On the hopes that the third time will be the charm

In the past few years, DC has made announcements about three stables of comics being folded into the DCU proper. The introduction of the Milestone characters was by far the one that generated the most excitement among fans. Milestone put together a solid and impressive set of books and characters in the early 90's, and only The Great Comics Glut could stop them. One character, Static, got a very good animated series based on him, and numerous crossivers with the other DCAU series. There wasn't a convention that came by where someone didn't ask about their eventual return to the DCU, and when they finally made the announcement, there was much rejoicing.

And then it sort of...well...

First Dwayne McDuffie get to write JLA, another move that got a lot of people excited, considering he had been story editor on the Animated series for years. He would get the introduce the Milestone characters in a major plotline in JLA, as well as have a number of other appearances across the DCU, including a series of issues of Brave and the Bold. Well, Dwayne's run on JLA was interrupted numerous times thanks to required tie-ins to Final crisis et al, last minute changes to plots that resulted in him having to re-dub panels at the last minutes, and by the time the Milestone story started, many people had written off his run etirely.

Dwayne's stories stories were all stellar, be was never "given the space to let him do the work", as Webb Wilder likes to say. As a result, the triumphant return of the Milestone characters was more of a wet firecracker. Now that the two issues of Milestone Forever have been released (also with lines taken out at the last moment for nebulous "fair use" reasons), the only evidence that they are back at all is that Static is a member of the Teen Titans. And there's more than a few people of the opinion that Static was the only character they really wanted, and were willing to take a bath on the rest just to get him. I don't quite buy it, but I don't quite discount it entirely either.

So now, save for Static (and a plotline in Teen Titans involving Dakota running right now), the Milestone characters are part of the deep pool of backup characters that might or might not get used by a creator down the line should they have a good idea for them. And for all the good it did, it would have been just as well if they never returned at all.

Last year and change, DC announced they has secured the rights to re-imagine the Red Circle characters, the characters Archie Comics held. If that announcement sounded familiar, it's because it was the same stable of characters they used to create the 90's Impact line of characters, a line that featured soe of the first DC work of Mark Waid, Tom Lyle and the late lamented Mike Parobeck. Rather than try again with those characters, DC chose to start again from scratch and create brand new interpretations of them. We got new versions of The Web, The Shield, Inferno and The Hangman, all introduced by J. Michael Straczynski. In addition to the new titles, the characters made appearances in other DC books to introduce them to the fabric of the world. And DC heroes appeared in the Red Circle books- The Shield locked horns with Magog and the Great Ten in his first few issues, and Web has come to loggerheads with Oracle. So while the Milestone characters were almost snuck into the DCU (and their sudden appearance wasn't explained for MONTHS, leading to great confusion), the Red Circle books would be definitely linked to the DCU from square one.

The books were quite interesting, with some bold ideas in them. But alas, both titles were cancelled this week with issue 10. Mirroring the Impact line, the last try was a team book, The Mighty Crusaders, which will come out the month before the books' last issues. Since the characters were not bought by DC but merely licensed, it's assumed they will vanish entirely from DC once the contract with Archie expires, just as the Impact titles went away with never another mention.

Now, in both cases, the idea was to bring in new characters to the DCU that new people could get into without having to sift through decades of history. This is a solid idea, and needs trying again. But there's a simple fact in comics - new ideas face an uphill battle. Unless a new characters or title has an "A-list" name attached to it, it's a battle getting current readers to try something new, simply because they're likely already buying quite a few books now. And getting completely new readers to a new title is even harder, since precious little comics news makes out of the comic shops.

There have been plenty of successes with new characters in comics over the last couple of years. They just haven't come from DC or Marvel. Image's comics are ALL brand new characters, but as I mentioned before, they all have the benefit of A-list creators to draw attention to them. Marvel has gotten a bunch of hits thanks to folks like Bendis, but most of them have been unconnected to the Marvel Universe itself. The Sentry is about the only truly new character to be a breakout hit in the MU, and if the rumors are true, that may change in the near future.

