It's Only the End if You Want it to Be

gabzilla-z:

fanboywatchtower:

gailsimone:

angrysunbird:

gailsimone:

cloudydrake:

gailsimone:

cloudydrake:

gailsimone:

gwenfrankenstien:

elfgrove:

gabzilla-z:

brikit:

dcwomenkickingass:

It does look like its time to find if she was Oracle. Interesting Ed Benes is drawing this.

BATGIRL #0

Written by GAIL SIMONE

Art and cover by ED BENES

On sale SEPTEMBER 12 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

• How did Barbara first become Batgirl? What led to her to don the cape and cowl?

• Witness Barbara Gordon’s shocking injury and her inspiring drive to recover and walk again!

• Witness Barbara Gordon’s shocking injury and her inspiring drive to recover and walk again!

Ugh. Really DC? We need to go over that AGAIN?

I know it’s an important part of her past, but do we really need to see Joker shooting her AGAIN?

You liked Oracle? That’s too bad, she was either erased or heavily retconned.

You didn’t like Babs being fridged in TKJ? HERE’S ANOTHER FLASHBACK

On the bright side, we may finally know if she was Oracle once and for all. Since this is being released in September, it took what? A year?

You know what needed revisiting? The fridging of Barbra Gordon. Even better? Let’s add the skeevy porno-traced artwork of Mr. Benes. GREAT.

DC, are you actively trying to run off your female fanbase? I just want to know if I should leave before it gets worse.

Is everyone enjoying the 4-pack of udders on her torso? Great. Thanks for pointing that one out @ShivaeStudios

oh good

now i’m angry at specific people for specific things!

The solicit is incredibly misleading, unfortunately.  The issue is not about TKJ at all.

Misleading my foot, I didn’t even THINK of The Killing Joke until reading all the above rants comments about it. Here’s a thought, guys: maybe it’s TKJ that’s being retconned out? Maybe DC finally listened to all the feminist commentators (not to mention ALAN MOORE HIMSELF) who thought it was exploitative? This has the potential to be a really good issue! OR, yes, it could be terrible and disrespectful, but we don’t actually know that until it’s published. We’re in the Schrodinger’s Batgirl period right now.

Also, the cover art? Yes, it is pretty ridiculous, but it’s a COVER. It’s SUPPOSED to be eye-grabbing! All it tells us about the actual story within is that it will feature Batgirl in some way. If you want to talk about the anatomy issues or the superhero medium’s continued over-sexualization of the female body, then great! Those are very important issues to discuss, but please try not to get it mixed up with the actual story that will be featured in the comic. They are two entirely separate topics (and the trend of featuring covers only vaguely related to the story within is a third topic also worthy of discussion. Just throwing that out there.)

I appreciate that a lot, but I totally understand why people would be concerned…we dealt with TKJ pretty heavily and this solicit makes it sound like the focus of the issue, which, no, it happens before then. I don’t blame anyone for taking it as read, I probably would, too.

The cover…hm. This is the first I’ve seen it, and that’s a little curvier than I like Batgirl. But it’s Ed’s first image of the character, I think, the interior pages are lovely and she’s got more of the shape she has in the book currently.

Gail, your patience is as always an inspiration. I’ll admit I don’t know the complete background for this issue (haven’t been buying a lot of comics recently due to some financial issues, and I don’t like torrenting for various reasons that are off-topic) so it’s possible I jumped the gun with my blanket dismissal of any connection to TKJ. I still think that the solicit itself, as posted, doesn’t contain more than perhaps a small implicit connect to TKJ, and that the reactions of the above commentators are pretty overwrought…buuuuut of course as I said in my own post, there’s really no way to know for sure at this point. Schrodinger’s Batgirl. :) I for one would definitely like to read this issue (and it comes out five days after my birthday! score!) so it seems that the solicit did SOMETHING right.

I’ll be honest, I used to freak out a little at solicit time every month, because people would tear their own heads off over these little paragraphs that were often written by editors, sometimes before the books were even written, and they rarely had much to do with the actual issues themselves. And I don’t let myself out of this equation, I write HORRIBLE solicit copy, probably the worst ever. The editors are doing me a favor when they write it themselves.

So it was always, sure as clockwork, people freaking out over nothing, the issue would come out, the solicit long forgotten, and sure enough, people are freaking out over the next set of solicits.

I used to get bugged about it, but then I realized that is totally my problem, not the readers at all. They are reacting to the information we have given them, that’s all they HAVE, so it’s not only understandable, it’s inevitable. We can’t give them a cryptic paragraph and be upset when they interpret it their own way, that’s goofy.

So now I look at it as kind of like sports fans, or something of that nature. It’s FUN to quibble and critique, I do it myself. There’s nothing wrong with it, it took me forever to learn that. It’s healthy. It’s fun, it doesn’t bother anyone.

I corrected this one here, but it’s not the readers who are at fault, the copy itself is a bit misleading, is all.

I was kinda hoping it would be an opportunity to explore the possibility that other people were Batgirl during her hiatus. You know, the same way they managed to cram four Robins in.

Crazy, I know. 

I am not going to lie about it, it isn’t that. But that isn’t off the table, as far as I know.

from your lips to Didio’s ears :(  i love Babs… but i really miss Steph and Cass :(

I really want them to confirm if Cass and Steph were ever Batgirls once and for all.

^ Same here.

As for this issue… I’m cautiously interested.

I’m very fond of how Barbara’s origin story was told in both Secret Origins #20 and Batgirl: Year One (both have elements that I prefer in different ways), and so I hope those stories will at least partly be incorporated into this new origin. Barbara’s origin has remained pretty much unchanged in its essentials ever since she first showed up in 1967, and to be honest I hope DC does not mess with it that much.

But that said, I may be spitting nails that Barbara is Batgirl again, but I have absolutely no problem with rehashing her classic history. And considering that Gail Simone is writing this story, it will probably be top-notch.

If the issue takes place before TKJ, it seems that it won’t be answering the questions of whether Babs was Oracle or whether Cass and Steph were Batgirls, either. Which is a pity. But a straight-up origin story could be great too. Like I said, I feel Barbara’s origin has already been told well in the past, but there’s always room for a new update, I guess… provided it doesn’t retcon too much.