Change Is A Sound

Me, The Nerdy Bird, Jill Pantozzi

I’ve been in a wait and see mode on the Oracle/Batgirl situation for a while now but still seeing people insist she should be cured simply because it’s fiction and anything can happen is bullshit.

(via thebirdandthebat)

quipquipquip:

gabzilla-z:

This was fun to do.

So sad that Bryan Q Miller never got to do a full arc of this concept.

Please draw everything forever. I’m running out of ways to describe your awesomeness.

Counselors often suggest writing letters as part of the grieving process to help achieve closure, whether it’s a letter to someone who will never receive it or what the writer wishes someone would say to them, knowing that person will likely never say it.

A while back, enigmaticcrux made a comment that hit a nerve - to summarize, she said it seems like DC is in damage control mode and trying to spin things instead of explaining why they decided to do this and acknowledge what a lot of people are feeling.

I can understand why DC isn’t really commenting on the loss people are expressing - PR is all about managing the message and trying to shape and shift perception and right now, that perception seems unlikely to shift. The message was supposed to be excitement about the return of another Silver Age character; instead, the message became frustration with DC’s failure to recognize the importance of Oracle to disabled people.

The particular problem DC faces in this example is that the same people who would likely have been excited about the title are now miserable because of what has been done with the characters. Like enigmaticcrux noted, it isn’t just the loss of Oracle and putting Barbara back in the suit - it’s displacing Stephanie Brown who put on Robin’s costume and went through hell to become Batgirl. As others have noted, it may also mean a radical shift for Cassandra Cain, and all this at the same time that Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian all seem to have roles in Bat-family books, if not a starring role in their own book.

Since it is rare for companies to admit mistakes and they typically only do so after being pummeled in the press and losing market share (and again, this is another lesson from Star Wars Galaxies which can be instructive here, and I promise I’m still messing with that piece because we’re talking about massive change forced on two rabid fanbases and past can be prologue and all that stuff), I messed around with what amounts to an academic exercise, although I’d love it if Dan DiDio and Jim Lee and Geoff Johns and Gail Simone read this, nodded their heads and sent it out as an official release. Seriously. If any of you four want to use this, you have my blessing to use it without compensation, although it would be nice if you donated some money to a charity that benefits disabled people or if you helped the cheerleader in some way.

With that in mind, here’s an imaginary letter from DC to everyone who is upset about this whole mess. I must stress that this is an imaginary letter which does not exist and is purely my wishful thinking. I also need to note that I started writing this piece before a lot of additional announcements, before the Jill Pantozzi / Gail Simone interview … before a lot of additional things came to light which make a lot of the points in this letter irrelevant. But still.

The point of the exercise is to imagine kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit, and to bring appropriate, healthy closure to a loss. Even if the circumstances have changed, even if I know more now than I did then and I feel like I’ve been kicked in the face, I still wish that this had been said instead of everything that has come out in the wake of DC’s announcement that Barbara Gordon will once again be Batgirl.

Dear DC and especially Oracle fans,

We didn’t know. We honestly did not know and would not have anticipated this reaction and outpouring of emotion and support for Oracle.

We knew that some people would be upset because any change in comics, no matter what it is, will upset some people. But we didn’t know how much Oracle meant to you. We had no idea that this change would affect you so much or that you would be so upset.

A lot of readers were excited when Hal Jordan came back and when Barry Allen came back; we simply wanted to bring that level of excitement to a character that we all love. It never occurred to us that in restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk that our world would become less diverse and that in making this decision, we would be removing one of the most prominent and visible disabled people in comics from view. That was never our intention, although that has clearly been the effect and we’re incredibly sorry for that. Clearly, we have more to learn about what diversity really looks like and a long way to go before the DCU is a truly diverse place.

What’s worse is we can’t change this decision. It would just upset more people and cause more outrage among people who were angry about how Barbara Gordon became disabled. It seems, in this case at least, that a lot of people are going to be hurt no matter what we do. However, we can recognize that now and act to not cause more hurt.

We’re sorry that you feel like you don’t have a place in the DCU. We had always considered characters like Cyborg and Cliff Steele to be representatives for disabled people because of their injuries, but it seems that Oracle was special to you because she accepted that her life had changed and continued using her talents to help people … just in a different way.

There’s really no way that we can make it up to you. If we introduce another disabled character right now, you’ll rightly see that as an offensive attempt at pandering. You’d probably wonder how long it would take before we someone cured or healed that person too. And you’d be right to do so. And we can’t introduce a character who is as powerful as Oracle was - that was the result of years of writing by skilled creators and she became that powerful over time.

In short, we screwed up, we can’t fix it and we’re sorry. We thought that everyone would be happy, but we obviously needed to do more research. Unfortunately, all we can do now is recognize what happened and learn from it so that we don’t make this mistake and needlessly hurt so many people again.

The exercise is supposed to make the writer feel better. I’m hoping that will come with time.

