Booster Gold #25

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Warning: this post contains long-winded ranting.

A bit of background for the uninformed:

This issue has Booster sneaking back into the Batcave to once again try and retrieve the photos of him at the scene of the Joker shooting Barbara Gordon. Bruce!Batman was aware of what happened and of Booster's attempt at preventing the shooting, but now that Bruce is gone, Rip advises him to get them out of the Batcave so that no one else knows, lest it mess up the timeline somehow.

A couple issues back he tried to get them out, but was caught by Dick, and then Dick disappeared because Black Beetle messed with the timeline ensuring that Dick got killed off when he was still Robin and working with the Teen Titans. After fixing that situation, he tries again by arriving five minutes earlier than the last time he went there. This time, however, he's caught by Damian!Robin, who is quickly followed by Dick!Batman. Alfred is all "Oh hey Booster, s'up?*" and brings refreshments.

*Except, you know, in Alfred-speak.



It's bad enough that the issue where Booster tries to prevent Barbara's shooting just uses her as a prop for the story, and that present-day!Barbara has yet to be informed. (I like to think that Bruce would have told her what Booster did, right after he told Booster that he knew about it, but I doubt we'll actually see that as canon. And actually, this issue would have been perfect timing for Babs to catch Booster in the cave and confront him on what happened, given that she's set up shop there now. She could yell and tell him to not mess around in her past without her permission, then be sympathetic and say she was sorry he went to all that effort for her, and then they could have bonded over missing Ted.) But I find it especially irritating how the photos of the shooting keep getting thrown around so lightly.

Those photos hold such pain and humiliation for Barbara. Not only because of what the Joker did to her, but because their entire purpose was to cause pain to her loved ones.

Given that the photographs hold that kind of awful power, it would make sense that access to them would be severely restricted, and that only four people (excepting the Joker and his goons) would have ever seen them prior to Booster's encounter. (I would think that Bruce would have made them a little bit harder to find than just sitting in an unlocked filing cabinet out in the open in the cave.) Commissioner Gordon saw them because the Joker subjected him to them. I'm guessing that Barbara would have seen them at some point, but it's possible that she chose not to look at them. Harvey Bullock was the detective on the case so he would have seen them, and Bruce would have seen them as he was also on the case in theory, and he apparently elected to store and protect the photos so that they don't run the risk of ever falling into the wrong hands.

So, given all of that, it is logical to assume that Dick Grayson has never seen the photos before this time. Maybe Babs has described the experience in great detail to Dick in the past, but Babs would absolutely not want her friend (who cares a great deal about her and vice versa, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend/fiancé) to see those photos of her.

As I said above, the entire point of those photos was to cause pain and humiliation for Barbara and people who cared about her*. It would be horribly painful for Dick to see them, and the same goes for Babs, and she wouldn't want him to see that way either, for both their sakes.

*Although really, it was not about Babs in the first place, hence The Killing Joke being a classic case of fridging.

So, yeah. That bugs me. Anyways, onward:




Um, okay. Look, I like the idea of Dick and Booster bonding and becoming pals as much as the next gal ("they have the two best butts in the DCU: together, they fight crime!"), but that last panel? They are essentially smiling and toasting their glasses over the fact that nothing can be done to prevent all the horrible things that the Joker has done (not to mention all the deaths in WWII).

It's one thing to acknowledge the permanence of solidified time (i.e., "you can't change the past"), but it comes off as more than a little callous to be so light-hearted about it, considering the events they're discussing. The millions of people killed because of Hitler, the Joker beating and blowing up Jason Todd, shooting and paralysing Barbara Gordon, torturing her father, murdering Sarah Essen (not to mention all the random unnamed Gothamites who have also been his victims), and all the hell that the Joker has put Bruce and Dick and everyone in the extended Bat-family through over the years. That is kind of what you're toasting over, boys.

*sigh* If it weren't for the sheer awesomeness in the Blue Beetle story in the back, I would have been annoyed that I bought this issue.



Okay, nothing to really rant about this, I just didn't expect what we saw on the following page.



I always picture the Graysons as living in a cozy little trailer at the circus, not living in a spacious suburban house, so I was kind of misdirected and assumed that we would see Dick as a kid at Wayne Manor (especially in light of feeling lost in training Damian and whatnot). Ah well, it was a nice thought, if somewhat awkwardly executed.

Comments

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

That's not the scene I'm thinking of.

Okay, got the book in front of me.

In JLA, the story was "seven soldiers of probability" or something like that, and J'onn says "The league is capable of building a watchtower on the moon, surely we could engineer a prosthesis for your legs", and Babs responds with "Thank you, but no. I have little interest in being half-robot."

