I would not have had a problem with this if they hadn’t done it with a retcon. Having Barbara Gordon recover from the injury that crippled her and yet still be the woman who founded the Birds of Prey would not have bothered me. Declaring that all the achievements she made while in a wheelchair no longer count, that bothers me.
Bleeding Cool covers DiDio’s response. Google some combination of “Didio + Oracle reaction” for an earlier version where he doesn’t understand why people might be upset at a different type of underrepresented group being marginalized.
He’s not being deliberately homophobic; he just has no concept of why this is seen as problematic. At all.
Exactly!
I don’t mean to be difficult — I honestly don’t see how an having a lesbian headlining one of their titles is “being marginalized.”
I’m truly trying to look at this from a detached, non-outragey point-of-view. There is a bias here but it’s not anti-gay — it’s anti-marriage. And given the number of times the big two have married their characters only to split them up later down the road, I have to assume they’ve discovered that married relationships are problematic.
Let’s recap. The creators who were so pissed off about the situation that they quit their jobs themselves said that it had nothing to do with homophobia. Yet the wording of every one of Bleeding Cool’s headlines imply that the same-sex marriage was the precipitating factor — because that’s going to get clicks the way “last minute editorial screw-up” won’t.
I am a diehard supporter of SSM, period. But this is a case of shitty business editorial practice, not gayhating.
Neither I nor Alan Smithee are saying it is homophobia.
This is just wrong. Nearly every DC/Marvel movie of the last five-ten years has been pitched at an audience of teenagers and up. Back when The Dark Knight was released, there was serious talk about how it “broke” the PG-13 rating because some of the violence was so extreme. And that’s the goddamn Batman, one of the most kid-friendliest characters around.
I sympathize, but the lesson I want to see DC learn here is to avoid heavy handed and inconsistent editorial policy, not to have a bunch of married gay characters
I mean, I’m okay with a lot of married gay characters in comic books, but that’s not going to address what’s wrong with DC comics.
(Fanboy Mode…) Secret Six was beyond excellent. Some of the best stuff DC ever did.
Have you looked at the current treatment of Jonah Hex? Palmiotti and Gray are brilliant. (Insane, but brilliant.) Right now, it’s the only DC title I am enthusiastic about.
I know you’re not. Alan Smithee, however, has used “homophobia” twice in the thread. You stated she’s being marginalized. But I don’t see how a marriage restriction does that.
Just for reference, I tried to recall all the superhero marriages I could think of. The ones in red are the ones the companies have undone in one way or another. While it can work in some cases, it seems like a trend that marriages don’t last in comics, and undoing them tends to be awkward. As a result, I can see some justification for the editorial department (charged with the long-term viability of these characters) to try to limit a convention that tends not to work.
[ul]
[li]Reed & Sue Richards[/li][li]Aquaman & Mera[/li][li]Animal Man & Ellen Baker[/li][li]Luke Cage & Jessica Jones[/li][li]Northstar & Kyle Jinadu[/li][li]Peter Parker & Mary Jane[/li][li]Superman & Lois Lane[/li][li]Cyclops & Jean Grey[/li][li]Scarlet Witch & Vision[/li][li]Bruce Banner & Betty Ross[/li][li]Hank Pym & Janet Van Dyne[/li][li]Barry Allen & Iris West[/li][li]Johnny Storm & Alicia Master (Skrull Imposter)[/li][li]Quicksilver & Crystal[/li][li]Namor & Marrina[/li][li]Ralph & Sue Dibney[/li][li]Tempest & Dolphin[/li][li]Donna Troy & Terry Long[/li][li]Black Panther & Storm[/li][li]Green Arrow & Black Canary[/li][/ul]
He’s stated he’d prefer if it was homophobia.
It is not marginalizing a minority by forbidding gay marriage to a lesbian character… if there were other examples of gay marriages to be had. Of course, in DC there are not.
Just as it is not marginalizing a minority by undoing the paralysis of one handicapped charater among many. But when you de-handicap your only handicapped character, that becomes problematic.
If you’re pointing to a token character as representative of your inclusiveness – which DC and Didio have done, emphatically – you need to be very careful of unintended consequences with that character.
Seeing past privilege can be difficult, but think of it this way: Having the Martian Manhunter always eating oreos isn’t a problem. Having Superman always eating watermelon probably isn’t a problem. Having Luke Cage always eating watermelon… maybe should rethink. Likewise, denying Peter Parker’s marriage might not be as much of a concern as it is denying marriage to your token lesbian.
(although, really, I think those were both cruddy editorial decisions.)
I could see editorial treading very gingerly on anything that may “hurt” the Really Big Marquee Characters or break something well and long established about the universe that the public has grown to expect (yet that was not applied to Peter and Mary Jane). But the haphazard way of treating the characters and story arcs that you all describe seems contrary to any sensible notion of trying to build up readership.