In the meantime, I think a lot of us would like a reboot.

The interview is up.

Which interview, you ask?

Seriously? The only interview that pretty much anyone I know has cared about since it was announced - that would be Jill Pantozzi interviewing Gail Simone for Newsarama.

Key takeaways?

1. It appears that Barbara Gordon was going to be Batgirl regardless of whether Ms. Simone wrote the comic or even agreed with the idea.
2. Ms. Simone raised the issue of why Babs was still in a chair while dead people keep coming back to life.
3. Ms. Simone mentioned that some disability advocacy groups argued for restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk.
4. Oracle was - and I’m paraphrasing - too powerful and turned Batman from a detective into a monster hunter as one example.
5. The entire DCU appears to be getting younger and less experienced; in order for other heroes and heroines to be able to make mistakes and learn, Oracle couldn’t keep saving them.

I suppose all of these points make some amount of sense, but it doesn’t alter the harsh reality of this change (and honestly, I’d love to know which disability advocacy organizations supported restoring Babs’ ability to walk - in light of how this change has emotionally affected many disabled comics fans, I think those organizations should make their stance on it public and explain their position).

The most problematic part of this is the second item above. Using this logic, DC is effectively saying that no one ever needs to be disabled in a DC comic again. Somehow, in some way, some magic or technology exists to fix any disability that can be imagined. If that’s the new shape of the DCU, that’s disturbing, but it’s not my decision - my decision is limited to whether I provide any level of financial support by purchasing their comics and, if so, how much.

But restoring Barbara Gordon’s mobility also suggests that no one has to continue being disabled and that in turn begs the question of why Wendy Kuttler (Proxy) still is. Barbara Gordon was paralyzed for 23 years and will have her mobility restored, apparently - according to Ms. Simone - to provide a framework for telling different stories about her (among other reasons, such as limiting the effectiveness of a character who is too powerful in the current DCU and offers what might as well be deus ex machina solutions). In the meantime, Proxy is still in a wheelchair.

It is clear from Ms. Simone’s interview that DC recognized how significant Oracle was and how her work made things easier for heroes, and that putting her back in the field as a cape will reduce that impact. Oddly enough, if we simplify that further and describe it as a physical change which renders someone less able to do certain things, doesn’t that sound like she’s being disabled again?

And yet that’s exactly what’s happening here. Barbara Gordon was disabled by The Joker’s bullet and found a new way to help people, one in which she became so remarkably effective that DC had to make her less useful and less capable, and changed her physical circumstances to mitigate her exceptional capability. In the absence of details, if we talked about a character who became less effective after a significant change in their physical condition, wouldn’t we assume that the character somehow became disabled?

So let’s summarize this briefly:

• DC allowed Alan Moore to paralyze Barbara Gordon for dramatic tension.
• That was apparently one of the key moments sparking Ms. Simone’s decision to begin the Women In Refrigerators list.
• Kim Yale and John Ostrander then created the Oracle character.
• Oracle grew in influence and ability, becoming an invaluable ally for DC’s heroes and heroines.
• DC then made the decision to remove Oracle from her wheelchair, partly because she was too effective and partly to enable new stories (or, perhaps more directly, to create dramatic tension as a result of her reduced effectiveness, particularly when compared to Oracle).

It seems that in DC’s eyes, disability only exists when it serves a story as a plot point, much like harming women. Apparently, Barbara Gordon must have her ability to walk restored because her extraordinary capability resulted in reduced dramatic tension, and if she isn’t in a wheelchair, she’ll be punching people instead of using her most finely honed skills to catch or stop villains more quickly. And apparently Proxy is the flip side of the coin and isn’t sufficiently capable to reduce dramatic tension by using her skills or intellect to intervene, so she can stay in her wheelchair because her physical condition is irrelevant to stories unless it’s for dramatic effect … even though DC is clearly showing us there’s no practical reason for her to be there and there is no barrier preventing her from getting up and walking away.

Using the same feminist perspective and reading that regarded Barbara’s ongoing disability as an ongoing recurrence of the violence done in “The Killing Joke” in light of people returning from the dead, when viewed through the lens of Barbara Gordon being brought out of her wheelchair, Proxy’s continued disability becomes a recurrence of the violence done to her by Wonderdog in exactly the same way.

The more problematic aspect of this reading (damn, there sure are a lot of problematic things about this, aren’t there?) is that it effectively places disabled people in the DCU in the same role as women in refrigerators. Writers used and still use violence toward women as a plot point, an inciting moment to spur a hero or heroine to action, to create motive for them and their actions, particularly if those actions are extreme, such as killing someone.

Likewise, in light of DC’s editorial decision to remove Babs from her wheelchair, it seems that disability now serves a similar, if not the same, purpose - people will only be disabled as long as it meets a writer’s need for the story and then that disability will disappear. Disability is no longer part of the natural order at that point, nor is it a different aspect of being human - it’s something to be repaired or exploited for the sake of drama in a story.

