[IMG]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/e4/19/8ce4194e8a92e836b3f6cb981507d8fd.jpg[/IMG]
Continued from,
[url]https://community.cbr.com/showthread.php?302-Barbara-Gordon-Batgirl-Oracle-Appreciation-2018[/url]
Printable View
[IMG]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8c/e4/19/8ce4194e8a92e836b3f6cb981507d8fd.jpg[/IMG]
Continued from,
[url]https://community.cbr.com/showthread.php?302-Barbara-Gordon-Batgirl-Oracle-Appreciation-2018[/url]
The first time I know about Barbara Gordon is from Batman 66 tv series.
As a kid, I remember being confused whether I want her to be with Bruce or Dick because there's always a love interest in the movies and books I read at the time and her age in Batman 66 seems to fit neatly between the two.
It's only after Schumacher's Batman and Robin and BTAS did I start to consider Dick Grayson as her love interest.
The first comic I read about her is in Hush as Oracle, The Killing Joke as a civilian, and the New 52 as Batgirl. It really surprised me that she didn't have her own solo before New 52.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]75779[/ATTACH]
[QUOTE=Restingvoice;4110508]The first comic I read about her is in Hush as Oracle, The Killing Joke as a civilian, and the New 52 as Batgirl. It really surprised me that she didn't have her own solo before New 52. [/QUOTE]
In a way, the original [I]Birds of Prey[/I] can be considered as Oracle's first solo title. And when she was first created, the comics market was very dissimilar to today's, and her having a regular backup feature in Detective Comics was probably equivalent (or more so in exposure) as having her own title today.
And now for one picture that really shows how other heroes appreciate Babs, from Birds of Prey #21:
Batgirl 30 was ok, can’t say I like Eternal’s Jason Bard. But Batgirl in HiC was really cool. Nice to see her have a role in an event.
Happy New Year to the Dominoed Daredoll and sometimes-Oracle Barbara Gordon :cool:.
[QUOTE=Godlike13;4110932]Batgirl 30 was ok, can’t say I like Eternal’s Jason Bard. But Batgirl in HiC was really cool. Nice to see her have a role in an event.[/QUOTE]
I love Batman Eternal, so I loved seeing this followed up on. While Scott is such a huge step up from the last 7 years, I still don't have an emotional connection to this series as I want to (and had to Babs in Birds of Prey).
Heroes in Crisis really reminded me of Oracle Year One in Babs's reactions and feelings. I think it's not quite as good as Ostrander and Yale's take, but it was really nice to see that exploration.
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4111501]Heroes in Crisis really reminded me of Oracle Year One in Babs's reactions and feelings. I think it's not quite as good as Ostrander and Yale's take, but it was really nice to see that exploration.[/QUOTE]
I had the opposite reaction: this was twentyfive years too late, and we have been subjected to a Babs where every writer since New 52 has feel compelled to get back to TKJ at the first opportunity. But Babs is the one superhero who have gone through a trauma recovery arc on-camera: first as Oracle and then as Batgirl. What King does in the Babs booth session here goes right against what Scott did in Batgirl #27. And that undercuts the scene with Harley as well.
I liked the interaction between Harley and Babs. While Babs has had her trauma explored in the past, I liked how it linked Harley and Babs this time around.
[QUOTE=RedQueen;4112315]I liked the interaction between Harley and Babs. While Babs has had her trauma explored in the past, I liked how it linked Harley and Babs this time around.[/QUOTE]
I like the idea of Babs connecting with someone who's undergone severe emotional physical trauma like she has...less so if it's with Harley Quinn.
But that's just me.
Before the retcons and changes to Barbara's past , how old was Barbara in the Killing Joke Story?
I know that she had history of having a Ph.D., being the head librarian of Gotham City Library, and being a U.S. House representative
That Babs and Harley interaction was weird as hell.
[QUOTE=Starrius;4112408]Before the retcons and changes to Barbara's past , how old was Barbara in the Killing Joke Story?
I know that she had history of having a Ph.D., being the head librarian of Gotham City Library, and being a U.S. House representative[/QUOTE]
I heard, unconfirmed and I forgot from where, that she's supposed to be 40 years old. That explains why the art shows her a lot older than I expected.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]75914[/ATTACH]
[QUOTE=Starrius;4112408]Before the retcons and changes to Barbara's past , how old was Barbara in the Killing Joke Story?
I know that she had history of having a Ph.D., being the head librarian of Gotham City Library, and being a U.S. House representative[/QUOTE]
She was confirmed to be 25 when she ran for congress, they made up a law or something for her to able to do it that young or something.
I'd say mid to late twenties with how they condensed the timeline.
With New 52, it's gotta be late teens given the nature of the deaging and timespan they've canonically provided.
