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.

[pyrotwilight]

Not to mention Babs might be pissed if she found out.

Not because she wasn't told but because it seems like they're pitying her and I doubt anyone handicapped would want that. After all from what I'm seeing Zee arranged this whole thing not because they were friends or felt like having fun but because they felt bad about what was going to happen.

And at the same time in story logic there's no reason for them to not try stopping the attack. Zee didn't think it might happen someday and thus have no control over it, she KNEW it was happening at that time or at the least that night.

[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!

[sistermagpie]

I have to say, that was my reaction: seriously? This is where this is going? Unless I'm missing something...?

[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.

[thokstar]

JMS seems to like the "you can't fight fate" them with respect to Brave and the Bold, as this is the third issues that's featured it (along with Batman/Dial H for Hero and Green Lantern/Dr. Fate).

I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been more anger about this issue (in terms of what reactions I've seen so far), given the reaction to the Dial H for Hero issue and the fact that the cover and solicitation gave a misleading idea of what the tone of the issue would be.

(Also, coming in 2012, an issue where J'onn J'onnz explains his remorse at being unable to keep Babs from being shot despite knowing what was going to happen.)

[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.

[pyrotwilight]

Ah yes, I didn't even want to go into the misleading and happy cover featuring the three walking happily.

It just seems like bad characterization to me especially on Wonderwoman's behalf. Zee I can kind of understand being unwilling seeing as magic and fate would be a big part of her. But Diana(yeah she's magic related but not in quite the same way)? If she found out something like this even if she were destined to never stop it she'd at least try.

[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.

[sistermagpie]

Seriously, they are? I was going to give it props for was that at least we didn't need to see her open the door.

[kenn_el]

My thought exactly. The last two pages seemed superfluous and only for readers who didn't know the history. I don't know how much influence TPTB have, but I could see them saying "But new readers might not know..." and insisting upon the additions.

[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.

[jlbarnett]

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

[kenn_el]

Well, 'pity' has become kind of a loaded word, and I don't recall its use in the book. Regardless, though, I think it's not a bad thing to not want someone you care about (or even someone you don't) not to get attacked. But maybe that's just me.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.