In that context, we must ask what purpose Proxy’s ongoing paralysis serves - according to the way Ms. Simone is approaching Barbara Gordon at the moment, restoring her ability to walk allows for different and new stories to be told. Therefore, Proxy’s paralysis must also serve a narrative purpose because there’s no practical reason for her to remain in a wheelchair if it does not advance a plot.

Perhaps more to the point, and certainly more directly, removing Babs from her wheelchair means that any disabled person who is still disabled is effectively in a proverbial refrigerator.

Consider that for a moment.

I’m saying, very bluntly, that in light of the change to Barbara Gordon, any disabled person remaining in the DCU, in light of the apparent ability to cure any disease and fix any physical ailment up to and including death, is in a refrigerator. There is no reason for them not to have their ability to walk restored, or have cybernetic limbs, or have limbs regrown or … you get the idea.

Being disabled in the DCU is now nothing more than a plot point, one which is as emotionally manipulative as the idea of putting women in refrigerators. And although it seems clear that Ms. Simone didn’t make the decision to restore Babs’ ability to walk, she’s involved with implementing it which is quite striking, considering her work in bringing the issue of violence against women for dramatic purpose to light.

First things first.

An old boss of mine once told me never to assume malice where ignorance could be at play. It’s one of the single best pieces of wisdom I’ve ever been given. Throughout this post, I will assume ignorance is at work. Furthermore, I will not assume that ignorance is intentional, nor will I assume that any harm is intended, even if harm is an outcome.

In short, I will assume - for the sake of this post - that it’s all inadvertent, the sort of thing that, when it’s brought to light, makes people sit back and say “I didn’t know” or “I never thought of it that way.” In short, the sort of thing that helps us better understand each other. I both hope and ask that you will read this post in the same spirit - even if or when it seems difficult to do so, whether because of someone’s actions or comments or your feelings about this whole thing.

It’s official that DC is restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk and that Gail Simone will be writing the character. Jill Pantozzi wrote an amazing piece responding to that announcement, explaining why Oracle is such a profoundly important part of the DCU and why she holds such an important role in comics in general.

In reading over comments added to reblogs of my On disability and visibility … post, I kept seeing the word kyriarchy appear in tags. I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, because as we all know, Wikipedia is the be-all, end-all source for perfectly accurate information on the treasure trove of facts that we call the Internet.

To put it in the most basic terms I can, and if I understand the idea correctly - and please, correct me if I don’t - kyriarchy means that someone can be both part of a minority and a majority at the same time, or part of a social group which can oppress others as well being part of another social group which can be oppressed.

Using myself as an example, I’m a disabled white dude. Although I really hate using academic jargon and rarely do, please forgive me for slipping into it for a moment to break down kyriarchy and make sure I’m getting it (seriously, please correct me if I’m wrong and explain it to me - I love learning new things).

Being white means I’m part of a social group with privilege. Being male means I’m part of a social group with privilege. Being disabled means I’m part of a social group without or with less privilege, or that is de-privileged, or whatever the particular jargon is.

Breaking it down further, Oracle is a disabled white woman with red hair. With respect to this discussion, while I’m partly experiencing the debate through being male and white, I’m certainly experiencing it from my perspective of being disabled. Gail Simone experiences this character much more than I do as a white woman with red hair. And I think any reasonable person can understand exactly why Jill Pantozzi is experiencing Oracle the way she does as a disabled white woman with red hair.

Both Ms. Simone and Ms. Pantozzi see themselves reflected in Barbara Gordon - Ms. Simone saw herself in Batgirl, while Ms. Pantozzi sees herself in Oracle. They’ve both made statements to that effect. I think Ms. Pantozzi’s statement that the real world should be reflected in the DCU’s fictional worlds is vastly more compelling than Ms. Simone’s excitement about getting to write the character who sparked her interest in comics.

Ms. Pantozzi’s comments cut directly to the heart of this matter. While another book anchored by a strong, capable independent woman is always welcome on the shelves, in this case it comes at the expense of one of the perhaps three or four visibly disabled people in all mainstream and most independent comics. Furthermore, it comes at a time when that character was the most visible of them all, considering that - as of the last X-Men trade I read - Charles Xavier was walking.

Now, that begs an interesting question in that I don’t recall such an outcry when Chuck started walking around again - why not? Do we simply expect less from Marvel? Is it that Professor X has gotten up and walked around before? Is it that, as Ms. Pantozzi noted, Dan DiDio noted at Wizard World Philadelphia in 2008 that Barbara Gordon would not walk again? Did Marvel never make a promise like that?

More interestingly, it seems that many of the people who are most concerned and most vocal about this change to Oracle are women. I’m aware of arguments that keeping Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair while countless heroes and heroines return from the dead is effectively a continuation of the violence done to her in “The Killing Joke” (or refridging). The outcry supporting Oracle seems to suggest that at least some readers feel differently about it.