I'd put current Babs at 24-25 since DC have loosened the reigns since rebirth.
[QUOTE=RedQueen;4112871]She was confirmed to be 25 when she ran for congress, they made up a law or something for her to able to do it that young or something.
I'd say mid to late twenties with how they condensed the timeline.
With New 52, it's gotta be late teens given the nature of the deaging and timespan they've canonically provided.
I'd put current Babs at 24-25 since DC have loosened the reigns since rebirth.[/QUOTE]
In New 52 she's 15 when she first become Batgirl and 21 when she becomes Batgirl again. It was mentioned The Killing Joke happened 3 years ago. The first time she became Batgirl she went solo for a year, then joined Batman and Robin for at least another year. Then Dick and Babs went to college, Jason became Robin, she was still Batgirl until she made a mistake and was fired by Batman.
So it matched. 18 years old in New 52.
Couture!Barbara Gordon winning commission for @barbiegirlgordon. Made with watercolour, Indian ink and gold leaf. By [URL="http://elithien.tumblr.com/post/152686314851/couturebarbara-gordon-winning-commission-for"]elithien[/URL].
[ATTACH=CONFIG]76067[/ATTACH]
‘The Late Batsby’, the Lauren Faust DC Super Hero Girls reboot short, has been posted to YouTube
[url]https://youtu.be/v5j_9rDh3TE[/url]
I think that it looks great, Lauren Faust is brilliant, and can’t wait for the show to come to Cartoon Network this year
[QUOTE=atomicbattery;4128731]‘The Late Batsby’, the Lauren Faust DC Super Hero Girls reboot short, has been posted to YouTube
[url]https://youtu.be/v5j_9rDh3TE[/url]
I think that it looks great, Lauren Faust is brilliant, and can’t wait for the show to come to Cartoon Network this year[/QUOTE]
Whoah, what a huge improvement from the old DC: SHG show! The animation is some of the best I've seen from DC in a REALLY long time and the designs are (mostly) great! It's like that Super BFFs series, but way better. I hope the show does well. (While I'm still not a fan of this interpretation of the characters, or the way shows for girls can't just be normal superhero shows, they have to be vapid and infantile... I still fully support an all-girl show.) Yay Lauren Faust!
LoL, the Freeze one liners got me.
I hear some beats of "Back in Black" while Babs sets out on her scooter, despite her wearing purple…
I just got this article posted about Heroes in Crisis #4, Oracle Year One (Batman Chronicles #5), and the relationship between Batman and Barbara. I hoped some Babs fans would find it interesting!
[url]http://thebatmanuniverse.net/barbara-gordon-30/[/url]
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4154337]I just got this article posted about Heroes in Crisis #4, Oracle Year One (Batman Chronicles #5), and the relationship between Batman and Barbara. I hoped some Babs fans would find it interesting!
[url]http://thebatmanuniverse.net/barbara-gordon-30/[/url][/QUOTE]
I didn't know you did articles on the Batman Universe Miller! That's so cool :).
I always feel like Bruce and Barbara's relationship is one of the most underrated and underrepresented dynamics in the Batfamily.
[QUOTE=Frontier;4154996]I didn't know you did articles on the Batman Universe Miller! That's so cool :).
I always feel like Bruce and Barbara's relationship is one of the most underrated and underrepresented dynamics in the Batfamily.[/QUOTE]
Thanks! Maybe I should make my link to my reviews more obvious in my signature. :)
Barbara's relationship to Bruce is such an interesting one. For all the strangeness of the way Tom King writes about it in Heroes in Crisis, I am glad to see that examined closely and powerfully. I think I prefer the way Tynion wrote about it in Tec 975, though - she cares about Bruce, but analyzes him clearly and without sentiment, and speaks to him with no fear to try to help him.
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4154337]I just got this article posted about Heroes in Crisis #4, Oracle Year One (Batman Chronicles #5), and the relationship between Batman and Barbara. I hoped some Babs fans would find it interesting!
[url]http://thebatmanuniverse.net/barbara-gordon-30/[/url][/QUOTE]
Interesting article. To me, there is a key statement that needed to be further unpacked: "King’s scene [with Harley Quinn and Batgirl] rings false to many longtime Barbara Gordon fans". Reading between the lines of the rest of the paragraph, I think you mean that the statement that Babs makes only makes sense with the Batman that King has built and uses in [I]Heroes in Crisis[/I], but that there has been no similar work by King on Babs's relation to that Batman. I think that's why it comes out from the left field, but the article really leaves that part unsaid.