Then J'onn asks if she misses her mobility, and she says "more than words can express. And I dream of the medical breakthroughs that might someday restore it. But in the meantime, I've worked hard to treat what happened to me as an opportunity, not a handicap." "I concentrate on the good I can do now that I've been forced to exercise my mind."

Mark Waid was the writer.

I only just got this trade, so I'll probably post some scans up sometime this week.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

"I concentrate on the good I can do now that I've been forced to exercise my mind."

I guess if she were a guy, she could walk and think at the same time...that certainly explains Power Girl. If you can't be a woman hack in the DCU with legs that work, think what kind of IQ sink flight must be.

Or, as they say on Leverage, "She's adorable."

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that's really not implied there. Of course Babs used her mind before she became Oracle, but as Oracle, she focuses the majority of her crime-fighting on nonphysical aspects.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Let's just agree to disagree. You think it's a valid reason that she refuses prosthesis and "[dreams] of the medical breakthroughs that might someday restore" her spine, and I like to mock Oracle for not researching the Brainiac virus that was working to repair her spine. Your reasoning is probably more sound in the eyes of creators; Oracle is a 20 year old character created before nanotechnology became popular, it's hardly fair to compare her to new, modern characters who use it.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Yep. I completely agree that in real life, a woman with the access and abilities that Barbara Gordon does in the DCU, would probably have found a way to be walking again (without being half-robot). But, to me, the meta-reasons outweigh that internal logic. (I wrote an LJ post (http://parsimonia.livejournal.com/241343.html) about Barbara and disability back while there was still a bit of talk about her becoming Batgirl again, basically outlining my meta reasons for why she should remain in the wheelchair.)

When you say stuff like "I like comics that humiliate Barbara" as you did upthread, it just sounds like you hate her and not the choices that writers, artists and editorial have made over the years. And even if your reasons for hating her come down to what you believe to erroneous choice on the part of those with creative power, it still often comes off as just "I hate that woman and I want bad things to happen to her"...and that does make me uncomfortable, I will admit.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

At some point the choices that writers, artists, and editorial make become the character. I have Gail Simone mocking me (http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/1172528.html?thread=34584624#t34584624) for arguing over the years that someone with Barbara's intelligence and technological base should be like other characters from anime, TV, and DC Comics who use cybernetics to overcome physical handicaps. I've been arguing this since 2004, and since then I've seen Barbara throwaway an alien nanite cure (Brainac) and seen the Calculator master an alien nanite cure (Kilg%re). I've seen Oracle go from this person (http://profnano.org/andy/misc/img/jlac14_1.jpg) to this person (http://profnano.org/andy/misc/img/tp_oracle.jpg). After all that, I'm no longer capable of seeing Oracle as the tech queen of the DCU; rather, I see her the same kind of character as Hal Jordan, someone we're supposed to like simply because the writers want us to, with no supporting reason.

I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but I do want bad things to happen to her, the same way I want them to happen to Green Arrow, Hal Jordan, Ezekial Stane, and other characters I don't like...because that's schadenfreude.

[darkblade.insanejournal.com]

Partially in Barbra's defense I can't imagine anyone with the level of the DCU that she has letting anyone bring anything connected with Brainiac nanites anywhere near her body considering the track record of his tech turning things evil.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Which is why I make fun of Barbara and not Calculator. Bok-Bok-Barbara is too chicken to try and hack the nanites, where as Calculator's smart enough and brave enough to do it right the first time.

[darkblade.insanejournal.com]

I'd think not injecting yourself with nanites that likely will at some point in the future turn you into an evil cyborg is a perfectly responsible and rational decision.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

If you're a Luddite luser, sure it is. Now, if she could program the nanites, overwrite their AI like Calculator did with Kilg%re...or use an innate goodness to convince the AI to switch sides, like Jaime Reyes did with Khaji-Da...then it wouldn't be a problem, but Barbara is nothing like either of those characters apparently, so I guess by her rationale fear is the rational decision.

This is fun.

[darkblade.insanejournal.com]

This is Brainic we are talking about. Who has resisted being reprogramed several times over the years and has overcome the innate goodness of Superman...you just don't get any more innately good than that.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Exactly, Barbara's no where near as smart as Brainiac.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

someone we're supposed to like simply because the writers want us to

Frankly, if we're judging by how she was written in the last few issues of BoP and Oracle: The Cure, then I don't think writers or anyone were trying to make us like her. If anything, that stuff is indicative of the fact that they don't know what to do with her at all, which is a big shame. (I swear, sometime soon I'm going to finish and post my big about Oracle: The Cure. There will be ranting, oh yes, there will be lots of ranting.)

