Birds of Prey).

Not "The Killing Joke"."

Now, what I said:

"Aside from crippling a sidekick to a character, Batman, who already had Robin, The Killing Joke helped revitalize Barbara Gordon as she transformed herself into Oracle and went from sidekick/guest star to Major Player. She can literally appear in any story in continuity. She has her own book with her own team. Rather than be the helpless female, Babs fought back."

In no way do I see what I posted to be inconsistent with the facts of how it occurred. I was discussing a character and her development in the context of everything that's happened to her since that story. I never read The Suicide Squad and actually, until about 3 days ago, didn't even know that's when Babs became Oracle, which is why I was vague about when that happened, simply saying "as she transformed herself into Oracle." To me, she was Oracle in Birds of Prey and a few years ago, I found The Killing Joke and read it so I could find out how she got crippled. When I wrote the post, I knew she didn't become Oracle in The Killing Joke. And all of that happened while I was boycotting comics following Kara Supergirl's death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yes, I was that upset.

I was not discussing the writer of The Killing Joke or any other writer. I was discussing the character, from the benefit of hindsight. Same as many years ago, when I went back and analyzed Ollie Queen to explain how he could go from socially unaware, rich playboy to the do-gooder he became in Green Lantern/Green Arrow. Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams had their reasons for doing what they did, but that didn't mean it made sense in the larger context. So, psych major that I was, I went through it all and analyzed Ollie, the character, so it made sense to me. Apparently, it made sense to other people because it got published in a semi-pro magazine. Published as in, I got paid for that piece of writing, my only paid writing credit so far.

It is and remains my contention that The Killing Joke helped revitalize Babs as Oracle despite what the intent was. See, writers' intent isn't really relevant except as an "extra" of the sort that gets added onto DVD releases of TV shows and movies. Intent is an interesting side story. As has been discussed previously elsewhere, and maybe here, but I forget, not intending to insult someone who's insulted anyway, doesn't make that offense less real to the person feeling it. If it's just one person who feels the offense, then it's likely to be that person. If it's 99 of 100 who feel it, then it's likely to be what's on the page/screen. In either case, the intent is a footnote to the person's reaction.

I've had writers tell me they didn't have something in mind when they wrote a book, only to have readers tell them what it's really about, and often, the readers will disagree. Never mind what the author wanted to say, if anything other than tell a fun tale.

Do Ray Bradbury's comments that readers and critics have misunderstood his classic anti-censorship novel Fahrenheit 451 make readers suddenly change their view of it? According to Bradbury, the book is about this:

"Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature."

Bradbury, and any writer, is certainly entitled to his opinion and his intent, but that book will remain an example of how censorship can become extreme. His intent will never change how most readers will interpret it. Because, once a writer releases his or her words into the wild, those words become open to interpretation by others. Writers who don't want to give up complete control of their writing shouldn't seek publication. As an aspiring novelist trying to ready her first manuscript for the submission process, I understand this.

Back to The Killing Joke. Perhaps my interpretation of the events is influenced by hindsight and my view of The Killing Joke might be different if I'd read it in real time, with all the years between that and Babs becoming Oracle in The Suicide Squad. But I'll never know if that would be so. I can only look back at it all in its entirety, see where Babs was and where she was at the start of Birds of Prey (and I came into that about 10 issues into the series and had to find the trades).

If she wasn't crippled there would have been no reason for Babs, from a character standpoint, to reinvent herself as Oracle, unless another major event occurred in its place. From a writer's standpoint, there would probably have been no reason to give her the role of Oracle if she hadn't been crippled and unable to be Batgirl anymore, thanks to The Killing Joke. Like it or not, Moore provided the impetus or the inspiration for that. So yes, Ostrander and Yale deserve the credit (I hadn't known who had been responsible for that) for making Babs Oracle. But The Killing Joke gave them the reason. And as Batgirl, Babs was stuck as a secondary sidekick in the Batman family, and stuck with the "girl" part of her name. For whatever reason, even a bad one by many people's figuring, being crippled freed Babs to become something more, something better, someone who could be Batman's equal.

