Possibly the most awesome thing I've read in awhile...

[kenn_el]

Brave and Bold 33:SPOILERS! If you do not wish too read SPOILERS, please don't click!
Zee and Diana invite Babs out for a night on the town. Babs sees some things that she might misinterpret.


We find out, however, that Diana and Zee had their reasons for their behavior, and we intercut their explanations with what we know is Babs' fate. I am not ashamed to admit I cried. I thought it was too anviliicious until I saw where they went. By J. Michael Straczynski and Cliff Chiang.

Comments

[birdofprey]

Three of my fav superheroines in one comic. So touching. Zee, you sweetie :(

[ghosty732]

This seems like such a sweet story. I need to go pick it up!

The art and writing seems fantastic.

[ghosty732]

*sweet/tragic.

[sailorlibra]

BRB CRYING.

[pyrotwilight]

I guess I'll have to read the issue because the parts shown here don't really elicit anything from me. The horse has been beaten to death with all the Killing Joke references we get in Bat stories nowadays.

[darkblade]

Agreed, far too much reliance on bringing up Killing Joke. Probably due to it's influence on the Dark Knight and how that made obscene amounts of money for DC.

[majingojira]

Why in the hell did I choose to read this while listening to Isao Tomita's haunting techno-orchestral piece "Death of (the) Young People" from the depressing apocalyptic film Prophecies of Nostradamus/Last Days of Planet Earth.

WHY?! I'm all wibbly from the text, but the music just MAKES IT WORSE!

[catey]

I don't really like Zee and Diana, but this made me wanna hug them and cry too. Don't read this while listening to some sad song like I did because... Well, major weeping time.

[thehefner]

The next two pages are a giant two-page spread of the Joker with the gun, and frankly, I feel like that was very unnecessary (even with the creative use of the word balloon). All you needed was to see her reaching for the door. Everyone knows what's coming next. Done like this, it's so powerful. Still a great issue either way.

[ghosty732]

That's a bit of a let down to hear, actually. I think that the scene ended perfectly with her just reaching for the doorknob.

[thebigapricot]

This just wasn't what I was expecting. I had to lie down for awhile after reading it. The issue to me just seemed to be all over the place. Is it supposed to be fun? Is is supposed to poignant? Why are they still mining TKJ, wasn't Booster Gold enough? (Although I was glad that they didn't have the coffee cup flying out of Babs' hands) Has Zee always had this skill? If so why haven't we seen more of it? Are we to believe that Barbara was such a sad creature that she hadn't had a night of bar crawling, dancing and karaoke and that one night of this will somehow mitigate being shot and paralyzed?

That being said I did laugh at Zee giving the bouncer one of Obi-Wan's lines from Star Wars. And a panel where Zee and Wonder Woman appear to be making out? I'll take it. And Cliff Chiang's art was beautiful.

[bluefall]

That being said I did laugh at Zee giving the bouncer one of Obi-Wan's lines from Star Wars.

Man he killed it like the very next panel by having Diana say "Bacchus" instead of "Dionysus" though. That's prolly the easiest next to Persephone to get wrong - I'm hypersensitive to it because I screw it up half the time myself - but JMS of all people ought to know better. And the awesomeness of the droid line made it doubly jarring.

[jlbarnett]

there's no good reason for it to happen. This happened in the past. Zatanna could have easily saved her.

[espanolbot]

Ah, but then they'd get eaten by flying time alien thingies,


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[autumn_lily]

That's.....f*** that's so sad and sweet and DAMN....

[badficwriter]

No, I'm sorry but...this is JMS being a giant dickwad.

I mentioned in my Brave and the Bold GL/Fate post that JMS likes to mine old tragedies to re-use the 'juice.' Those cut scenes aren't there to introduce new readers, or because we needed all of them to remember that is how Batgirl was maimed. They're there because they hurt us. Every panel, every step further to her 'destiny' is meant to twist the knife. I understand poignancy adding flavor to happiness, but I think this goes over the line.

I'm really angry about this. So much so that I'd best not comment further.

[cuntfucius]

DON'T YOU SEE GUYS IT'S ~FATE~ AND MEANT TO BE WHEN PEOPLE GET PARALYZED AND TRAUMATIZED AND SEXUALLY VIOLATED


IT'S ALSO FATE WHEN TED KORD DIES

BUT WITH OTHER PEOPLE IT ISN'T JUST ... BECAUSE

/CLOSES THE DOOR ON DEATH AFTER I BRING BACK THE CHARACTERS I WANTED TO BRING BACK

[bluefall]

I... really still have no idea how I feel about this ish. Read it three times since I got home and still haven't been able to sort it out. I mean, on the one hand... yeah, it's kinda just an eensy bit exploitative of a really, really overexploited event. I've said before if I never see those TKJ scenes again it'll be too soon, and that hasn't changed. And thehefner's right about the two-page spread; even if the rest of the story can be justified, that crosses the line.