DC has usually gone the route of legacy heroes - taking a character name or concept that has been around a while and handing it to a new character. The new Blue Beetle is one of the latest examples of that. While his book was recently canceled after a VERY entertaining run, the character's become a breakout star on the Batman: Brave and the Bold animated series, with his action figures selling quite well. But again, he was brought down by the reticence to try something new, combined with a fairly sizable readership who were still smarting from the way Ted Kord, the previous Blue Beetle, was uncerimoniously shuffed off this mortal coil. In many eyes (not mine) it seemed as if he was killed off expressly so they could create a new version, a move that didn't exactly make any friends when they tried it with Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner.

New characters at DC are few and far between. The Power Company had a brief but well-received run, Secret Six is a new version of an old title, featuring old characters used in a new way under the stady hand and twisted mind of Gail Simone, who's also getting to spread her magic on Birds of Prey again. But all told, save for those few exceptions, DC makes most of its money bringing us what they've been bringing us for decades. Being a to-the-bone DC fan, I have no problem with that at all, but whenever they try something new, I try to give them a fair hearing, and nine times out of fourteen, I enjoy it.

Last summer DC announced they had finally secured the rights to the THUNDER Agents, the Tower Comics characters created by a sadly underappreciated diety of the medium, Wally Wood. I was,am, and will remain to be over the MOON about this. I've gone on and on about the characters before, so I won't do it again. But based on the past two failed experiments, I am quite keen to see what DC can do this time to make the characters of interest to the new readers. I'm rational enough to know that they will have to rise or fall on new readers; there's simply not enough people who remember them to carry a series.

The Milestone characters were re-introduced with no explanation at all. If you didn't know who they were, you had no idea what was going on. The Red Circle books started on square one and were introduced to everyone at once. Both fizzled. So what's plan C? How do you introduce a whole set of characters to new readers and not overwhelm them? Off the record discussions with DC editors revealed that there are a lot of folks at DC who have been begging to waork on the characters, so I think we'll get some solid work from them; stories written by people who want to write them, as opposed to those who get assigned to. Will they tie the characters to an existing story concept like Checkmate, or even STAR Labs, or will they create something new? Will we see a big name or two involved, at least for the launch to draw attention?

All I know is that once the announcements are made, you are not gonna be able to shut me up about them. So go buy some cotton, cause you gonna have to block out the thunder...

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On the labeling of an entire group by the behavior of its worst members

Let's get a few facts out of the way straight away.

1. There are some outrageous assholes in the tea party movement.
2. The Democrats are happy to point to them and say "You see? That's how they all think".
3. In so doing, they are being delightfully hypocritical.

The act of pointing to a small group of people and claiming that they represent the entire group is a practice that Liberals take great glee in excoriating its enemies when they do it.  Yet, as is true of anything when it benefits you, they see no problem when they do it, likely because they maintain that in THIS case they're right.

Protests, like talk radio and anything that will get you on television, attracts the most shrill and radical members of a movement.  And television loves to show shrill and annoying people, usually to give you an opportunity to lord it over them.  It's the reason they don't talk to the particle physicist or computer programmer who goes to science fiction conventions instead of the fat guy in the Klingon outfit.  And every time they show them, all the perfectly rational people who like science fiction just facepalm and shake their heads. 

Look at the folks that turn up for Earth Day, or any political protest.  Not the kind of folks you want showing up in the halls of Congress.  But again, for every hemp-wearing yahoo coming out for Global Warming, there's hundreds, thousands who have rational reasoned opinions, who grasp that you can't shut down industries but see the benefit of reducing pollution as much as can be without causing undue strain on the business of the industry.  They just couldn't (or wouldn't be caught near) the protest because they have jobs or other such responsibilities.  So they suffer the result of having people believe that the movement is made up of Burning Man refugees who think everything can be solved with a hug and a carbon shell game.

Lots of people have hesitations about the Health Care bill of varying levels of reasonability.  The ones who bought the "Death Panel" line are sadly, tragically deluded.  The ones who see great challenge in the government being able to keep such a large system under control and not grow wildly expensive...perhaps not so crazy, based on past performance. But as is traditional, it's far easier to point to the fringey tips of the wings than to spend time discussing the more rational arguments nearer the middle of the bird.

Frost/Nixon has a great speech at the end about the reductive power of television - the ability to compress an entire complicated issue to a soundbite or a closeup.  And depending on the choices made, you can make someone appear a hero or a fool.  The Tea Party folks are giving the media very little source material for the "hero" image.

