Thoughts on BoP, and Oracle: Internet Superhero
(NOTE: This post contains spoilers for Oracle: The Cure.)
I read Newsarama's BoP retrospective, and this stuck out at me:
Platinum Flats served as the backdrop for the second confrontation between the Joker and Oracle in the pages of Birds of Prey. Unlike the first confrontation, this encounter was purely physical. Although the Joker defeated Oracle in the issue, Bedard described that issue by saying, “That story morphed a bit. I originally had her busting out his teeth and he is so horrified that he runs away. It was supposed to be that she really hit a nerve there: he took her legs, so she takes his grin. But then the decision was made to cancel the series, and the whole direction of the book and the tone of the encounter needed to be different, and we ended up making it a much more even match.”
I hated that final issue of the Joker storyline. Especially because the issue before it had seemed like a set-up for Babs somehow winning against the Joker, and when instead she falters and he throws her down a flight of stairs, it was really disappointing and depressing. Not just because I, as a reader and a fan of the character, would like to see Barbara conquer lingering fears and insecurities and generally kick ass, but because I felt the way it ended just didn't fit with the issue before it. The issue before it promised victory, but the conclusion just gave us defeat. I'm sorry I didn't get to read what Bedard originally planned.
I guess we'll find out when Oracle: The Cure #3 comes out, but I'm almost at the point where if they don't give her some *actually* life-changing event, I'll be pissed because it will all seem like such a huge waste, only culminating in the end of BoP and leaving Oracle and her team without a title to call their own. (Actually, forget I said that, I'd much rather have them LEAVE ORACLE ALONE, not turn her back into Batgirl, and then once they've regained some sense, DC will give her an ongoing book again that doesn't suck.)
(I'm also entirely bored of, and sick of, Calculator as a villain, but that's another rant. I wish they could've left it at this)
I just really despise the notion that that "different tone" was needed in the first place: the need to bring her down, make her lose her confidence. And for what? So she can be so disconnected with herself that she'll ambiguously kill/almost-kill muggers in Hong Kong? I don't want to read that.
I was about to write, "maybe I'm just being a whiny, entitled fan, but...", but you know what? No buts!
I don't think Kevin Vanhook is doing a good job of writing an Oracle series. I don't like his third-person thought boxes, I don't like Babs becoming inexplicably vicious, and I don't like stories that feature Babs in (cyber)SPAAAAAAACEE! I should clarify, I don't like stories where she has a physical presence in cyberspace, but I'll get back to that later.
And I don't like Guillem March's covers, even if there are worse examples of cheesecakery. I don't even have a problem with cheesecake if it fits the the character/setting/situation. (After all, I do enjoy nicely drawn beefcake, but that's rarely ever seen in a context where it doesn't make at least some sense within the story.)
#1: "I am prepared to fight. And so are my boobs!"
#2: "Something astonishing is happening. My boobs are so surprised they cannot be contained!"
#3: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up! My boobs may be to blame for this.*"
*Okay, so the "OMGBOOB" factor isn't as big in this one. This is one is more like, "what tragedy has happened here? what's going on--oooh! A bat-USB key! Nifty!"
Actually, what bothers me more than the boob-factor here is how the colouring gives her that excessively air-brushed, personality-free look that you see in make-up advertisements.
I really wish we could see this awesome character put to good, interesting use in her own title. I didn't expect to be complimenting Battle for the Cowl in this post, but at least what little we've seen of her there, she's participating and engaged in what's going on in Gotham, and she's not shutting out all of her friends without any interesting plot-relevant reason. It looks like we may get some decent Oracleness in The Network, though.
But I've got to say, a book focusing on Oracle alone could be a lot of fun. Superhero on the Internet, you guys, superhero on the Internet! Not only can you do BoP-type stories where she gathers the information, assists and directs her field agents, but you could have all sorts of things that take advantage of her being the DCU's online expert. She should know about every World of Warcraft or Second Life game equivalent in the DCU, and she should have kicked ass in every single one in her spare time. (I mean, if she can get her Harvard Law degree by correspondence in her spare time, what the hell does she do when she's really bored?)
Don't get me wrong, I love the kinds of stories where she works with the Birds, the Bats and the GCPD, etc, and I wouldn't want those to stop happening. But you could also have her dealing with stuff that actually happens on the Internet in real life, with a comic book twist of course.
