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

[pyrotwilight]

Hmm, I'll agree it IS a loaded term.

But I suppose there's no real way to show me a story where two people know the others going to be paralyzed and thus give her one last party for the sake of throwing her one last party and not make it seem like they're pitying her. It just invariably makes it seem like they're only doing it for that reason.

If they'd done it with her before and decided to make the last party the best they ever could then it'd be more understandable but the three came together only because the other two felt bad about it.

[kenn_el]

We don't know the timeline from the story, nor do we know WHAT Zatanna saw specifically. They just wanted to give her a night out, and they did. It's just that for them there was a pall based upon them knowing that something terrible was going to happen to this terrific woman they were spending a great time with.

[bluefall]

Well, it depends to some degree on the characters. Diana I can't ascribe any pity to here, just because she's Diana. Perez notwithstanding, there's no way she hasn't known disabled veterans of Doom's Door her whole life, and even without that experience, she'd have enough respect for a fellow warrior to know better. Plus, note that she's here mostly to comfort Zee; her interactions with Babs are much more equal.

Zee absolutely does come across as pitying, and I think the problem is, neither of these two are particularly Barbara's friends. Apart from Supergirl, Babs didn't have any pre-Crisis female friends on the scene, and of course, Kara got retconned out of existence. So they can't really be girlfriends out for a good time on behalf of one of the girls (which would be fine, it's not pity when your buds take you out after you get dumped, it's friendship) - they can no longer be assumed to be getting anything from it themselves or having any obligation through friendship, and pity becomes the only real choice.

I think JMS was going for the friendship thing, based on the interaction between the three when they collect Babs in the first place, but obviously the weight of canon is against him.

[alienist]

This exactly. It'd work much better if there was actually a history of friendship there.

[kenn_el]

But that's the problem with almost ANY DC character. Batgirl and Wonder Woman in particular have had huge chunks of their histories retconned, so where we don't have canon history of their friendships, neither do we have any history of them NOT being friends (I'm assuming Babs vs. Diana over love for Bruce is no longer canon, hopefully?), so the writer should have some wriggle room where retconning relationships is concerned. (In this same issue, Diana explains that Hawkgirl taught her to whistle for a cab. Pre-Crisis Diana WAS friendly with Shayera Hol Hawkgirl, but that friendship doesn't exist post-Crisis, sadly.)

[3goodtimes]

I read it as a gift for a friend. One last gift.