Insane signs that can be easily twisted to appear racist (and statements and expletives this weekend that require no twisting at all) make it highly tempting to tar the entirety of people who disagree with the bill with the epithet "looney".  And the binary "all good or all evil" culture that we more and more live in tempts us to believe that the other side is entirely wrong with no worthy ideas to be listened to.  We may not agree with the entirety of our plan, but it's comforting to know that their plan can be discounted entirely.

There's nothing going on in this whole health care mishegas that hasn't been done before.  Politicians have ever wrangled programs and funds for their home districts in exchange for their votes. (Indeed, I consider that far less "corrupt", as the talk show crowd have taken to calling it, than the ones who try to get benefits for themselves alone. At least they're trying to get something for their voters...)  Parties have ever used interpretations of parliamentary procedure to get their bills through in scenarios where they're not sure they have the votes.  We have seen endless examples of perfectly good ideas that turn into wishy-washy do nothing boondoggles that serve no purpose but to allow the politicians to be able to say they Got Something Done.  And we've got lots of plans that the opposition has spent great time pointing out every shortcoming and failing of, so as to drive home the point that The Other Guys made a mistake, and you better vote us in before it all gets worse.

The big difference here is that all of these activities are being dragged out into the light by those who would see the bill fail, rather short-sightedly forgetting that all they're doing is alerting the people to the tricks that they'll be using four or five years hence.  This isn't some new set of tricks and schemery, this is standard operating procedure for the Beltway, magnified to the point where it's visible to the naked untrained eye.  By drawing attention to it, there's the remotest of chances that people will realize that twas ever thus, and might ask it be changed.  If they can stop coming up with embarassing slogans to mis-spell on signs.

Now, the cynical among us might point that I myself am painting all politicians with the same brush, making myself guilty of the very infraction I attack them for.  But of course, here it's perfectly acceptible, because in my case, I'm right.

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On a small point of physics

Usually I let scientific errors in comics roll off my back like complaints off a Southwest Airlines Customer Service representative. I mean after all, when you're dealing with a book where people can fly and have x-ray vision, complaining about the speed of light being unbreakable is a little hypocritical.

But occasionally I come across one I feel the need to comment on.  In JSA 36, Jesse Quick and Baroness Blitzkrieg are having a brief high-speed chase/fight.  Baroness B remarks that she doen't have to engage in fisticuffs with Jesse, she only has to "spread a number of obstacles in your path".  She pulls a bunch of super-bounce balls from her satchel and tosses them in Jesse's path.  The result, as Baroness explains that at the speed she's running, they hit her like bullets.  Good idea.

Small problem.  At the time she releases them, they're both running, at almost the same exact speed.  If two objects are traveling at the same speed, relative to each other, they aren't moving.  If one is moving at 500 MPH and the other at 501 MPH, the second one is only moving at 1 MPH, relative to the first.

So if Baroness releases the balls (there's no way to write that without sounding dirty), they're traveling at the same speed as the two runners, and in the time it takes for Jesse to plow into them,  they haven't slowed down enough to strike her with much velocity at all.  They'd be minor annoyances.  Still something that could make her lose her stride and tumble (especially considering she's relatively new to speedstering, and doesn't have the reflexes, friction aura or ability to vibrate through obstacles of the flashes), but not enough to hit her "with the force of wrecing balls".  If Blitzkrieg had been standing still and done the same, then yes, Jesses would have plowed into them at whatever speed she was running, and would have hurt like hell. Indeed, they might have just cut right through her, were she not able to avoid them.  Of course, being bouncy-balls, a few might have bunced right back at Blitzkrieg and hit HER at Jesse's speed, having absorbed her kinetic energy.  So, not as good an idea.  Still, an elegant move, as Baroness calls it, tho.

I recall a story decades back that dealt with relativistic speeds of moving objects that got it RIGHT, but nobody could understand why it worked.  John Ostrander did a mini about the cops of Gotham City (might have been called GCPD; too lazy to look it up).  In the last scene there was a riot which the cops quickly quelled.  Gordon mentions there were guns in the crowd, but most shots were fired in the air and injuries were from bruises as the bullets fell back down from the sky.  People on Compuserve (an antiquated communication system similar to smoke signals) were asking how those bullets didn't kill anyone. After all, they're bullets.