In part I think it's an artifact of King's storytelling style, where he hints more than tells. But it is also similar to the booth session with Diana in HiC #2, which similarly came out of the left field for many Wonder Woman fans, and didn't fit with the way that Diana is characterised by her better writers (like Rucka, Tynion, or Simone). In both cases King latches onto a specific interpretation of a side character in the story, and pushes that forward without considering how it gels with prior incarnations.
Another problem with the Harley Quinn–Batgirl scene is that it really only works if Babs is in her post-trauma phase with regards to TKJ, as she was as Oracle or as Scott depicts her right now. She is not a victim anymore, but a survivor, and it as that she reaches out to Harley Quinn. Both as a survivor and as a survivor who is still viewed as a victim. But the booth session earlier in the same issue situates her as still traumatised by TKJ—still a victim—and thus undercuts the later scene with Harley.
The way Clay Mann poses Harley Quinn doesn't help either, but that's not on King's writing.
[QUOTE=kjn;4155184]Interesting article. To me, there is a key statement that needed to be further unpacked: "King’s scene [with Harley Quinn and Batgirl] rings false to many longtime Barbara Gordon fans". Reading between the lines of the rest of the paragraph, I think you mean that the statement that Babs makes only makes sense with the Batman that King has built and uses in [I]Heroes in Crisis[/I], but that there has been no similar work by King on Babs's relation to that Batman. I think that's why it comes out from the left field, but the article really leaves that part unsaid.
In part I think it's an artifact of King's storytelling style, where he hints more than tells. But it is also similar to the booth session with Diana in HiC #2, which similarly came out of the left field for many Wonder Woman fans, and didn't fit with the way that Diana is characterised by her better writers (like Rucka, Tynion, or Simone). In both cases King latches onto a specific interpretation of a side character in the story, and pushes that forward without considering how it gels with prior incarnations.
Another problem with the Harley Quinn–Batgirl scene is that it really only works if Babs is in her post-trauma phase with regards to TKJ, as she was as Oracle or as Scott depicts her right now. She is not a victim anymore, but a survivor, and it as that she reaches out to Harley Quinn. Both as a survivor and as a survivor who is still viewed as a victim. But the booth session earlier in the same issue situates her as still traumatised by TKJ—still a victim—and thus undercuts the later scene with Harley.
The way Clay Mann poses Harley Quinn doesn't help either, but that's not on King's writing.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the comments!
I agree that I'm intending to say that King hasn't previously developed this relationship between Batman and Barbara, and that it works against the portrayals that almost all other writers, both pre and post Flashpoint, have gone with. Perhaps I'm stealing from King in leaving things unsaid ;)
The portrayal of Diana does feel very King, rather than consonant with the writers you mention, but I thought it was a very interesting portrayal. Perhaps because my experience with Wonder Woman is much less comprehensive than my experience with Barbara, it didn't seem so jarring to me.
I think the contrast between victim and survivor is definitely what I'm seeing between Ostrander and King - and I think it's further complicated by the idea that Barbara might be using her experience as a victim, even if it's not her current experience, to reach out to Harley.
No problem, it was a nice article that tried to look in-depth into characterisation in a way that a lot of writing about comic books fails to do. (Generally speaking, I see the standard of comic book criticisms and reviews as extremely poor, even if there are exceptions.)
Leaving thing unsaid or eliding steps in reasoning is, I think, an occupational hazard for a lot of writers, myself included. That's one reason why editors are needed.
And yes, I think King based his take on Diana on what he had read about the character, but he didn't read the stuff where Diana showed her more empathetic side. Or he had read it, but had some interesting thoughts about repression and reaching out for help, but then he needed to provide some groundwork first. Because I found the booth sessions with Batman and Superman to be really fitting their characters, and the one with Superman was downright insightful.
Of course, every survivor has been a victim, but I think that reaching out like that requires that Babs does so from a position of having moved on. When Babs says "he'll see you the same way he sees me; as pitiful; broken" and later "without… people who think they [B]know[/B] us [B]not[/B] knowing us" she is speaking as a survivor to a person that she views as a survivor as well, and contrasting that with the people around them seeing them as victims. Babs is aware that Harley is in a worse place than she is as a person, and haven't gone as far to recover as she herself has, but shows trust that Harley can heal and move on, just as she did.
I think the weekly release of comics, which makes it so appealing as a fan, also makes reviewing pretty difficult, as the deadlines are really rough (and the job is almost always completely unpaid). :)
King was definitely going for a very stoical Diana in her interview, which I think has a bit of truth (it's not like Diana is a whiner at all), but taken too far, I think it definitely could lead to a feeling that Diana is too cold. I don't think that was King's intention, but Wonder Woman does feel like the member of the trinity he has the weakest grasp on (look at Double Date vs. the Wonder Woman arc, and the backlash he got for it).