At this point, we have two red-headed white women identifying with Oracle, one of them able and the other disabled. We have a disabled white dude trying to puzzle through feminist interpretations of Barbara Gordon’s ongoing disability in a world where people come back from the dead almost every year but doctors are unable to heal her spinal injury even though Bane broke Bruce Wayne in half and he’s back on his feet. We have people who think that keeping Babs in the chair is effectively reenacting the violence every time she appears because of the injury that put her there and that removing her from the chair will heal that psychological wound (i.e. defridging), we have people who applaud how she grew as a person and hero from that moment …

In short, we have a lot of compelling arguments, all of which are based in profound emotions and stuff that makes people who they are and shapes how they see the world. We’re talking about long-held fandoms that brought people into something they love, and reverence for characters.

And a lot of it seems to deal with how often people see people who look like them in TV shows, movies, etc. (representations of self in media for people who prefer a more academic way of putting it). And all of it is affected by the blinders we all have, just like the ones horses wear to keep them from getting distracted by stuff on the periphery of their perception. We may not wear them by choice, we may not be and usually aren’t aware of their presence, but it’s ostrich logic to think that because we don’t acknowledge them that they don’t exist.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’m disabled. My little girl’s mom identifies as a lesbian these days and half of my little girl’s family is Jewish, some orthodox. My little girl stayed here last night and we talked a bit about this stuff this morning.

My little girl has always been a source of change for me, ranging from writing Tony Hawk directly to inquire why players couldn’t create female characters in certain versions of the video games that bear his name to suggesting non-violent collections to Star Wars Galaxies developers because she wanted to know why I was shooting baby deer. She has helped change the way I see the world and removed blinders that I wasn’t even aware of.

For her part, she gets mad when she doesn’t see girls in comics, games and so forth. To her, it isn’t fair and she puts it as simply as that. This is gender disparity analysis from a 9-year-old. It’s pretty solid and reasonable and I think a lot of comics creators could learn from it.

Anyway, we chatted about the change to Oracle. I asked several questions working up to it and she didn’t see what the big deal was about not seeing disabled people, or LGBT people or people of color. Her mom is gay, and she didn’t see a problem with not seeing LGBT folks on TV. And then I asked her how she would feel if she didn’t see girls, and it suddenly all fell into place for her - she remembered how she felt when she couldn’t play as a woman in a Tony Hawk game (and, on a semi-related gaming side note, Brink offers 100 quadrillion different appearances - more than everyone who has ever lived on this planet combined - and not one of them is a woman) and she seemed to understand - at least intellectually - how it all cascades … how seeing girls is as important to her as seeing GLBT or people of color as heroes is to others … and that this, in turn, extends to disability.

Poof. Blinders gone.

And this is where we come all the way back around to the beginning, and first premises.

Like I said, first things first, do not assume malice and I’m not assuming malice. I’m assuming ignorance, and not willful ignorance - I’m assuming, as I noted, the sort of ignorance that dissipates when someone calmly and reasonably points these things out in plain, simple language. I’m assuming blinders that people aren’t aware of.

And this outcry? This is a good thing. It may be too late to change DC’s editorial direction with Barbara Gordon, but it’s a positive step that this discussion is occurring and that it’s happening in places where it normally wouldn’t, that it’s making people aware of their blinders, and it’s especially positive if it eliminates those blinders to any degree.

And what if … and I’m just thinking out loud on a blog here … what if all of us disabled comics fans and disabled people with a few extra bucks to spend picked a day and time and all went to buy comics? What if we all talked to our local comic shop owners about the importance of accessibility and accommodations for the disabled as we were giving them money? What if we all voted with our dollars that day and made not only our physical presence but our economic presence known?

Good for disabled people. Good for LCS owners. Potentially good for the industry.

Just a thought.

I meant to write about Christine Miserandino’s Spoon Theory that bluejaybirdie loosely referred to in her post about a Batgirl picture with a caption that is either sarcasm or poorly done trolling, but I’ll have to do that later. See, I’m out of spoons now … read the Spoon Theory article if you aren’t familiar with it. You’ll understand.

I absolutely love the way that Ms. Pantozzi explained this. It’s heartfelt, emotional, reasonable, logical and says why Oracle matters so much better than I ever could.

Put simply? It brought me to tears. Literally.

Oracle Is Stronger Than Batgirl Will Ever Be

dcwomenkickingass:

Gail Simone just confirmed it.

Writer Gail Simone sent us a few words about today’s BATGIRL #1 announcement:

“Barbara Gordon is pretty much my everything. Because of the Batman TV show, she was the reason I fell in love with superheroes. Because she was a redhead who could kick ass, she is…

This is not thrilling. This is actually the exact, polar opposite of thrilling. A friend of mine and I quite literally just had this conversation. We’re both men, he’s able-bodied and I’m not, but we both agree that Barbara Gordon was a much more effective hero as Oracle precisely because she wasn’t limited to what she could do in swinging around Gotham.