I had to step in and explain that John had gotten it right, as he usually does.  If a bullet is fired straight up, gravity starts to slow it down at the rate of g, or 9.8 meters per second per second.  Once it comes to a halt, it starts to fall back down at that speed, but the bullet does not now have the terrific force of the gun's propulsion behind it.  It's going to come down as it it had just been dropped from that height, which considering its small size and air resistance, is going to cause no more than a sharp sting if it hits anyone.

As you can see, I clearly have too much time on my hands.

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On being given an unsolicited opportunity to undertake a grand adventure

Long story short, I got laid off today.

Don' worry, you're getting the long story as well.

I was getting new work to do right up until Friday, everybody was pleased with my work, and all seemed well with the world.  But after lunch today, my manager asked me to "come to a meeting", have mumbling that we had to go down to HR.  Not the place one wants to go to a meeting.

The company is expected to have a harsh year, and as a cost-saving measure had to lay off a bunch of folks in a number of offices, and alas, I was on that list.  It was made abundantly clear it was a choice from on high, out of their hands, yadda yadda.

I didn't get upset to speak of, we walked through my severance package and a short time later I was packing up my stuff.  My previous manager was near tears - she had even tried to get me transferred back to her department, as she didn't want to lose me in the last corporate shuffle.  No go, alas, tho they are keen enough about me that they want me to keep in touch should any other positions open up.  So that's something.

I'll get the ball roling tomorrow.  What with the electric-type internet, I can get all the paperwork and resume spreading going without having to get dressed, so that's nice.

I'll remain optimistic for quite a while - I'm that way.  I'll try to keep being funny and yammering on about comics and other stuff that doesn't involve self-pity.

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On analyzing the success of a bold experiment

World of New Krypton has spent a year doing something that had been met with suspicion at best - taking Superman out of the Super-titles. The story, if you haven't been reading the Super-titles, is that the Bottle City Of Kandor was finally freed from its diminutive status after being liberated from Brainiac's ship. Once it was made quite clear that the governments of the Earth didn't quite know how they felt about 100,000 people with the power Superman suddenly appearing, they took the entire city off-planet and built a new Krypton on the other side of the sun.

Superman decides he needs to travel to New Krypton to check things out, considering among other things, the Kryptonians saved General Zod from the Phantom Zone and put him in charge of the military. He stays on the new world, assigned the rank of Commander of the Military Guild by Zod himself. Over the course of his stay, he deals with a series of assassinations of the ruling class, an uprising of the labor class, while all the while keeping a wary eye on Zod and his equally dangerous compatriots, Ursa and Non.

Of all the things I liked about this book, the greatest is that it successfully confounded everyone's expectations. Zod has been played as a hero to the people of Kandor/New Krypton, because that's what he was when they last saw him. And he's been exactly that. No plots to take over the Earth, no moustache twirling, nothing. He works with Kal-El, contentiously at first, but coming around to respect his more peaceful way of doing things. At no point throughout the book is Zod revealed as having a secret plan at all. He really is the hero of New Krypton. The series ends with Zod and Kal-El having a positively polite conversation. Admittedly, the conversation is dramatically interrupted, but there's no rug-pull. I was SO pleased at that.

I've complained in the past about mini-series that serve no narrative purpose, books like Oracle: The Cure, which neither delivered what the readers thought it was supposed to deliver nor told a complete story, rather just telling us to pick up Batgirl #1 in a couple months. WoNK (I wish it'd had a better acronym, but whajagonnado) did none of that. It served an important part of the overall Superman storyline, and it told a solid and coherent story that was ended. The secret of the conspiracy on Krypton was explained, it was solved, and the chracters behind it were punished. The surprise ending of Brainiac's ship appearing in the sky was a cliffhanger to a NEW story, not a dangling carrot that made you feel duped for buying an incomplete one here.