Honestly, I have issues with how she's been written lately, I'm not going to defend every little panel. I just think she's always been a Bad-Ass Normal, and as such, I can't see her adopting nanites for the long-term or do whatever the fuck Calculator did. (For the record, I am sick to death of the Calculator and never want to read another story about him. I loved that done-in-one issue that Bedard did before McKeever's run, because I thought it was a fun story. The Calculator works as a nice done-in-one villain for Oracle, not as an arch-enemy, and certainly not whatever the hell happened to him when he went part-robot.)

I like seeing Barbara use her mind and use information to best her enemies and help others.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Frankly, if we're judging by how she was written in the last few issues of BoP...

Yes, well, my memory goes back to the "Student and Sensei" arc where Oracle called her own answering machine to leave a message for Black Canary to come save her whenever she returned from Hong Kong and only got Huntress because the Clocktower security system was (if memory serves) a padlock on a window. I envy the fact that your memory only goes back to Bedard's stories, but my larger set of data makes it harder to forgive the foibles of a couple newbie of writers.

I just think she's always been a Bad-Ass Normal, and as such, I can't see her adopting nanites for the long-term or do whatever the fuck Calculator did.

Me neither, that's what I've been saying. Barbara Gordon is not smart enough to reprogram the Brainiac virus to fix her spine and then die off without taking over her body, much less able to upgrade herself like Calculator did. That kind of technical skill is far beyond her mental capacity. I totally agree with you on that.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Wow. That post was amazing. Let me ask you, is it okay if I draw an arbitrary line where Black Canary has to stop being an empowered heroine and still stay a damsel in distress, like you drew a line on how cured you thought Oracle should be?

I'd probably draw my line around 80%, so she'd be able to and kick ass for four issues but every fifth one she'd get kidnapped and have to be rescued.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Huh? I don't see how my desire to see fictional characters reflect the diversity of real people implies I want Oracle to be un-empowered or become a damsel in distress. To my mind, Babs is not defined by her injury, by once being a damsel in distress, or by once being fridged. Those things have shaped and altered her life, but she's still the same character.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

Answer four questions for me:

1. Should you cure being black?

2. Should you cure being a woman?

3. Should you cure being gay?

4. Should you cure someone who can't walk?

[galateus.insanejournal.com]

Well there's a huge difference between making a meta-decision to give one of the handful of prominent wheelchair-bound fictional characters the ability to walk again and giving a real person who can't walk the option of taking a cure, y'know?

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

So you'd be cool if John Henry Irons became Superman's slave? I mean he'd still be a prominent black character, and it's not it was a real person?

ಠ_ಠ

[galateus.insanejournal.com]

What? That's a terrible analogy for so many reasons. It wouldn't even make sense outside of an Elseworld where Kal-El's rocket landed in the antebellum south, and maybe Abraham Lincoln was Batman.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Is the fifth question "When did you stop beating your spouse?"

As I've already mentioned, my take on the matter is that in real life, Barbara Gordon would be walking again if the medicine and/or technology existed or if she had the means to create it herself.

In fiction, however, I think there is much to be gained by telling stories about a superhero who has a disability. I do appreciate that there might also be value in seeing such a fictional character find/use/create that technology or medicine herself.

I honestly don't know what's 100% right.

My gut tells me that if DC decided to fix Barbara's spine, they wouldn't be able to resist the nostalgia factor of getting her in the original Batgirl suit for a bit, and the whole thing would probably find a way to be condescending, ableist and sexist. It also tells me that if she regains the ability to walk permanently, then we can say goodbye to Oracle and to this (http://i36.tinypic.com/2ppbqdv.jpg) kind of story.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

In fiction, however, I think there is much to be gained by telling stories about a superhero who has a disability.

I'll ask you the same question I just asked galateus: would you be cool if John Henry Irons became Superman's slave? He'd still be a prominent black character, it's not he was a real person having his civil rights stripped away, and there might be interesting stories in seeing how slavery was treated in modern times.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Slavery was abolished. People still use wheelchairs today.

Are you saying you would rather have no one in comics, no one in fiction of any kind, no one on TV have any disability? Have the cultural world completely ignore disabilities, pretend all the people who have them don't exist? Or maybe pretend that they don't exist in reality, either? Not have laws ensuring that buildings be accessible for wheelchairs? Get rid of all the braille in the world? Stop teaching sign language?

Equating the depiction of Barbara Gordon as needing a wheelchair with slavery that way is poor logic. That doesn't mean that there are no stories to tell about slavery, but to make a character of today's world into a slave out of nowhere, particularly an African American, would be hurtful and demeaning.

[jarodrussell.insanejournal.com]

You know what, forget it. If you can enjoy Oracle in a wheelchair, good for you. I can't enjoy those stories anymore, I can't think of her as a genius while she both wants to walk and doesn't use her resources, and therefore the only way my mind can reconcile that kind of conflict is to mercilessly mock the character.

I'm going to stop trying to ruin it for you.

[parsimonia.insanejournal.com]

Fair enough, I guess.