This is not a step forward for the character in any respect except for literally being able to take a step forward.

With that said, I’m going to ride a pogo stick through a minefield here, so get your flamethrowers ready:

Gail Simone started with Women In Refrigerators and Barbara Gordon was on that list. Reading Ms. Simone’s explanation, it’s clear that she identified and still identifies with Barbara Gordon, so - perhaps more than any other writer, especially in light of her role in bringing violence against women in comics to the forefront of discussion - she should understand how much being able to see a visibly disabled superhero in comics means to people who are disabled. She saw herself reflected in Batgirl, right down to the hair color. We see ourselves reflected in Batgirl, including overcoming tragedy and adversity and becoming stronger because of it.

Ms. Simone gets Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl. The disabled community loses one of the very few characters in comics who was disabled.

Since Charles Xavier was depowered and walking when I last paid attention to The X-Men, are there any other characters in comics who are visibly disabled? For sake of argument, let’s exclude characters who would be disabled in the absence of technology (see: Cable, Cyborg, Forge, etc.) and supporting characters whose role is either incredibly limited or augmented by cybernetics.

Who’s left?

In the wake of that sketch of Barbara Gordon in her Batgirl costume walking away from her wheelchair, I felt compelled to write. I ignored that compulsion until I calmed down, because most of it was frustration and anger.

I can absolutely understand why people are excited about the possibility of Barbara Gordon walking again - it’s not that they’re prejudiced or that they have any animosity for the disabled, it would be joy and happiness for the character. Oddly enough, I’ve had this exact same conversation - only about us - with a friend of mine who has a degenerative condition that will eventually kill him.

You see, I’m disabled. I have been for several years. On the good days, I function well enough to run a few errands or do a load of dishes or laundry. On most days, I have to take medication that renders me incapable of performing a lot of fine motor skill functions and usually knocks me out. On the bad days - and there are more of them than there are good days - I struggle to get to the bathroom which is barely 10 feet from my bed.

My friend has a laundry list of problems - it’s best summarized by noting that he’s about 90-95% quadriplegic and that his conditions will eventually kill him. It could happen sooner rather than later or vice versa, but he knows his death is coming much sooner than mine, and he knows what will kill him or what will allow something else to kill him.

We had a chat a while back. I told him that if I had a wish, I’d wish they’d find a cure for him since my stuff won’t kill me and he responded with one of the most brutally realistic assessments I’ve ever heard from someone - he wished that the docs could fix me because it would take him years of physical therapy to do almost anything, given how much his body has deteriorated. Me? I’d be facing a lot of rehabilitation, but I could probably be back to something resembling normal in a couple of years of intensive physical therapy if the docs can ever patch me up enough to allow for that.

It’s not that we, as disabled people, wouldn’t be happy for Babs if she could walk again. I’d be thrilled if the docs could cure my friend so he doesn’t die. I’d be ecstatic if I heard from a girl I knew back in 8th grade who had spina bifida and she told me that the docs had been able to restore her ability to walk. I have no way to describe how I would feel if the docs could patch me up enough that I could pick up my little girl again or wrestle with her or run around in a park with her. She turns 10 this year, and I don’t know if she remembers when I could do that and did. If you don’t understand how that thought feels - how it feels to be unsure if your little girl remembers when she woke up from a nightmare and you were there to pick her up and comfort her because most of what that child has known of your life is disability - then it’s going to be difficult for you to understand why disabled people look at Babs the way we do.

It’s that every single healing mechanism in the DCU has been tried on Babs and found wanting. None of it has restored her ability to walk. It’s 23-odd years of canon. More importantly, Babs has accepted her disability and made the best of it, transforming herself into a world-class computer expert who does more as Oracle, who helps more heroes, who saves more lives, who stops more villains, than she ever did as Batgirl.

As Batgirl, her ability to effect change was limited to what she could punch. As Oracle, she can reach any network, any data store, contact any hero, anywhere … she can reach farther and deeper than she ever could before. Think of it as the difference between Cyclops and Professor X - Scott Summers can affect only what he can see. Professor X can affect almost anything.

In allowing Alan Moore to disable Barbara Gordon, and then keeping that in continuity since 1988, DC allowed Babs to become a vastly more powerful hero than she had ever been before. It no longer matters whether DC planned it that way (and I doubt they did) or whether it was accidental / inadvertent (and it probably was - scope creep affects every project, and DC probably didn’t notice how integral Oracle had become until Oracle was already so powerful that she couldn’t really be stopped, because what could they do? Paralyze her again?), Oracle had become one of the epic bad-asses of the DCU, and far more bad-ass than Batgirl had ever been. From her wheelchair.

Why does this matter?

