Babs and Alfred: Tea and Sympathy. And Crime-Solving

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

Reading Gotham Knights #12 and came across this nice moment between Alfred and Babs. I really liked this story. There's kind of--quite a bit of her processing her shooting, and I think it's well done here.

(From Gotham Knights #12 by Jen Van Meter, Coy Turnbull and John Lowe. 2001.)


Cover by Darwyn Cooke

Context: Babs is having a hard time, trying to solve a case involving wheelchair victims. She's tried all of her usual coping mechanisms: exercise, work, etc. and nothing's helped. So she makes a fairly complicated trip...





I love that Alfred found her a BW handkerchief.




Check out the photos changing...

She figures out the guy's motive, so she sets him up to go after her. She sues her father and Bruce Wayne. For her shooting.



It works and the guy comes after her.


She solves the case and takes down the criminal.

Comments

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Damn. :)

Remember when artists who drew Oracle bothered to do basic wheelchair research? That strap around her legs, hooking them to the foot rests, is a real product (http://www.assistireland.ie/eng/Products_Directory/Wheeled_Mobility/Wheelchair_Equipment_-_Manual_Chairs/Wheelchair_Accessories/Universal_Elastic_Strap.html).

Man, the 90's comics...and I say this as someone who read the bulk of those 90's comics in 2004...really had a much greater respect for Oracle disability than the 00's books.

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

I absolutely hear what you're saying. Just FYI, this is from 2001.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

You know, as soon as I said "90's comic" I thought, "This is going to be a 00's comic, just watch." Oh, well. :) Thanks for the correction.

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

Heh. No big deal. I should have put the year up in the info. I just mention it now because the relative newness makes me more hopeful--that since it's a little more recent, it'll somehow be more likely for us to get good bat writing (like this) and detail-correct art (like this). Sooner than later. This whole story deals with her disability and her character--plus the other characters' characters--in a way I really like.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

I'm waiting until the next Crisis to get my hopes up. The bulk of everything I enjoyed about 90's comics came after, or as part of, Zero Hour. The bulk of everything I hate now at DC came about as build up to, part of, or during the latest Crisis. (Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis were linked, no?)

DC strikes me as being like the U.S. political system. It swings to the Right for a while, then the pressure of people's disgust pushes it to the Left; then people's weariness of the left pushes it back to the Right. All of the Silver Age wank is blowback from all the new ideas that erupted in the 90's/early-00's. Once people get fed up with it, the pendulum will swing away from Nostalgia Porn back to New Hotness.

[starwolf_oakley.insanejournal.com]

Once people get fed up with it, the pendulum will swing away from Nostalgia Porn back to New Hotness.

I don't see anyone getting away from Nostalgia Porn. Even if they bring
Connor Hawke, Kyle Rayner and Wally West back to the forefront in some way, that will be its own kind of Nostalgia Porn.

Ahh, the Silver Age wankers

[autolychus2.insanejournal.com]

Well the bulk of everything I hate about DC is the Silver Age. The bulk of everything I love about Marvel is the Silver Age. That tends to make things all right for me as when one company starts fan wanking the previous generations characters and ideas, the other does as well and I switch.

This, of course, is a generality as nothing could make me like Superman.

There are always gems. I think one of the reasons that I liked the original JSA so much in the 70s was that their tone was more like Marvel at the time. While DC was still pumping stories that featured super-heroes who never had problems, the original JSA we're getting old, dealing with life's problems -- or, at least that's the perspective that seven-year-old Auto had.

That's why when someone asks me, who's my favorite GL or Flash, etc., I answer Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, respectively. It's not that I don't like Hal or Barry -- I do -- I just don't like the stories that they were in at the time, and I'll always like their namesakes better because, in comparison to Marvel heroes at the time, their stories were weak.

Now, that isn't to say that everything that DC put out during the Silver Age was crap or that everything that Marvel did was golden, it wasn't. But overall, the tone -- again with that word -- was what brought me in.

I could go on, but honestly college football is on and I'm enjoying a nice combination of barley and hops ...

Auto

[mysteryfan.insanejournal.com]

And wow I think that's more negative than I meant to be, there. I'm frustrated by certain things, but there's some bat work I really like out there, right now, too.