Batgirl

Well...it's official. Barbara Gordon is back in the cowl as Batgirl, for the first time in over twenty years, presumably replacing replacing current Batgirl, Stephanie Brown. Heaven only knows what's going to happen to Steph and her new partner-in-crimefighting, Proxy (aka Wendy), as well as previous Batgirl, Cassandra Cain, who's only just come back in the pages of Batman Inc. as Blackbat, Batman's representative in Hong Kong.

I guess Cass could stick around as Blackbat while Steph goes back to her old Spoiler identity, but...I don't know. It just makes me heartsick losing my favorite Batgirl and having both her and my second-favorite Batgirl demoted in importance, all in the name of bringing back the "iconic" Batgirl, who had already moved on and created an identity of her own -- Oracle.

Which brings me to my next point on why I don't like this: the erasure of Oracle. The conditions under which Babs began her road to eventual Oracle-hood were, frankly, horrible -- shot and paralyzed by the Joker, turned into a victim and humiliated, but only as a way of proving a point to Commissioner Gordon. The Killing Joke was all about how that event affected Gordon and Batman, with no thought given to Barbara in the story.

Like I said, horrible.

But after that event, Kim Yale and John Ostrander gave her a new life and turned her into the mysterious Oracle, who fought not with punches and kicks, but with technology and her own intelligence. The debate is ongoing on whether or not it is reasonable for Babs to still be wheelchair-bound (powerful symbol of a differently-abled heroine vs. logic fail in a world full of Green Lantern rings and Cyborg's tech and Bruce and Damien recovering from their respective broken backs?) and whether Babs is the most effective Oracle she can be these days. Still, whatever position you take, you must admit, she has come a long way from being Batgirl. As Batgirl, she was just another caped hero operating in Gotham City. As Oracle, though, she was a unique figure, using technology and information to fight and help others fight, among whom are several girls who have carried on, in some form or another, the legacy she once held - Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Wendy Harris, and Charlie Gage-Radcliffe (aka Misfit).

And now they're sending her right back.

And what makes even less sense? Kate Kane is confirmed to be sticking around in the new...continuity, I guess...as Batwoman. Hilariously, one of the reasons why Cassandra Cain's Batgirl ongoing was cancelled years ago was that they were thinking of bringing the then-new Batwoman aboard and thought that having two female Bat-themed character would be too confusing.

They thought readers (what readers? The elusive new readers that everyone's so obsessed with?) would be confused between a dark-haired, biracial, Asian-looking girl in a black suit with a gold bat-outline symbol and a red-haired, Caucasian adult lesbian woman in a black and red costume. But now we're about to have two red-haired white women wearing the Bat-symbol and apparently that's not confusing at all.

I have to laugh at that or I would cry at teh stupid. Seriously, I don't think even Gail Simone can save this for me. :/

And because when it rains it pours, I'm not really impressed by what they've got planned for Birds of Prey, thus possibly nixing my only two purchases from DC. I'm tentatively curious about Firestorm's post-Flashpoint ongoing (funny, since I can only barely remember that the character exists most days), but otherwise? It looks like it might be that you and me are fucking done professionally, DC.