Batgirl: New Outfit

[erikson]

I always laugh a bit when people use the subject of comics aimed at young people as some sort of a pejorative. When one of the major reasons the industry is in its death knell and sells a tiny fraction of what it once did is because the decided everything had to be dark and gritty and aimed at adults.

Comics have been dark since I was a kid back in the 80s and I haven't seen this kind of mass complaint about it till a few years ago. You would never have seen a mainstream comic that looked like this back then. Even in the silver age super heroes weren't drawn to look like Disney characters. Even TMNT was originally a dark property. Go back to the origins of comics, they weren't very deep but they were pretty dark as well. If now the new zeitgeist is for everything to be bubblegum and rainbows fine, but don't expect people who have enjoyed the growing maturity of comics since the 80s to enjoy this. Comics sold fine before so I doubt just dumbing them all down now will revive the genre. The downtick in sales is oprobably generated by a host of factors other than just the "darkness" (and by darkness I get it most people mean not whimsical and light hearted, few DC/Marvel titles are much darker than what I read when I was a kid) Like I said, if they lightened the mood a bit that would have been fine, but this looks cartoonish. And I assume Babs will never interact with her brother ever again (who is a serial killer who is active all over the DCU, established as such in the previous continuity). If they did an all ages line I wouldn't have a problem, but I don't see how I am supposed to take this gangily, badly dressed child character as an evolution of the grown woman I have been reading about the past few years. I'll just call this from now on "Wertham's Revenge"

[disguiseartist1]

If now the new zeitgeist is for everything to be bubblegum and rainbows fine, but don't expect people who have enjoyed the growing maturity of comics since the 80s to enjoy this.

The fact that comics have been preoccupied with pandering to people who have been reading them since the 80's rather than actively courting new readers is part of the problem. Trying something that appeals to women and younger readers rather than the rest of the dreck DC puts out is a nice step in the right direction.

[Suicide]

It doesn't matter if the books are dark or light-hearted. A good read is a good read. I certainly wouldn't say the death knell of the industry came with darker and and adult tone. It came from horrible marketing decisions like printing the same comic with 50 different variant hologram collectable covers to try and forcibly create rarity and intrigue. The toy industry suffers from this same thought process. Comics are at a high point of intrigue now that they've successfully crossed a medium for the first time. The reason I like this is because it looks DIFFERENT. It's taking a staple character and actually doing something that looks like a reboot. A new take on an old staple. A modern angle on her original concept and appearances. I really didn't see that in Simone's run. I saw her pretty much feeding her love of creating new crazy people to act crazy in very specific and crazy ways. It's like Frank Miller and Sin City. She just can't seem to help but write Sinister Six.

[erikson]

If now the new zeitgeist is for everything to be bubblegum and rainbows fine, but don't expect people who have enjoyed the growing maturity of comics since the 80s to enjoy this.

The fact that comics have been preoccupied with pandering to people who have been reading them since the 80's rather than actively courting new readers is part of the problem. Trying something that appeals to women and younger readers rather than the rest of the dreck DC puts out is a nice step in the right direction.

Really? So kids in the 80s liked drama and maturity, but modern kids want cartoons? And why is this just a DC thing? Marvel's titles are for the most part unrelentingly miserable to. Look at All New X-men, about teenagers contstantly being traumatized? The curreent Cap run which is one misery after another inflcited on him. The current Original Sin crossover that is about the Watcher being murdered and having his eye ball carved out. That bad to or are Marvel fans allowed to like that? DC puts out dreck? Because someone watched Teen Titans a few years ago and thought that is what the comics were supposed to be about? So I guess you want the comic readership to be 9 year olds and women. Have fun with that, I'm sure the kids will stick with the 50s era pap once they hit puberty.

[erikson]

It doesn't matter if the books are dark or light-hearted. A good read is a good read. I certainly wouldn't say the death knell of the industry came with darker and and adult tone. It came from horrible marketing decisions like printing the same comic with 50 different variant hologram collectable covers to try and forcibly create rarity and intrigue. The toy industry suffers from this same thought process. Comics are at a high point of intrigue now that they've successfully crossed a medium for the first time. The reason I like this is because it looks DIFFERENT. It's taking a staple character and actually doing something that looks like a reboot. A new take on an old staple. A modern angle on her original concept and appearances. I really didn't see that in Simone's run. I saw her pretty much feeding her love of creating new crazy people to act crazy in very specific and crazy ways. It's like Frank Miller and Sin City. She just can't seem to help but write Sinister Six.

A reboot in the middle of her run? Turning her into a flightly kid? That is what I am having problems with. She is an intergal member of the Bat family and this will wrench her away from the rest of the line entirely. Unless people want Batman 66 to be the status quo in the Batman line I doubt this new Babs will be able to participate in very much, when a ton of stuff happening in the main books directly affect her (her brother's staus, her father's staus, Dick Grayson's apprent death and her sadness over that). If DC wanted to try something like this they should have done it with a character like Supergirl (a character I actually am a bigger fan of than Babs BTW). She has had very little establsihed in her current continuity, and she is actually a teenager, as apposed to the college graduate 20 something Babs. I get that Batgirl is a more prominent property, but if they wanted to de-age her and make her a kid (which she wasn't even when she originated) they should have done that before. So you make a whole readership (and Batgirl is amongst the top selling female super hero titles) who grew to enjoy the mature young woman that was being depicted now is to be expected to accept she suffered massive brain trauma and turned into a kid (and is there such a thing as a light hearted neighbrohood in Gotham, couldn't they had just moved her to another city?) ? I hope DC will gain more readers than they lose with this because from what I can see most of the people who actually read the book hate this new direction. Just to let it be clear, I usually don't comment here on stuff that I dislike (I never post on Star Wars discussion threads for example) but this was one of my favorite titles and newly favorite characters. If this was just lightening the tone a bit (to say the tone in the previous Nightwing title) I would not have much of a problem. But this looks like going from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 all in one step.