Internet vigilantism, memes with the power to steal your bank account info, rumours on Twitter getting out of hand and creating propaganda or widespread panic, Misfit writes a wanky rant on her MySpace about her favourite RPG and starts a flame war that gets out of hand and threatens to destroy us all! I would love to see a plot that runs somewhat parallel to the whole Anonymous/Project Chanology thing, or a dying print media company run by an evil megalomaniac who has plans to monopolize all social networking sites and put a choke-hold on free speech online.
Barbara Gordon should have five sockpuppets in every fandom, just in case, is all I'm saying.
There is endless opportunity for geekery in stories about a superhero on the Internet. Would it kill her to rickroll Booster Gold just once? (I say Booster Gold, since Batman is dead and because Booster keeps showing up in her past, and he's probably one of the few who would be genuinely baffled by it at this point.)
Maybe I'm not being entirely fair. Because the Silicon Syndicate story, and the Calculator's thing with the Anti-Life Equation remnants being on the Internet and stuff are also geekery. They're just not my kind of geekery, you know? I like the occasional "hard" science fiction, but only if it's balanced by good character development or fun/interesting interaction between characters. And to be honest, I don't think it's just "a girl thing", either. (Not that Vanhook's Oracle: The Cure is hardcore science fiction, but it's...trying to be?)
Anyways, I think I had a point here, somewhere. Ah, yes, the point is I don't like the direction they've been taking Oracle in over the past six months or so, and I think The Powers That Be are underestimating her potential for storytelling within the DCU. To say nothing of the direction they may yet take her in, what with the new Batgirl series conveniently hitting the stands three months after the last issue of Oracle: The Cure.
To reiterate: SUPERHERO ON THE INTERNET! When the Oracle persona was first created, the World Wide Web had only just been invented. Fiction having to do with the Internet from that era, to my knowledge, often involved a lot of concepts like sentient AI personalities and people having actual physical presences inside of Internet-like networks (hence: "BABS IIINN (cyber)SPAAAAAAACCCEE!"). (If I'm wrong on this, please let me know. I took a class on science fiction once, and we were supposed to read William Gibson's Neuromancer, but that was the one book in the course I slacked off on and didn't finish reading! So, my knowledge of Cyberpunk is sketchy, except for the fact that everyone needs shiny reflective sunglasses. That much I know!)
That is not what the Internet turned out to be like, really. It's all about porn information, use of information, distribution of information, and having fun with information!
INTERNET SUPERHERO. Think about it.
I read Newsarama's BoP retrospective, and this stuck out at me:
Platinum Flats served as the backdrop for the second confrontation between the Joker and Oracle in the pages of Birds of Prey. Unlike the first confrontation, this encounter was purely physical. Although the Joker defeated Oracle in the issue, Bedard described that issue by saying, “That story morphed a bit. I originally had her busting out his teeth and he is so horrified that he runs away. It was supposed to be that she really hit a nerve there: he took her legs, so she takes his grin. But then the decision was made to cancel the series, and the whole direction of the book and the tone of the encounter needed to be different, and we ended up making it a much more even match.”
I hated that final issue of the Joker storyline. Especially because the issue before it had seemed like a set-up for Babs somehow winning against the Joker, and when instead she falters and he throws her down a flight of stairs, it was really disappointing and depressing. Not just because I, as a reader and a fan of the character, would like to see Barbara conquer lingering fears and insecurities and generally kick ass, but because I felt the way it ended just didn't fit with the issue before it. The issue before it promised victory, but the conclusion just gave us defeat. I'm sorry I didn't get to read what Bedard originally planned.
I guess we'll find out when Oracle: The Cure #3 comes out, but I'm almost at the point where if they don't give her some *actually* life-changing event, I'll be pissed because it will all seem like such a huge waste, only culminating in the end of BoP and leaving Oracle and her team without a title to call their own. (Actually, forget I said that, I'd much rather have them LEAVE ORACLE ALONE, not turn her back into Batgirl, and then once they've regained some sense, DC will give her an ongoing book again that doesn't suck.)
(I'm also entirely bored of, and sick of, Calculator as a villain, but that's another rant. I wish they could've left it at this)
I just really despise the notion that that "different tone" was needed in the first place: the need to bring her down, make her lose her confidence. And for what? So she can be so disconnected with herself that she'll ambiguously kill/almost-kill muggers in Hong Kong? I don't want to read that.
I was about to write, "maybe I'm just being a whiny, entitled fan, but...", but you know what? No buts!
I don't think Kevin Vanhook is doing a good job of writing an Oracle series. I don't like his third-person thought boxes, I don't like Babs becoming inexplicably vicious, and I don't like stories that feature Babs in (cyber)SPAAAAAAACEE! I should clarify, I don't like stories where she has a physical presence in cyberspace, but I'll get back to that later.
