Now, let me preface this post with a few things - I do not consider myself an activist. There are causes I support and which I am perfectly willing to send out some e-mails and do some healthy debating about with people who aren't going to go out of their way to scream about how I'm a raging and irredeemable misogynist (I'm not, I hate everyone equally and if you don't like that, tough toenails). However, I don't do blog posts concerning a certain Twitter hashtag for the same reason I don't do posts about my religion or political views: it isn't what I set this blog up for.
I set this up to review video games, movies, comic books, and whatever else happened to suit my fancy at any given time - sometimes even within a set schedule!
I should probably also point out that I'm not a DC fan. I know some of the storylines and characters thanks to cultural osmosis or word of mouth and I've played and view some of the spin-off properties, but the DC comics that you find in my collections will be hand me downs. I'm a Marvel boy (not to be confused with Martin Burns, Vance Astrovik, or Noh-Varr) and I'm damn proud of that fact. You can keep your Batman, I'll take Spider-Man. You can take your Doctor Fate and shove him, Doctor Strange is the Sorcerer Supreme. You can take Atom, I'll take Hank Pym...err, Scott Lang, I'll take Scott Lang. But you get my point.
However, I can appreciate comic book history and DC has little history that is more prominent (again, by cultural osmosis) than the Batman family. Case in point, Barbara Gordon, PhD. (yes, she has a doctorate) aka the original Batgirl. When people want to talk about positive female icons in comic books, she's a character I point to. The daughter of Commissioner Gordon, she's an excellent fighter and computer genius who worked alongside not only Bruce Wayne as Batman, but also several Robins, some of which she helped to mentor.
And then a tragic event occurred. Flashforward to 1988, when Alan Moore's The Killing Joke went to print. Now, I hardly think I need to go into an introduction of the Joker, the most iconic symbol of insanity and evil this side of Hannibal Lecter. Needless to say, in Killing Joke, the Joker was looking to deal out some hurt on the Commissioner and Batman. He succeeded in one facet of this by shooting Barbara through his spine, which resulted in her becoming paralyzed from the waist down quite probably for the rest of her life (until recently, but remember, it's comic books). So, you would imagine this would be some kind of a soul-crushing thing that Barbara would never truly recover from, right?
Fuck, no!
Though now bound into a wheelchair, Barbara came roaring back as Oracle, putting to use her earlier computer skills as a hacker par excellence. As Oracle, she worked to aid the individual members of the Bat Family, the Justice League, and even the Suicide Squad on various missions and has been instrumental in the success of many of their ventures. Basically put, if I didn't make this abundantly clear, Barbara Gordon is pretty awesome. The character is great and she's been able to not only overcome the injury that crippled her but, in a way, rise higher than ever before.
Of course, one would imagine that being so crippled by the Joker did no end of psychological damage to her - indeed, the Bat Family is a collection of people who have more than a few screws loose altogether, though it could be argued that Barbara and possibly Dick Grayson were the most well-adjusted of the bunch. Still, one would expect her to feel at least a bit of fear at the prospect of facing the man again even if he hadn't crippled her as he had.
Which brings us to the present, 2015, and the "Change the Cover" controversy.
This cover, a variant (for those who don't know, that means not the main) cover for Batgirl #41, depicts the Joker having smeared his traditional lipstick smile over Barbara's face and putting an arm over her shoulder in a menacing manner. It's chilling and playing right into Barbara's psychological trauma while faced with, again, the man who crippled her. As it should be. However, due to a great deal of harassment and threats received by artist Rafael Albuquerque the cover was cancelled.
Because it's not as though we can have a villain doing something...y'know...villainous, that's just crazy.
Or is it because it's a woman in peril and we can't have that in spite of the fact that (as I mentioned above) it's a tribute to one of the most shocking and horrifying moments in all of comics, and a physical manifestation of the psychological trauma that Barbara likely suffers from even to this day. It's a part of her character that radical changed her and helped shape her into the character she is now (depending on the writer, I'm sure). So what? We're just supposed to ignore that?
Sure, why not?
In fact, let's ignore a few more things in comic book history.
Bucky Barnes? Never got captured by the Russians and turned into the Winter Soldier. No, he survived the fall from Zemo's rocket and went back to the States a hero, dying of old age peacefully in his bed and surrounded by his friends and family.
Peter Parker? Never lost Uncle Ben. He's perfectly fine and living with Aunt May back in their house in Forest Hills, enjoying his retirement and being all the happier for being alive. Didn't need that traumatic incident to teach him that with great power comes great responsibility.
Jason Todd? Never got beaten to death by the Joker and blown up, eventually becoming Red Hood when Superboy Prime punched reality hard enough to bring him back to life. Never suffered the trauma that followed and was made into anti-villain.
Or hey! Bruce Wayne's parents? They're alive. Apparently bullets only mildly irritate the skin and they're just fine. No worries.
Or is it okay because all four of those characters are men?
Seriously, if you're not convinced, do a little exercise for me. Take the cover above and, in your mind, replace Barbara with Jason Todd. Jason Todd who, as I will remind you, was beaten to near death by the Joker and then blown up. Not to debate on who had it worse, but I want you to seriously consider if that cover would seem the same to you.
It would? Of course it would. Because ultimately, what the Twitter and Tumblr "activists" have failed to understand is that that cover is not about the oppression of Barbara Gordon...it's about the Joker being a deranged psychopath and the effect that that has had on Barbara as a character. It's a tribute to the 75th anniversary of the Joker as a character and the 25th of the fateful event in The Killing Joke. But we can't have villains being villainous to a woman, because it's not like Barbara has spent several years in the comics being a capable character who can more than handle herself.
And to top it all off, it's a variant cover. I don't know about the normal comic book shop routine, but I have to order my comics online (Thing From Another World has a very nice mailing service) and the only way I can get variant comics is to special order them. So, those people who are making a fuss about all this are making a fuss about a cover that isn't even in common circulation. Was it worth it, Twitter and Tumblr users? Was it worth it to harass and threaten violence against someone because of a creative decision? Because it makes you somewhat uncomfortable?
Was it really?
Edit: So now, apparently, the decision to pull the cover was because of threats made against people who were criticizing the cover...which just further clouds the issue. So was this just a PR scam by DC? It's sure starting to seem like it, what with the Streisand Effect in full effect. I guess we'll known when Batgirl #41 hits shelves. I won't be buying.
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