Because we, as disabled people, face struggles that the able-bodied can’t understand. As an example, I was trying to cross a two-lane street the other day - I can walk, but I walk slowly and with a cane to stabilize my gait. I wait for cars to pass so I’m not inconveniencing anyone. I entered the crosswalk and a car pulled up on the cross-street, then started to turn directly into me and honked at me to speed up. Until the driver saw the cane. Then they looked away and something that looked like shame spread across their face.

That’s all too typical. Most disabled people are used to pity - people meaning well, but being inadvertently condescending. Most disabled people are used to avoidance - people seeing us and then quickly looking away, whether to avoid staring or because they’re uncomfortable with the disabled. It’s just part of the territory, like sharks in water or bears in woods or Godzillas in Tokyo.

But then I recently read an article about the difference between monsters and heroes in comics. And frankly, I politely and academically lost my proverbial shit when the author began talking about The Other, and the ability to pass as normal and so on. In essence, the author’s clumsy and ineffective scholarship, along with his jargon-laden writing, equated the disabled - people with canes, in wheelchairs, etc. - with monsters because we can’t pass as able-bodied people. In the author’s argument, he distinctly noted that it isn’t power that makes people monsters, it’s their appearance and ability to pass as normal. The author went so far as to say that people perceive the mere existence of The Other as a crime against nature.

At the time, I wrote:

“As a visibly disabled person, I’m already feeling a bit like the author’s saying I’m a violation of the natural order because I can’t readily ‘pass’ as normal. More bluntly, the way this argument is being framed so far feels somewhat prejudiced, regardless of whether it’s intentional or not. If the distinction between a monster and human is whether one can ‘pass’ as normal - and I can’t - then the author is effectively arguing that those who can’t are monsters.”

Now, for the sake of people who managed to get through life without dealing with The Other or abjection in critical theory (and also don’t want to wade through those Wikipedia links, and honestly, I can’t blame you), here’s a brief summation of the ideas:

The Other, simply put, is different from The Same. The Same is you and people like you, or something else which is like something else. The Other is anything outside that grouping, especially if it makes you feel uncomfortable. That’s where the idea of abjection comes in.

Abjection is the part of The Other that makes people feel uncomfortable. Since The Other exists outside The Same, being faced with it can be traumatic for people, such as seeing a friend in hospice care, dying from cancer. Abjection, in this sense, refers to anything that falls outside someone’s definition of sameness - it can include race, gender, sexual preference or gender orientation, etc. And it often includes the disabled.

Now cue up your Don LaFontaine voice:

“In a world filled with people who see monsters everywhere, one brave woman has the courage and strength to prove them all wrong just by being herself.”

So let’s be really blunt. And be honest with yourself, even if you never admit this to anyone. Disabled people make people feel uncomfortable. I spend a lot of time in doctors’ offices with people who have to be transported by ambulance due to their disability, and I still look at them and think how comparatively lucky I am.

Disability reminds us how fragile we really are as a species and how easily it can be taken away by disease, by aging, by freak accident. Or by some jackass in clown make-up wearing a Hawaiian shirt, although that is a statistically less likely way of becoming disabled.

Disability, in very profound ways, scares us. In fact, it terrifies us because it reminds us of our mortality. It reminds us that we will all die someday, and that we don’t all get to jump on grenades to save our friends or heroically push a child out of the way of a speeding truck. Most of us will die of old age, swallowing more pills than we did the year before to control our heart problems, our cholesterol count, to improve our kidney functions and so on.

Seeing disability and fearing it is seeing our future and not being emotionally ready or prepared to even acknowledge it, much less face it.

So this Otherness and abjection stuff isn’t just crap-ass academic Ivory Tower bullshit. It isn’t just some blowhard who never worked a real job talking out their ass. It’s real, practical, applicable stuff which is usually pretty rare for critical theory.

But here’s the thing - The Other is only The Other as long as people are able to remain ignorant of it. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. When people begin being exposed to something different, it can be traumatic - you may not remember the first time someone besides your parents held you as a baby, but the adults in the room probably talked about how cute you were as you cried because you recognized The Other - it wasn’t you and it wasn’t your source of milk, therefore it was The Other, it was abject and it scared you. But as you grew, adults - giants that they were - became less scary.

And the same is true for disability, even in something that seems as simple as a comic book.

Seeing a disabled person in a comic is sufficiently removed from direct personal experience to ease the discomfort someone might feel when seeing someone in a wheelchair. Seeing that character over and over further reduces those negative emotions. Think of it, in a way, as exposure therapy for The Other.

So. Why are we upset about the idea of Barbara Gordon coming out of her wheelchair?

Because you’ve said she couldn’t for more than 23 years.

Because she’s visibly disabled and extremely capable, arguably more so than many able-bodied heroes.

Because we have people writing ham-handed critical theory about comics which equates disabled people with monsters.

Because goddammit, she’s one of the very few disabled role models in comics, one of the very people in comics that disabled people can look at and see their own struggles for respect, for equality, for simple dignity reflected back at them.