We got to see New Krypton grow as a planet, using its advanced science to terraform (Krypto-form?) the world from a lone city to a quite pretty place, even able to re-create some of Krypton's geographic wonders. We got a look at galactic politics, as representatives from Rann and Thanagar, as well as closer neighbor Saturn come to invetsigate this powerful new player on the field. (Robinson loves bringing back obscure characters, so Saturn was represented not only by Jemm, Son of Saturn, but The Faceless Hunter, a character who also just got a cameo on the brilliant cartoon Batman: The Brave and The Bold.) And we got to see how a planet full of of people who have spent most of their lives imprisoned reacted to suddenly not only being free, but having godlike powers overnight. It all worked very well, and did a spectacular job of setting up New Krypton and its people as real three-dimensional characters, something the residents of Kandor never really were back in the Silver Age. Because if you started to really appreciate and care for them, you might start to feel for their glass-enclosed plight.

It's exactly because they've done such a good job of "humanizing" New Krypton that I'm really hoping that once War of the Supermen is over, they don't get wiped off the map. As I've said before, a planet of 100,000 Supermen is rather a big Mcguffin to leave lying around, but there's any number of happy endings I can think of for the planet that would allow them to stay a part of the universe, one that Superman could visit for happy personal reasons if he chose. Park it around a red sun and have a fleet of L.E.G.I.O.N. ships keep strict watch on any ships entering or leaving the system, for example.

The only real complaints I had about the story are vanishingly small:

One, pulling a moon from Jupiter seems like a rather unsettling move to make, from both a "physics-al" and from a PR point of view. Even if they did nod to the three-body issues, saying that the variance in gravity is vanishingly small over the long run, the people of Earth would have to have been rattled that these people just grabbed a moon from another planet, just cause they needed it. It seems to me there's more than enough raw material in the asteroid belt to fashion a moon-sized object without rattling any cages, and they could still have gotten the same "moon headed towards Krypton" story that they wanted.

Secondly, while I'm sure we'll get an explanation for the mysterious abbatoir and the use of the animals' silvery pelts, I think it was played up a bit more than it should have been for a plot point not to be used in this story. Chekhov's Gun still applies; if you show the audience a gun, make sure it goes off. If it gets used in the Brainiac story or in War of the Supermen, it'll require a clunky moment to remind everyone of it. Also, since it didn't actually have anything to to with the mystery the story was working with, it was functionally a red herring. Again, just a minor point.

I've also mentioned that I'd loved to have learned more about Krypton's leisure time activities. We learned a small bit about its art, and a good bit of its mythology, but I'd love to see more. What is Kryptonian theater like? Their comedy - is slapstick funny to a Kryptonian, or do they prefer wordplay? I understand there's little place for such points in an action and intrigue-based story, but if there's a Secret Files coming out in association with WotS (not a much better acronym, but again...) it seems like a good place to put one. Again, the more you make people understand the characters, the more you draw the reader into the story.

As the story on Krypton ends, it's made clear that Earth, or more specifically General Sam Lane and his cronies in Project 7734 are the bad guys there. The conspiracy on Krypton was fomented by Lane, in the person of Superwoman, AKA Lois Lane's sister Lucy. Zod has kept his promise of worrying only for New Krypton's defense, and not its expansion. With Brainiac attacking (thanks to the able assistance of Lex Luthor), Krypton will be on the defensive, and surely Zod and his military guild will step to the forefront of both the battle and the narrative. At this time, there's no way of knowing which way War of the Supermen is going to go. Some people are already waving it off as "another Amazons Attack" (perish the thought) but based on the complex plotting (a term that could be taken many ways there) of the Super-titles so far, it might be any number of possibilities. There's nothing that says it mightn't be Earth and Krypton teaming up against Brainiac, or some other threat. I'm simply not sure...and I couldn't be happier about that.

The past year has been filled with a number of parallel plotlines in the Super Books. Each has spent time with different new and old members of the Super-Family, and how they deal with a World Without Superman. I'll look at them in detail in a later piece, as their stories are still unfolding. But all told, the Super-team has done a great job of telling a sweeping story, while still making each title entertaining in its own right. A lot of folks took the mindset of "If there's no Superman there's no reason to read the book" but I think they've really cheated themselves out of a great bunch of stories. I look to the future of the Superman narrative with a hopeful eye.