Thing is, do the recently succesful other-media versions really derive any advantage from hewing faithfully to the print-comic universes’ “extended canon”? The dystopian Batman of the last few decades’ comics ***had ***mostly coexisted with the PG/TV-safe Batman – that the Dolan/Bale films chose to go Dark Knight was a gamble that paid off, but a gamble nonetheless.
The word you’re looking for isn’t “de-handicap”, it’s “cure”. It is the character who should be preserved, not the injury.
No. She was not cured. It was all retconned, so that the character was never handicapped at all. Hence Grumman’s post above.
I haven’t really looked into circulation numbers, but from what the folks at my favorite local comic shop tell me, DC’s situation is as follows:
Prior to the “New 52” reboot, DC had a few solid performing titles – mostly Batman or Superman titles – and a bunch of titles with low but extremely reliable sales. They kept getting big sales on massive crossover events (probably starting back with the Sinestro Corps War crossover).
There was a mandate from above (WB, probably) to boost sales, or else.
After the “New 52”, DC still has a bunch of titles with low sales, but they’re no longer reliable; mostly dwindling, until those titles are canceled. Their solid performing titles will outsell Marvel or other company titles – but only during massive crossover events. Therefore, DC now rolls out line-wide crossover events regularly (currently some sort of Villains crossover), and most of their titles are either Superman or Batman related.
The event treadmill is a business model that has been tried before in the comics industry – back when the comics bubble hit. DC is even back to issuing variant covers for event comics. As previously, I’m sure this will not be a sustainable method of higher sales, and will eventually collapse.
I agree that the enforcing a “no marriage” mandate when you have a prominent gay character is bad optics. But marginalizing means* to treat a person, group or concept as insignificant or peripheral. * DC is guilty of some faults, but as the only major comics publisher currently publishing a title headlined by an LGBTQ character, marginalization isn’t one of them.
If all the other characters were getting hitched (and it resulted in a great bounty of great stories and and sales) and Batwoman was denied it — I would be right there at your side. But please look at the list of hero marriages that get undone. It honestly looks like an attempt to keep an albatross from her neck.
Bah, no one cares about exposing kids to violence in America. Only sex.
You are right. To be fair, I did say that the decision was “borderline homophobic.” I think I’ve clarified what I meant by that (and it’s not different from what Lightray is saying) but I did use the term.
This isn’t true; in the New 52, Barbara was still shot by the Joker (They had a flashback of the scene in “The Killing Joke.”) and spent time paralyzed in a wheelchair. I haven’t been reading Batgirl lately, so I don’t know if she was ever Oracle (I don’t think so.) or if they explained exactly what healed her, but she was definitely paralyzed, and it took some sort of miracle to get her to walk again.
The Batgirl reboot never really bothered me. Oracle’s character arc didn’t start when she was shot, it started when she became Batgirl. Her past as an acrobatic crime fighter is integral to her character. If you’re going to reboot the character, it makes sense to reboots her all the way back to Batgirl, give her a few years in the cowl, and then do a big event arc where she’s paralyzed, and becomes Oracle.
I know; I’m the one that wrote it. 
Before the reboot, Barbara was paralysed by the Joker, but was still able to return to being a functioning member of the superhero community - she might not have been on the front lines, but she founded a superhero team and worked with them and Batman.
After the reboot, the Birds of Prey were not founded by Barbara. They took a popular storyline in which a disabled person played an active, positive role (without any kind of mitigating superpower, unlike Daredevil or Professor X) and said they did it without her help.
If I was the editor, the reboot would have started with Oracle deciding where to go from here, after regaining the use of her legs. The first few issues would provide the necessary backstory for her role with the Birds of Prey, perhaps making it clear that she had taken a back seat for the past month or so while she was receiving whatever treatment was necessary to cure her. And in the end, I’d have her keep the Oracle name, to show that we were not going to dismiss her achievements while injured, and to avoid pissing off the other Batgirl fans.
Regardless of what they did with Oracle, the Batgirl fans were going to be pissed off: almost none of them remembered Barbara as Batgirl outside of the Adam West TV show. To anyone who had been reading Batgirl, Batgirl was Cassandra or Stephanie. Both of whom disappeared forever in the reboot, with DC editorial denying all use of either whatsoever. The Oracle-to-Batgirl reboot pissed off the Oracle and Birds of Prey fans, not the Batgirl fans.
Same thing happened to the Flashes with Wally and Bart.
Sounds like a bunch of editors saying to themselves *“Outside of comic geeks, the masses know Batgirl as Barbara Gordon (from 60s TV and later animated cartoons). Let’s make it so and see if we can bring them in.” *