I'll have to ponder more on where I think Babs is reaching out to Harley from - I think your analysis is strong in terms of the way she is presenting herself vs. how she presents Batman perceiving her. The dissonance really shows in the way Barbara presents Batman's attitude, which doesn't seem to be present in most portrayals of their interactions. (The exact state of Harley's history also really makes it hard to determine what the statement being made here is - is this the Harley who mostly just hits people with a big hammer for laughs, or is this the Harley who blew up a significant number of children, or is this the Harley who killed a baby with tetanus, or...)
Yeah, there are lots of reasons why it is so (including that it is hard to write good reviews, and harder still to write good critique). Won't stop me from lamenting the fact. And as for Tom King's Diana, to me it is frustrating because King clearly has some psychological insights and a strong sense for crafting scenes where characters connect with each other, but at the same time has a decidedly non-standard view on some characters. The page with Diana discussing Jumpa was fantastic, but first he had to do several pages with Diana as Catwoman's rival and a temptation for Batman.
The trouble with the Babs–Harley scene in HiC #4 does, I think, come down to three different things, one under King's control and two outside it. The first is that Babs's booth session show her as the victim of TKJ, not the survivor of TKJ. The second is that I myself haven't seen any earlier deep connection between Babs and Harley. With Poison Ivy, yes (as Simone did wonderfully in Batgirl Annual #2), but not Harley. It doesn't destroy the scene, but it undercuts it a bit. And the third is of course that it requires not only Batgirl but the [I]reader[/I] to view Harley as a person deserving of empathy and sympathy (and then not Batman's rough empathy of bringing her home—to Arkham).
ETA: And then there is the thing that millernumber1 raised, that King needed to build support for the way Batman views Babs and Harley, according to the scene.
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4155704], or is this the Harley who killed a baby with tetanus, or...)[/QUOTE]
Harley killed a baby with tetanus? I think that was the Joker.
Maybe I'm wrong, since I don't know all the story of Harley Quinn.
[QUOTE=Konja7;4155921]Harley killed a baby with tetanus? I think that was the Joker.
Maybe I'm wrong, since I don't know all the story of Harley Quinn.[/QUOTE]
I can't remember exactly - it was part of Gotham City Sirens, but the part that I hated (after Dini had mostly left). It's possible that it wasn't Harley herself.
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4155014]
Barbara's relationship to Bruce is such an interesting one. For all the strangeness of the way Tom King writes about it in Heroes in Crisis, I am glad to see that examined closely and powerfully. I think I prefer the way Tynion wrote about it in Tec 975, though - she cares about Bruce, but analyzes him clearly and without sentiment, and speaks to him with no fear to try to help him.[/QUOTE]
Both moments are stuff I can appreciate or understand on-paper even if I feel like the execution didn't deliver.
[QUOTE=millernumber1;4155928]I can't remember exactly - it was part of Gotham City Sirens, but the part that I hated (after Dini had mostly left). It's possible that it wasn't Harley herself.[/QUOTE]
If it's Gotham City Sirens, I remember it was the Joker who killed the baby.
In fact, Harley used this information to convince the baby's father (a cop) to allow her to kill the Joker.
[QUOTE=Konja7;4156635]If it's Gotham City Sirens, I remember it was the Joker who killed the baby.
In fact, Harley used this information to convince the baby's father (a cop) to allow her to kill the Joker.[/QUOTE]
Good call. Like I said, I hated that part of GCS. Really felt like a betrayal of the tone and early plotting of the book.
Wow, I didn't think that Joshua Middleton would be challenged for best variants, but this is really awesome! I love the way the new suit looks here.
[IMG]https://i.redd.it/0xvqs82s7rd21.jpg[/IMG]
From Adam Hughes to Alex Garner to Joshua Middleton (and a host of others) to this, Barbara has been blessed with gorgeous cover art.
Seems like Batgirl gets all the best variant covers. Probably part of the reason why I love this newest costume.
(Even though that's totally just Barbara Gordon with lines on her face...)
Glad to see her in more animated material
Well I guess Jason Bard and Babs won’t be rekindling thier romance anytime soon.
Haha. I'm actually really interested in this arc, as a huge Batman Eternal and original Dixon Birds of Prey fan. I don't ship Babs and Jason (in Batman Eternal, Jason was dating Vicki anyway), but I'm really curious about the resolution here. I know that the heroes don't and shouldn't kill, but I don't see why a civilian hired to protect the candidate shouldn't. An interesting moral dilemma.
Cover to BATGIRL: BRONZE AGE OMNIBUS Vol 2.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]79121[/ATTACH]
The Bronx Zoo apparently named a baby fruit bat Barbara Gordon.
[IMG]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0Np4FnXcAIaAfd?format=jpg&name=medium[/IMG]