The more I learn about the silver age the more I realize Barbara should have stayed a full on adult woman. Lawyer/Congresswoman Barbara is infinity better than "relatable" young adult Barbara.
>>151780783>Babs used to be an advocate for prison reform due to how carceral policies incentivize recidivism during the 70s and became a congresswoman>then used to be the most prominent disabled character in comics alongside Xavier and Daredevil during the 90s and 00s>lead her own team during the 00s>come 10s DC does all they can to erase her disability and make her a generic womanchild while occasionally keeps her off the team she used to fucking lead>come 20s DC still tries to keep her off the team she used to fucking lead sometimes and 75% of the time is just Dick's cocksleeveHow did Babs get less woke?
>>151780932In the end, the hypocrisy of the combo of The Killing Joke + Knightfall was too big to ignore. Bruce getting his back broken was every bit as bad of an injury as Barbara getting shot in the spine, and the fact that Bruce was able to completely recover from it set up the uncomfortable dissonance between the two incidents the longer Babs stayed crippled.It was inevitable that she'd be un-crippled; the double standard between her and Bruce was never gonna survive in the era of feminism and social justice. Unfortunately, Barbara being wheelchair-bound was basically the shorthand of all her character development over the last 30 years; it was what was holding all her growth as a character together. When the wheelchair went away, so did all the growth, too.Better writers would have prevented this, but, well, there are no good writers left in comics.
>>151780783 Barbara's always been around the same age though, just that cultural changes mean that 20 somethings dress look and act alot different now than they did in the Silver Age of comic books ie the whole "Why do high school kids pre 90s look so more mature than millennials and Zoomers did"
>>151780783Man, now you got me wondering how Congresswoman Babs would've interacted with Steph and Cass.
>>151780783It's BatGIRL not BatHAG
>>151781226Charlie's Angels style where she's Charlie.
>>151781394Wasn't that BoP essentially?
>>151780783Batwoman is better
>>151780783I think the world has changed so much that having a politician character be a heroine would be a real tough sell. Especially with how obnoxious you know the writers would be with using her as their own mouthpiece.>>151781125It's not only that, Oracle wasn't used much by the Batman books for years, and with hindsight it becomes obvious that they started pushing her as Oracle, launching Birds of Prey, and hiding behind "she's disabled representation" when they started getting pressure from people higher up to just heal her and bring back Batgirl, a character people knew from the cartoons and a movie. It's why we also got two legacy Batgirls.
>>151780783OP is a retard, Babs wasn't a Lawyer in the silver age, she was a librarian.
>>151780783No it’s not.
>>151781125>>In the end, the hypocrisy of the combo of The Killing Joke + Knightfall was too big to ignore.No one gave a damn about this. Old fanboys just wanted the Batgirl they grew up with back, would have used anything to justify it.
>>151780783She can be a congresswoman now since she's been superheroing for ~10 years but she shouldn't be a congresswoman so early in her career or else she'll be too old to be teased with Dick when they're Batgirl and Robin.
>>151781125Barbara injury was always treated as the worse one.Hell, the current canon is that is New52 Magic that made her walk again and even with that the last years is more "I can Fight crime that much or I will get fucked"Hilariously enough I remember Future ends treating Barbara as Ms Bane who could beat Bane , while Bruce back was giving up
>>151782911That doesn't discount the double standard though. You could make the same case for Oracle fans only caring about representation and using her development as an excuse.
>>151783539Yeah, there was a double standard. Denny O'Neil didn't care. He hated Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. And she wasn't Batgirl again until 2011, 18 years after Knightfall. Another lifetime as far as comics go.
>>151783560Wasn't Barbara Gordon invented for the '66 TV show in a last-ditch effort to keep ratings up and the comics adapted her later on?
>>151783595It was cross-media synergy. She debuted in Detective Comics #359 which was published on November 29, 1966 and her first episode on the show aired in September 14, 1967 but yes she was created for the show and they decided to put her in the comics first since a comic can be put together faster than a season of a tv show. A similar thing happened with Montoya from BTAS.
>>151782013Kate?
>>151780932Movie/Tv synergy
>>151781125Yeah but it's also the same universe where they have about a dozen different options to heal a back injury like cyborg parts, magic JLA friends, cloning parts, spare Nth metal, alien healing machines etc. When you realize Batman and Batgirl are on a first name basis with majority of the superhero community of DC then it becomes weird how they couldn't be healed up in a week or two. They could>Ask Hawkman to borrow some Nth Metal for a week>Ask Zatannah to say Kcab Delaeh>Ask Cyborg to implant some spine repairing parts>Ask Wonder Woman to use the purple ray>Ask Aquaman to use the healing waters>Ask Superman to use the regenerator>Ask Flash to use speedforce healingI can keep going...
>>151780783I like her most as oracle. She had the most personality.>>151782220She was used as oracle in suicide squad, she started to pop back up in batman books in the 90s when they started to do a batfamily again. Same deal with nightwing honestly.>>151782911This honestly.
>>151785376This also applies for anyone whose ever died in the universe, they can also heal cancer, undo global warming (superman alone can), make eternal green energy, they dont becuase at some point it just stops being reality.
>>151782911Wasn't that pretty much the standard for 00s and 2010s DC? Wind the clock back to the silver age as much as humanly possible, kill off all characters invented Post Crisis, cancel all books that feature a modern version of a character, and erase all newer incarnations of heroes and villains if they were not the classic 60s versions?Returning Barbra to being Batgirl seems perfectly in line with the other decisions likeDrop Kyle and Make Hal the main GL againMake Aquaman look like the 60s version again, no beard, no hookDrop Young Justice and remake TitansErase Wally and Bart, and bring back BarryErase Red Arrow, the JLA All-Stars, and all post 90s OutsidersErase Linda Supergirl and bring back Kara
>>151785524Yeah didio was open about that. It was also seen with the new 52 superman being edgy silver age superman.
>>151785544Action Comics #1 Superman and that was Morrison being Morrison. But yeah they brought back all the goofy silver age Superman stuff the Crisis deliberately excluded in the 00s.
>>151785623Even outside of it. The Kent's being dead Him being unmarried, ect
>>151780783I don't know what she was doing in between being a librarian and then or when but she got elected to congress in '72, two years into the bronze age.
>>151785376And Barbara's reason for refusing it all was that she felt it wouldn't be fair to those who don't have superpowered aid for such medical emergencies.
