So let’s briefly talk about Barbara Gordon. Like with Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown I have a lot to say about this character and her story, but it really deserves a post of its own so I’ll be as brief as I can.
Barbara is the second Batgirl but the first serious attempt of giving Batman a competent female ally who wears the symbol of the Bat (The previous Bat-Girl, and her aunt the first Bat-Woman, was little more than bumbling sidekick). Barbara, on top of being the daughter of Batman’s longtime police contact Jim Gordon, was not a teenage sidekick but rather a full grown woman, with a PhD. in library science (I think. Feel free to correct me in her degree was in) and a skilled fighter who operated without Batman’s permission or training; she didn’t need either, mainly because she’s goddamned awesome. She even retired as Batgirl after years of service to use her abilities for other, more practical pursuit (Yes that happened). However in the 1988 comic The Killing Joke she is shot in the stomach by the Joker and permanently paralyzed from the waist down. But because, as we established, Miss Gordon is a badass she soon becomes Oracle, an information broker and world class hacker who aides various superheroes in the war on crime (And eventually establishing a network between them) and begins employing agents to fight the forces of evil on a global scale, the most famous of whom were the Birds of Prey (Including her best friends Black Canary, The Huntress, and Lady Blackhawk). Over the years she has become not only one of the very few disabled superheroes in comics but frankly she was more effective, and invaluable, in this role than she ever was as Batgirl.
Unfortunately, for reasons seemingly due to low sales of Stephanie Brown’s Batgirl title and the idea that they wanted to bring familiarity for casual readers back to the book in the Great DC Reboot the powers that be in DC Comics decided to return Barbara to her classic role as Batgirl, restoring her legs in the process, in Batgirl #1.
The trade-off is that it’s being written by Gail Simone who is one of the best working writers in comic books today, having written Secret Six and being most famous for runs on Birds of Prey. There is also art by Adrian Syaf (Pencils) and Vicente Cifuentes (Inks). This issue is titled "Shattered".
Like with my Spider-Man: One More Day review this is a pretty controversial comic but I want to focus on whether this is a good comic on its own merits rather than because of my personal feelings on who is or who isn’t Batgirl. Still I do want to very quickly state my opinion on the matter before we get into the review: Yes, I agree that Barbara Gordon has no business returning to the role of Batgirl. While I’m not happy they decided to restore the use of her legs I can live with that aspect but de-aging her (Which they have done) and putting her back in that identity feels like a straight up demotion. You likely wouldn’t see Dick Grayson return as Robin or Wally West return as (Ugh) Kid Flash (At least freaking I hope not. Has Wally been accounted for yet?). Barbara graduated from being Batgirl a long time ago and moved on to bigger, better, and more important things as Oracle and I find it a bit ridiculous that I’m being expected to take her seriously here. She used to wage cyber-warfare on global threats and use her genius to regularly help save whole nations and even the world. Now she’s gone back to fighting muggers and gangbangers on the streets of one city? Please.
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| Oracle reacts to Batgirl #1 |
Actual review after the jump.