And I don't like Guillem March's covers, even if there are worse examples of cheesecakery. I don't even have a problem with cheesecake if it fits the the character/setting/situation. (After all, I do enjoy nicely drawn beefcake, but that's rarely ever seen in a context where it doesn't make at least some sense within the story.)
#1: "I am prepared to fight. And so are my boobs!"
#2: "Something astonishing is happening. My boobs are so surprised they cannot be contained!"
#3: "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up! My boobs may be to blame for this.*"
*Okay, so the "OMGBOOB" factor isn't as big in this one. This is one is more like, "what tragedy has happened here? what's going on--oooh! A bat-USB key! Nifty!"
Actually, what bothers me more than the boob-factor here is how the colouring gives her that excessively air-brushed, personality-free look that you see in make-up advertisements.
I really wish we could see this awesome character put to good, interesting use in her own title. I didn't expect to be complimenting Battle for the Cowl in this post, but at least what little we've seen of her there, she's participating and engaged in what's going on in Gotham, and she's not shutting out all of her friends without any interesting plot-relevant reason. It looks like we may get some decent Oracleness in The Network, though.
But I've got to say, a book focusing on Oracle alone could be a lot of fun. Superhero on the Internet, you guys, superhero on the Internet! Not only can you do BoP-type stories where she gathers the information, assists and directs her field agents, but you could have all sorts of things that take advantage of her being the DCU's online expert. She should know about every World of Warcraft or Second Life game equivalent in the DCU, and she should have kicked ass in every single one in her spare time. (I mean, if she can get her Harvard Law degree by correspondence in her spare time, what the hell does she do when she's really bored?)
Don't get me wrong, I love the kinds of stories where she works with the Birds, the Bats and the GCPD, etc, and I wouldn't want those to stop happening. But you could also have her dealing with stuff that actually happens on the Internet in real life, with a comic book twist of course.
Internet vigilantism, memes with the power to steal your bank account info, rumours on Twitter getting out of hand and creating propaganda or widespread panic, Misfit writes a wanky rant on her MySpace about her favourite RPG and starts a flame war that gets out of hand and threatens to destroy us all! I would love to see a plot that runs somewhat parallel to the whole Anonymous/Project Chanology thing, or a dying print media company run by an evil megalomaniac who has plans to monopolize all social networking sites and put a choke-hold on free speech online.
Barbara Gordon should have five sockpuppets in every fandom, just in case, is all I'm saying.
There is endless opportunity for geekery in stories about a superhero on the Internet. Would it kill her to rickroll Booster Gold just once? (I say Booster Gold, since Batman is dead and because Booster keeps showing up in her past, and he's probably one of the few who would be genuinely baffled by it at this point.)
Maybe I'm not being entirely fair. Because the Silicon Syndicate story, and the Calculator's thing with the Anti-Life Equation remnants being on the Internet and stuff are also geekery. They're just not my kind of geekery, you know? I like the occasional "hard" science fiction, but only if it's balanced by good character development or fun/interesting interaction between characters. And to be honest, I don't think it's just "a girl thing", either. (Not that Vanhook's Oracle: The Cure is hardcore science fiction, but it's...trying to be?)
Anyways, I think I had a point here, somewhere. Ah, yes, the point is I don't like the direction they've been taking Oracle in over the past six months or so, and I think The Powers That Be are underestimating her potential for storytelling within the DCU. To say nothing of the direction they may yet take her in, what with the new Batgirl series conveniently hitting the stands three months after the last issue of Oracle: The Cure.
To reiterate: SUPERHERO ON THE INTERNET! When the Oracle persona was first created, the World Wide Web had only just been invented. Fiction having to do with the Internet from that era, to my knowledge, often involved a lot of concepts like sentient AI personalities and people having actual physical presences inside of Internet-like networks (hence: "BABS IIINN (cyber)SPAAAAAAACCCEE!"). (If I'm wrong on this, please let me know. I took a class on science fiction once, and we were supposed to read William Gibson's Neuromancer, but that was the one book in the course I slacked off on and didn't finish reading! So, my knowledge of Cyberpunk is sketchy, except for the fact that everyone needs shiny reflective sunglasses. That much I know!)
That is not what the Internet turned out to be like, really. It's all about porn information, use of information, distribution of information, and having fun with information!
INTERNET SUPERHERO. Think about it.