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On the passing of an extraordinary personality

The Wife's Mom, Jacqueline Kehoe, died back in December from complications of Pulmonary Fibrosis. We had her memorial service this last Friday. It was well attended and nobody started a fistfight, so I'd say it went well. As several people got up to say a few words, everyone made mention of the fact that they "had a few good stories" about her. Since no one actually TOLD one, I figure someone ought, so I stepped up. It follows hence...


When The Wife was yet but a little girl, her mom took her to the movies. About half-way through the film, she started wiggling in her seat. "What's wrong?" asks Jackie. "There's something wrong with my seat." says she.

Jackie turned around to discover that some unbalanced gentleman had sat behind the innocent waif, had slipped his hands up between back and seat of her chair, and was feeling her little patootie up.

Now, this was the early 70's. The average person might have simply moved seats, perhaps made a complaint to the manager. Jackie was not "the average person". She stood up and proceeded to verbally rip the creep a new one, punctuated with pelts from her prodigious pocket book. The man likely injured his back slinking out of the theater.

Jackie would go through hell and high water to protect her children, and make sure they were safe. I learned this every.single.day of my married life. She was a glorious person with a life full of high points and strong emotions. She was difficult to forget, and gave you no reason to wish to do so.

We shall miss her.

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On the revamping of women and girls of the Battish persuasion, and the reappearance of avian predators

For all the questionable and outright poor choices DC (read "Dan Didio" if you like, you know you want to) have made, I am still quite surprised that anyone still considers keeping Babs Gordon as Oracle, and NOT making her Batgirl again, to be a BAD move.

Babs was one of the few examples of a character undergoing a radical and shocking change and actually coming out the other side a newer and better character. Originally paralyzed by the Joker in Alan Moore's Killing Joke, John Ostrander couldn't stand the fact that such a great and classic heroine was taken off the board. So he (and the divine Kim Yale) created Oracle, turning Babs into a viable character again. And since then she's become FAR more important a player in the DCU than batgirl ever could.

The current version of the story goes that when DC Editorial decided to bring back Batgirl again, returning Babs to the role seemed the slam-dunk move. But they got talked out of it, and they went with Spoiler. And for the life of me, I can't get why anyone sees that as anything but a plus. Oracle is jut plain a great character. A rare example of a topical character (the "hacker") having the staying power to rise above the cliches of the trend. There's the argument about her being an inspiration to the handiicapped as well, but I don't neccessarily see her being tied to the wheelchair as intrinsic to the character. Yes, she chose this role because of her inability to help physically, but if she regained mobility, I don't see that making Oracle any less a strong character. In a universe where character lose major portions of their body and become better strong faster thanks to technology, Babs' paralysis has always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. It seemed much more like she needed to stay in the chair for narrative as opposed to "real" reasons. The only other major wheelchair-bound character I can think of in the DCU (and I'm sure y'all will bring others to my memory) is The Chief from Doom Patrol. In a weird way, I can actually see him CHOOSING to stay wheelchair bound, for two reasons. One, making his enemies underestimate him, and two, the Guy Caballero motive of "respect". But Babs, I don't think she'd really turn down a legitimate fix, as opposed to magic or prosthetics or what have you. But I, to borrow a catch-phrase, digress.

Whether or not the new Batgirl should have been Babs, Spoiler, Cassandra Cain, someone else or no one is another issue, and one that'll likely never die. The point was that turning Babs back into Batgirl would have been a step backwards in a lot of people's eyes. It's one of the few times that the chestnut about making the characters (back) into the version that the most people know is not the better move. Like Dick Grayson into Nightwing, trying to turn him BACK into Robin would have been almost laughable, let alone a poor use of the character.

As the tale goes, Dan wanted to kill off Nightwing as well, but was talked out of it by people (spearheaded by Marv Wolfman) who convinced him that there were more and better stories to be told with the character alive than dead. So Dan changed his mind. And if he hadn't, we wouldn't be reading the current Batman stories, which you have to admit have been pretty damn good. If he was as poor as his job as so many say he is, he'd have stuck to his guns, forced through the plot he wanted, and very likely seen it go up in flames faster than Conan at 11:30.