And as a character, Babs progressed from Batgirl to a crippled woman who needed a new purpose and reinvented herself as Oracle. As a writer, I'm not always so concerned about the writer. I'm concerned about the character, about making and keeping it plausible. About being able to look at characters independent of their creators. Do they stand on their own? Could they really exist? Would readers be able to embrace them as real and believe in them?

From the moment I first watched Man from UNCLE in 1964 and started playacting UNCLE with a friend, the characters of Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were more than the words the writers gave Robert Vaughn and David McCallum and more than the actors speaking those words. I believed in Napoleon and Illya. They became as real to me as my favorite comic book characters. Through scores of writers and interpretations, the best characters maintain a core that keeps them consistent and real. I had to look hard to find that core in Ollie Queen, but I did, which is why I'm so enjoying the new Green Arrow Year One series which is filling in the gaps so perfectly. And it's why I and my friends wrote fan fiction. Because we saw things we wanted to do with the characters, put our own spin on them, fill in the gaps, yet maintain the core of what they were that made us love them.

I didn't have to look hard to find the core in Barbara Gordon.

When is it Gratuitous?

This post over at Blog@Newsrama asks what we think about the controversy re: the women in refrigerators syndrome, which by the way, originated not with The Killing Joke, as I understand it, but with the body of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend being found by him in the fridge.

I've been mostly ignoring this latest "outrage" over an old story, but since a lot of people believe, and rightly so in many cases, that women are still not respected in the DCU, I figured I'd write yet another *insightful* post about it. At any rate, this is my opinion and not intended to be treated as anything other than that.

Aside from crippling a sidekick to a character, Batman, who already had Robin, The Killing Joke helped revitalize Barbara Gordon as she transformed herself into Oracle and went from sidekick/guest star to Major Player. She can literally appear in any story in continuity. She has her own book with her own team. Rather than be the helpless female, Babs fought back. True, that was after the fact, but Babs was stuck down at home, in her civilian life, not as Batgirl. So, no, she wasn't given anything heroic to do in the story, because in that story, she was a supporting character. The story, sorry, wasn't about her. It was about Jim, the Joker, and because he's who he is, it was about Batman and his friendship with Jim. Batman was the frontrunner. He was and is one of the "Big 3." Babs, especially then, was not a headliner.

Which brings us to the issue that she was attacked as a helpless female to get back at a male. So what? Jim Gordon has one person in his life someone wanting to get to him could go after: Babs. And Jim, himself, was nabbed and tortured. And has had to live with the guilt over what happened to his daughter. In some ways, Babs had it easier.

It is a fact, unfortunate perhaps, that the best way to strike at someone indirectly, is to go after a loved one, and if there are mostly females in that person's life, it's the females who get to suffer so the males can suffer emotionally. But sometimes, a male gets it. Jason "Robin II" Todd got to die. Even if we'd voted for him to live (I voted for death), he would've had a rough recovery given his injuries, or at least, he should've. Who knows how DC would've handled it. Probably with him bouncing back next issue, as obnoxious as ever. But the fact remains that Jason was a male character getting blown up.

Suffering is part of drama. Sue Dibny gets raped because that's a horror people can relate to in the real world and because neither DC or comics readers are ready for male rape. It was a horrid act that could logically lead to the mindwipe that led indirectly to Identity Crisis. Sue was one of the very few civilians who could have been in that role. Jean, who turned out to be the killer, was one of the few others, someone with inside info, but not one of the team. And Sue was one of the few characters who could have been in the satellite and been unable to fight off Light. Story-wise, it fit.

I am not disgusted by stories that have women harmed, maimed, tortured, or raped. Nor am I disgusted by stories that have those things done to male characters. I AM disgusted by stories that do any of that to either sex for the sheer fun of doing it without a story reason, without a story to go with it. Without a purpose, without the follow-up. Black Canary was tortured in the original Green Arrow series, but then, so was Ollie. Was it less horrible when it was Ollie hanging from the rafters with blood dripping down his body?

All we need, IMO, is to even things out a bit, balance the suffering between the males and the females. But mostly, we need more books with female leads and vulnerable males in their lives. Now, are they bringing back Kate Spencer, the Manhunter, or not?