On the other hand, though... this is about Babs. We get a whole scene where no less an authority than Wonder Woman herself affirms the vital, overpowering awesomeness of Babs-as-Oracle, and the issue ends on Barbara, in control and happy, going about her day as Oracle, looking back in a positive way on her past, embracing her history without dwelling in it.

And as a Babs fan who has read every single one of the million wallowing TKJ flashbacks that regularly get inflicted on her and us, what I'm seeing is a completely revolutionary treatment of the device. Yeah, she still has no agency surrounding the shooting, and yeah, a major focus of the story is the angst of Zee and Diana about Barbara's suffering, so nothing all that new there. But the overall effect of this story is to minimize the impact of the shooting - emphasizing not the helplessness of that moment, but rather all the important things Babs has had a part in before and after - in a sense, robbing the fridging itself of some of its agency, by showing that both the memories of Batgirl and the existence of Oracle are stronger and more important.

But, again, "we're actually going to do it really well this time" is perhaps not enough to justify "we're doing it again at all" when the "it" is fucking revisiting the fucking Killing Joke. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL.

[thebigapricot]

Hmm. But one of the things that bothered me was that the it seemed that the idea of Oracle was being presented to Barbara (or to say it in a worse way "planted") by Zee and Diana. Did you think that it undermined the idea that Barbara became Oracle on her own?

[bluejaybirdie]

I MUST HAVE THIS. Immediately.

I mean, seriously. Do want, so hard.

[grimmbear]

Damn! Now I'm crying.

[retro_nouveau]

This is a rather contrived prequel, Zee's suddenly got a Dream Girl power that she only needs for this story. I don't need to revisit TKJ ever. If it weren't for those, I would eat this kind of thing up and ask for more.

[lieut_kettch]

*sniff* Something in my eye. BRB.

Ok, better now.

Was anyone else thinking, "Booster's going to materialize any moment now and try to stop the shooting?"

[pyrotwilight]

Yeah, I would've loved to see a reference of that thrown in. Like them re-iterating it's fated and unchangeable but at least have SOMEONE trying to stop it.

But it'd probably feel too forced to reference that Booster issue.

[lanternicity]

Ignoring everything else about this issue for a moment...

Was anybody else bothered by the anachronisms? Wondy smashes a guy's iPhone, and the girls sing karaoke to Single Ladies - I know DC has no set timeline, but that would make Babs have been shot in, like, the past year. And, well, yeah. It's weird.

[magus_69]

I noticed that too. It took me out of the story a bit.

[mullon]

Goddamnit, I hate stories like this. You're superheroes, you get an opportunity like this you work like Hell to prevent it.

[zordboy]

THIS.

[crabby_lioness]

*cue bawling*

[zordboy]

Interesting that this issue seems to have split the audience, or at least, a majority of people are responding positively.

Thumbs down, from me. Thumbs *way* down. The dead horse isn't just being flogged -- at this point, the thing was given a black lantern ring and resurrected just so they can hit it a little bit more. Yes DC, Joker shoots her and its sad. Brightest Day my hairy Australian arse, they're still cheap plays for emotion as opposed to actual stories.

Besides, I completely agree with mullon, above. You're the good guys. You stop things like this from happening.

[bluefall]

Unfortunately I don't think even Zee has spells sufficient to combat a force on the level of Alan Moore.

[3goodtimes]

This made me bawl like nobody's business.

The last thing my dad did before he was paralyzed in a roofing accident was dance with me.

Beautiful issue.

[kenn_el]

So sorry about your dad. That must be a good memory for you.

[kenn_el]

Not defending the last page, since I think it was unnecessary in the first place, but Babs could be recalling wearing the shoes her father gave her, and thinking she was beautiful in them. It could be read in different ways.
Diana and the 'oracle' happened at a diner after a night of dancing and whatever. Babs probably did know as much about oracles as Diana did, but you let your friends prattle on in those situations. Unless you're drunk and want to show how much you really know and then it never ends.

[kingrockwell]

My shop was out of this one, so I was gonna try to track it down elsewhere. Now I'm conflicted. From things I'm hearing it might be a must-have, but a two-page spread of Joker at the door does not amuse me in the least.

[kenn_el]

For me, the issue essentially ended where I left it with the scans. It was very satisfying until that point. (I still would like to believe that the creative team were made to add those, but who rall knws?) The issue was worth it becaue wha hapens up ntl hat point, IMO, but YMMV.