DC, Marvel, all the comics companies have copyrighted and trademarked characters which they need to keep using on a regular basis, or you end up with the scenario where Captain Marvel can't appear in a book with his name on the cover, or toys named after him. So we will ever see hero names re-used. There's no point grousing over it. It's why all the classic Superman characters started to re-appear oin the books after Byrne's famous "get rid of all the silly stuff" revamp. So for Batgirl to reappear is not a shock. Again, want to argue who it should have been; go ahead, and sei gesund.

The same is so of Batwoman. Not nearly as popular or as well known a name, but a name that needs using every so often. They got it into that Batman Beyond movie a while ago, but it needed using again. Greg Rucka created a very good and very intersting character in Kate Kane, one that has far outpaced the initial rowdy-dow about her interpersonal predilictions. That doesn't happen often; usually those re-vamped characters are sad shadows of the original, requiring years to find redemption in the proverbial "right hands". The plethora of Starmen (Starmans?) leap to mind. So to actually get a good, even great character from such pedestrian needs is quite a treat.

One of the single best revamps of a character in recent years (IMHO) was The Calculator. As much as I have to say against Identity Crisis (suffice to say I am a rabid Ralph and Sue fan, and let that be the end of it), taking Calculator from one of those aforementioned "trend-born" characters and revamping him into Oracle's opposite number was nothing short of brilliant. Gail Simone took the ball and ran with him, using him regularly in Birds of Prey, often in virtual battles against Oracle, and at least one face-to-face meeting. Gail eventually left the book in the capable hands of Tony Bedard. Tony's a very good writer, and delivered some solid character issues, but right at the end of the run, the direction they chose to take both the book and The Calculator bordered on embarassing. They chose to have him not only survive an attack by the Kilg%re, but survive with powers similar to the cybernetic beast. Which I found to be utterly pointless. Already a great villain with lots of resources and abilities at his command, giving him powers is like adding a spoiler and neon to a Dusenberg. This, combined with the choice to retroactively make him the father of Wendy and Marvin from Teen Titans was an attempt to make Calculator more than he needed to be.

Birds of Prey ended, immediately followed by the mini-series "Oracle: the Cure". This begged the question "cure for what"? The rumors ran rampant - Babs would walk again, Babs would become Batgirl again, she'd become a cyber-being like that guy from Psyba-Rats, and who knows what else. As I mentioned, I didn't see an issue with Babs being able to walk again and still remaining Oracle. A lot of people were really against that - they maintained that her position as a role-model was too important. I found that almost cruel; would the same people have begrudged Chris Reeve the ability to walk because he was too important as a role model, or Stevie Wonder to "get a peek" as chris Rock described it? Yes, I know, fiction and reality, but I still found/find it an odd position to take.

Ultimately...nothing happened. It was a protracted (and suffuciently entertaining) fight in the virtual and real worlds against the Calculator for possession of a facet of the Anti-Life Formula which ended in a sort of tie, with his daughter Wendy awakened from her coma (apparently the titular "cure") but paralyzed. Basically, nothing happened to Babs. The book ended with an entreat to read the upcoming Batgirl series, a book that now nobody had any idea who it would star. People complained that the book didn't deliver what was promised, never quite realizing that nothing was promised. People assumed it was Babs' "cure" we'd see, so all it could be accused of was that it didn't deliver what they THOUGHT is was supposed to.

The new Batgirl book is quite entertaining. Since I've already said I didn't care for the idea of Babs returning to the purple tights, and never really having to great an attachment to the young Ms. Cain, I am happy with the choice made. I do look forward to seeing Ms. Cain appear (and hopefully the narrative backflips she was put through resolved) and I wish the book a long life. But I dod suspect the most recent announcement might make the book feel redundant in many eyes.

Last week, DC announced that Gail Simone would returning to Birds of Prey. I've yet to hear this news accepted as anything other than a triumph for good comic books everywhere. Gail will be able to write characters like Black Canary and Oracle again; characters that many have said no one has been able to write as well since her departure. But for those who have been buying Batgirl for their monthly required dose of Babs, will the re-appearance of this title see their desire to read Batgirl diminish? Will DC decide that the best place for Ms. Brown to receive further training is among a large number of female heroes? I am curious, but hopeful, about Batgirl's future. The title? We shall see.

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