Because when you create a character like this, when you maintain that character and her origins for so long and let people cheer for her and - by proxy - for ourselves, you have something like a responsibility to maintain that character, to not tarnish her with scandal or sordid behavior that is not in keeping with her ethics and morals, to uphold that character as an example of the goodness she has represented for the past quarter-century despite, or (in Oracle’s case) because of being in a wheelchair.

When you toy with that, when you play with it, you aren’t just updating a character or making something more relevant - you’re tinkering with one of the very few characters in comics that we can look at and recognize as one of our own.

And is it really wrong or harmful to want to see yourself reflected in a comic, to imagine yourself being able to be that heroic and noble, before returning to the grind of daily life, when simple tasks are struggles and may require assistance, before you go back to needing a nurse’s assistance to simply go to the bathroom?

When you tinker with this stuff, you’re messing around with things that can make difficult lives easier, that can bring joy into those lives and happiness that one of us is reflected in this fictional universe, and she’s even more capable and heroic than people who don’t think twice about whether they’re physically able to fly around the world - much less stroll down the block.

When you tinker with this stuff, you’re effectively tinkering with reality, and when you erase a character like Oracle from the universe, the effect might as well be removing the disabled from our reality as well.

It’s already June and the reboot / relaunch is coming in September. We’ll see then what happens with Batgirl, Barbara Gordon and Oracle. In the meantime, I’m crossing my fingers that disabled people still have a place of heroism in the DCU.

First things first: Barbara Gordon is one of the only disabled people in comics. Not only is she disabled, she is a bad-ass, not just in her hacking skills and as Oracle, but a certifiable ass-kicking heroine who could, from her wheelchair, open up a can on some punks. Although Alan Moore’s decision to cripple her in 1988’s “The Killing Joke” was a questionable plot device, it’s one of the very few things that hasn’t been retconned in the last 23 years.

Moreover, Barbara Gordon is a visibly disabled person in a world where disabled people don’t seem to exist in any positions of agency (i.e. they’re always the subject - people help them, save them, etc.). She has not only saved herself, she has saved others as well, despite her disability or, arguably, because of it. If she hadn’t been put in a wheelchair, would we have had Oracle? When you consider Oracle’s impact on the DCU, it seems much more significant and far-reaching than anything Batgirl could have done.

If DC is, in fact, restoring Barbara Gordon’s ability to walk and removing her from her wheelchair (never mind the storylines which explained why Babs couldn’t be healed even by Purple Ray technology), that is counter-evidence for their claim that the new DCU will be more diverse. Why? And even more to the point, why does it matter? Because something on the order of 40 million Americans - around 10% of the current population, possibly slightly more - have some form of disability. Representing that isn’t just reflecting diversity, it’s reflecting reality. For those who would argue that only physically fit people can be heroes in comics, I’d point to the last 23 years of Babs Gordon’s life. Nearly everyone’s favorite hero or heroine in the DCU has had their ass saved by Babs, probably more than once.

Alan Moore is an amazing writer, arguably the best comics writer to date, but the decision to cripple Barbara Gordon to make Batman angry was one of his low points. However, that tragic plot resulted in an amazing new character who became a crucial part of the DCU. Removing that character won’t make things more accessible to new readers - at this point, the only people who remember Barbara Gordon being able to walk are 35 or older and have had nearly a quarter-century of her being in a wheelchair.

Just for sake of comparison, Geoff Johns was born in 1973 and was roughly 15 years old when The Joker shot Babs. Jim Lee was born in 1964 and was about 24. Dan DiDio was born in 1959 and was about 29. When that plot has been reality for roughly half of the lives of the key architects of the new DCU, it’s something that might as well be set in stone. Heroes don’t need to replace most of their body parts with machinery to be heroic. They can be just as heroic from a wheelchair because being able to stand up has never been a necessary component of being able to stand up for what you believe in or deciding to do the right thing.

Popgun Chao$ has an interesting piece about the reboot which approaches the possible changes with reason and logic, generally two alien concepts when it comes to comic fandom. Why, there’s barely any frothing or foaming at the mouth!

The site makes several reasonable points:

• Comics must change to remain fresh and gain new readers.
• The changes could result in something better - we simply don’t have enough information at this point to make any judgments.
• This gives new readers a clear, recent starting point. It isn’t a matter of picking up with an issue numbered in the 600s, 800s or 900s, it’s a matter of grabbing the first four issues.
• It may result in consolidating titles - I don’t think many people would argue that the number of monthly Bat-books (whether minis, one-shots or ongoing) is a little out of control.
• The DCU can move forward with uniform purpose.

I’d suggest reading that piece before continuing here. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

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You’re back? Great.