[erikson]

And I also want to mention all the people comparing this to Waid's Daredevil. Is that comic really "light hearted"? Or is it just not Frank Miller? Matt still suffers regularly in that title. His father's grave is vandalized and the corpse stolen. We get a gruesome paralized version of Bullseye. Matt loses his law license in NY and has to leave the city. Foggy gets cancer and almost dies and now has to live under ground with everybody thinking he is dead. Will anything like this happen in the new BG title? Is this just bashing DC? Why are people not pointing all these fingers at Marvel as well, whose titles, and more so their youth titles, are constalty grimm and dark. You can have mass slaughter of children in Avenger's Arena, and a constaltly mopey and miserable teenage Jean Gray put on trial for intergalactic genocide in All New X-men and people say the books are great. A full grown woman fights the same kind of crime all her related Bat characters fight at DC and it's the end of the world. I wish I were a Marvel fan rather than DC because they obviosuly get a constant pass.

[Suicide]

A reboot in the middle of her run? Turning her into a flightly kid? That is what I am having problems with.

That to me is a CONSTANT in the New 52 when they can't decide their continuity. XD Like all the editorial missteps about weather or not Red Robin was an actual Robin Sidekick and WHERE THE HELL J'onn is in relation to other characters. He's changed personalities and locations like 3 times in the first year. This whole thing has felt like they're grasping and straws when they comes to the complete continuity of the universe. Hence why artists and writers are leaving in droves since this whole editorial mandated nightmare began.

[erikson]

A reboot in the middle of her run? Turning her into a flightly kid? That is what I am having problems with.

That to me is a CONSTANT in the New 52 when they can't decide their continuity. XD Like all the editorial missteps about weather or not Red Robin was an actual Robin Sidekick and WHERE THE HELL J'onn is in relation to other characters. He's changed personalities and locations like 3 times in the first year. This whole thing has felt like they're grasping and straws when they comes to the complete continuity of the universe. Hence why artists and writers are leaving in droves since this whole editorial mandated nightmare began.

Then you should have the same issues with this that I have but on an even larger scale.

And really...have you been following Marvel? Why is it they get a pass for morbid, depressing and gruesome content in their teen oriented books but DC gets bashed for having them in books featuring adults? Do you see why I feel put upon as a DC fan. My gripe honestly is more with the hypocritical bi-polar fan base than the company.

[rider28031]

And I also want to mention all the people comparing this to Waid's Daredevil. Is that comic really "light hearted"? Or is it just not Frank Miller? Matt still suffers regularly in that title. His father's grave is vandalized and the corpse stolen. We get a gruesome paralized version of Bullseye. Matt loses his law license in NY and has to leave the city. Foggy gets cancer and almost dies and now has to live under ground with everybody thinking he is dead. Will anything like this happen in the new BG title? Is this just bashing DC? Why are people not pointing all these fingers at Marvel as well, whose titles, and more so their youth titles, are constalty grimm and dark. You can have mass slaughter of children in Avenger's Arena, and a constaltly mopey and miserable teenage Jean Gray put on trial for intergalactic genocide in All New X-men and people say the books are great. A full grown woman fights the same kind of crime all her related Bat characters fight at DC and it's the end of the world. I wish I were a Marvel fan rather than DC because they obviosuly get a constant pass.

From what I did read, the reason I think people really like Waid's Daredevil is that Matt, while he does suffer, doesn't dwell on his past like he did in Brian Michael Bendis' run. He tries to adapt to the best of his abilities and tries to return to his 'swashbuckling' roots. The comic, in truth, isn't light-heartened, it's that the attitude has changed to be slightly more optimistic and having some sense of humor. Daredevil acknowledges that he's been through a lot of crap in his life and tries to not suffer from his past anymore. Even then, I think that's probably going to be thrown through a loop pretty soon with the Original Sins tie-in. As a DC fan, I think the reason Marvel gets a pass is that, from my limited experience with those titles, they've kind of always had this inherent darkness compared to DC. I'd even argue that Marvel is even more messed up what with what I've heard about Avengers Arena and what I did read of the current X-Men titles, of which I have since dropped because it got very old, very quickly.

Is that to say this new Batgirl run will be inherently light-hearted and turn Barbara into a 'flighty' girl? We don't know, no one's read the first issue. I think the problem may be that some of the official comics art is making her appear much younger then she actually is. The writers have stressed that they are acknowledging the Gail Simone run, that Barbara would be focusing on graduate school, and that they are featuring characters introduced during that time. I agree with Erikson that I think it's bullshit that Marvel seems to get a pass, dare I say, even a pat on the back when they are doing far more crueler things to their characters then DC's doing at the moment, now matter how much the New 52 screwed things up. As much as I had quite a few problems with Simone's run, I still enjoyed when it first started out but it got old after the first 12 issues or so with the constant crossovers with the main Batman title. I wouldn't mind if they did a revamp of that particular title, I just didn't think it needed to appear to go to such an extreme. We won't know until October to read the book and see what the damage, if there is any, is.

[erikson]

And I also want to mention all the people comparing this to Waid's Daredevil. Is that comic really "light hearted"? Or is it just not Frank Miller? Matt still suffers regularly in that title. His father's grave is vandalized and the corpse stolen. We get a gruesome paralized version of Bullseye. Matt loses his law license in NY and has to leave the city. Foggy gets cancer and almost dies and now has to live under ground with everybody thinking he is dead. Will anything like this happen in the new BG title? Is this just bashing DC? