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scans_daily2010-01-17 06:27 pm
glprime) wrote in scans_daily2010-01-17 06:27 pm
Oracle's Tenure with the JLA, Part 2: Introductions
Continuing on from Part 1...
(Sorry for the Spine Smooshing)
So, the NEW League, flush with several NEW recruits, is giving a publicity-driven tour of their NEW moonbase and roster to the press. Get how everything's NEW? Well unfortunately, a NEW
Bats wakes up and rallies the group by revealing his ace-in-the-hole, Miss Voice with An Internet Connection.
Aaaand that's it. That's all she does during the entire Prometheus debacle. Yep. Really glad you chose to expose her for that.
Stowaway thief Catwoman (disguised as reporter "Cat" Grant... get it?) grows a brain and just whips him in the nuts, while everyone else stands around listening to his blusterous threats to civilians. Oracle now gets to project her ultra-sweet hologram over the League's round table.
Note: the job is PR management after having their asses handed to them by a Batman-wannabe.
In the next case, the League is dealing with members disappearing alongside a statistically improbable series of disasters and crime sprees.
This would be the first of another JLA theme: J'onn and Oracle mind-meld. Also, notice those totally cool floating flat-screens in the Monitor Room? Never a technology offered to Oracle. Hmmm.
The League's tussling erupts into the White House where they discover the president to be... Julian September?
Seems Julian spent more time studying quantum physics than watching old episodes of The Twilight Zone. Messing with the laws of probability isn't usually a good idea.
I have no idea why Barbara's decided to go brunette for awhile. Apparently Howard Porter thinks she doesn't get enough sun to be a redhead. And must also be trying contact lenses. And collagen injections.
Despite shutting down the machine, Batman is quickly blinked away from the scene, leaving the League without the person who had been working the mystery behind the degenerating state of reality. But Oracle can step in with her years of training and act as his Watson, right? Nope.
Looks like Superman: True Brit could become canon!
So Barbara is understandably stymied by Bruce Wayne having his parents back and not being a total nutjob that
Oooh, burn, J'onn. "Men are from Mars..." indeed.
Well, Oracle at least doesn't stand in their way, but how can they understand anything subatomic without- ...oooooh.
So yeah, the Atom pops in, shrinks them all down, and helps them repair seven particles that September had split to power his quantum probability engine or something. This includes the wonderful lampshading of the ridiculousness of Atom's powers: Kyle (an artist and hero with light-based powers) wonders how they can see if they're currently smaller than photons? "You're not, your brain's just compensating with familiar senses. It's best not to think about it." But how could they even have corporeal bodies if they're smaller than-? *SHHH!*
Later, after everything is restored (and Batman wonders why he was transported from D.C. to Gotham unexpectedly), J'onn proves he's not a total dick and goes to apologize to Oracle in person.
It's strange, because Barbara's actually very particular about non-Bat Family intruding on her lair, but then J'onn is the badass wise uncle of superherodom. And he probably brought Choco cookies.
Yes, yes, "his parents are *zzzzzz*..." And apparently Oracle, one of the greatest technophiles in the ENTIRE DCU (behind Ted Kord, of course) "has no interest in being half-robot." Really? 'Cuz being a cyborg is considered fuckin' awesome by about 90% of all geeks.
Anyways, Oracle becomes known to the League as an asset, and will regularly be on call to act as Switchboard Operator and Reference Department. Whoopie.
While Oracle gets to be a total wimp here, it gets even worse next time, when
14 pages, 2 from JLA #17 (art by Arnie Jorgensen), 5 from JLA #18 and 7 from JLA #19 (written by Mark Waid)
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Very much so. I think that's kind of the driving force.
I'm not at all sure that it breaks down to female/male hero healing. I'm not sure. I can't think of any other female heroes who haven't healed up.
On a meta-level, I think many people, possibly up to and including editorial over the years, want to keep Barbara in a wheelchair because DC has been praised for having an amazing hero with a visible disability that does not impede her ability to be a hero. And while Barbara's portrayals tend to vary between writers and scenarios, over all, it is a good thing to have characters with disabilities, simply because it reflects the diversity of real people. (There's also a need to combat bad portrayals of disability.)
And on a meta-level, people sometimes say, why Babs? Why not so and so who got healed up already?
I'm thinking the idea is mostly: For Oracle, it's great! (I really don't think it's so much about defending TKJ as it is the justification that does seem to tend to crop up in Oracle stories. Where--it's like the scans above. She gets a chance to compare life without the shooting and life with, and she goes with 'with'. Partly because she has no choice (if it was real life versus comic book--not sure what's up with that) and partly because DC is very happy keeping her in the status quo.
I don't think--imo--that DC is inserting TKJ panels because they want to pay homage to TKJ. I think they are doing it because they want to remind us of the trauma. It's like 'My parents are dead'. They aren't reminding us of that for any reason except to remind us of the trauma.
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That, I really disagree with.
"My parents are dead" is Bruce's origin story. Barbara was already a superhero when she was shot, nor is she motivated by her shooting. She continued being a superhero after she was shot. Being shot changed her life, but it didn't stop her being a superhero.
Given Barbara's pre-existing talents, all the tools and motivation were already there for her to turn into Oracle whether or not she had been shot. (Whether or not writers or DC editorial would've thought of it otherwise is another question, though.) Afterall, that's why Ostrander and Yale decided to make her Oracle: she was a librarian and a crimefighter who knew the power of information, add in burgeoning computer technology at the time and it must have seemed like the obvious choice to them.
The flashbacks to TKJ, while they certainly are sometimes used to remind us of the trauma she went through, the sheer frequency with which we're shown the exact same panels and colouring (re-drawn) in newer comics makes it more than a little creepy, IMO. I don't mean to downplay the trauma that Barbara went through, but she's been "dealing" with it for so long now (21 years!), that reliving and revelling in those same panels ceases to bring about or reveal any character development. Especially considering there are other ways to talk about her trauma.
If the story calls for a retelling of those events, there are other ways than just repeating TKJ panels. Other writer/artist teams have in fact done that, by focusing more on her being in the hospital, having to realize she'd never walk again, how it affected relationships, how it all made her feel–rather than by paying tribute to TKJ, the story that wasn't even about her. (One example is this one, as well as in Simone-penned BoP, where Babs starts telling Helena some personal secrets as a way of making up to her.)
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Either way, I'm just as tired of seeing the panels as you are! And yes, it IS quite creepy.
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