One specific, meaningful concern that readers justifiably have is that a character may be written out of continuity or changed so that they are no longer recognizable. When Barry Allen returned, I heard comics fans expressing frustration because Barry Allen’s death meant something and he had remained dead - they had about 200 issues (or, in linear time, about 17 years) of Wally West as The Flash and didn’t see a need for the change. Now it seems clear that DC has been laying groundwork for this change for some time. Barry Allen returns, appears in The Flash regularly after a 17-odd-year absence, Flashpoint begins and then there’s this.

It’s hard not to look at this and see some level of causality.

With that said, look at the list of characters that Popgun Chao$ mentions: Tim Drake, Connor Kent, Wally West, Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, specifically. That’s Red Robin, Superboy, the old Flash, an older but still much-loved Batgirl and the current and apparently increasingly-loved Batgirl.

If the purpose of this is giving people a jumping-on point, Batgirl is sufficiently new that readers can jump on now and not miss much. If the purpose is boosting sales, I’m not sure that changing Batgirls will do much. As an exercise in masochism, I looked up Batgirl’s sales on ICv2 for the last six months. Here they are:

April 2011: 24,310

March 2011: 24,821

February 2011: 24,390

January 2011: 25,189

December 2010: 25,225

November 2010: 25,827

Month to month, the sales hover between 24k and 26k, with a general, slight downward trend. Batgirl, over the past six months, generally appears to lose a percent or two of its readership with each month. Some titles which aren’t doing as well? Legion Of Super Heroes for one. Adventure Comics, Supergirl, Titans, Secret Six, Power Girl and Booster Gold for a few more.

There’s only so much DC can do to revamp those titles. Legion Of Super Heroes is already relatively new, with only a dozen or so issues in the current volume. The same is true for Adventure Comics, although a recent renumbering makes it look like there’s significantly more history in this volume than there actually is.

More to the point, fans are invested in these characters and often identify with them. It’s instructive to remember that Robin was originally created specifically to have a character in the Batman books that young boys could identify with to increase readership. Yes, I’m citing Wikipedia, but only because I can’t find the actual source online.

So let’s put this bluntly and as directly as possible: DC has actively created characters to ensure that fans are emotionally attached to these books. Although I don’t know how many people today would be as honest about the reason for creating a character as Robin’s creators were, it is not only possible but likely that DC and other comics companies create some characters for precisely the same reason today, whether to draw in GLBT readers or people of color or women or disabled people or whomever.

DC - and, by proxy, other comics companies - cannot then be surprised when readers become upset because those characters are removed from continuity, killed, crippled, unceremoniously dumped or have their origins changed from “getting [their] powers from a transcendent scientist-mentor” to being “grown from the DNA of Aryan super-athletes and Hitler’s personal sex midgets” (quoted from Warren Ellis’ extraordinary “Planetary” series).

And companies want people to form emotional connections with their brands - it keeps them coming back for more and that’s what every marketer wants to achieve. The downside to it is that people expect the same with, at most, incremental change (i.e. 15% more cleaning power!) or, as is usually the case, only the illusion of change. Shake things up too much and that brand loyalty disappears because the fundamental components of that brand are gone.

And it’s important to note here that DC isn’t the brand - the brand is Batman or Superman or Wonder Woman or Power Girl or Supergirl or any other hero you choose to name or that you appreciate. Change too much about them and the loyal fans will eventually realize the hero they have is completely different from the hero they knew - witness the complaints about J. Michael Straczynski’s run on Superman and how he characterized Superman in his walk across America.

The brand isn’t the DC logo and Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio and Jim Lee. Superman existed before all three were born, as did Batman and Wonder Woman. While Geoff Johns is a talented writer and may draw people to read Green Lantern or The Flash or Aquaman based on his skills, he isn’t the brand. The brand is the characters and the shared universe they inhabit. It’s the stuff DC makes, not DC itself.

I could care less who publishes the comics I read as long as it isn’t some incredibly offensive organization which I can’t support in any sort of good conscience. I care about the characters and the stories. While talented creators typically develop more interesting stories and offer deeper insights into the characters and I freely admit that I’ll pick up a book simply because one of my favorite creators started working on it, what keeps me coming back are the stories, and no creator, no matter how good, can keep me coming back to a lousy book with uninspired characters and boring stories.

So shift the creative teams around. Mix them up. Have them draw names out of hats to find out who they’ll be working with and on what book(s). Play spin the bottle for all I care. Just remember that the characters and the stories are what keep comics fans coming back.

Remember that we’re emotionally invested in these characters, and any remotely competent brand manager would not only recognize but salivate over that loyalty.

Remember that these characters reflect who we are, as readers and as people.

Remember that comics may be fantasy, but at least some of us like to imagine ourselves in them and it’s easier to do that when we see people who look like us in these pages.

Remember that we love this stuff, and if you mess with it too much, you break our hearts.

Remember that this is a two-way street, not unlike a romantic relationship, and that if you play too many games with our hearts and stand us up for dates and treat us like dirt and take us for granted, eventually we’ll just walk away from it all because we’ve had enough.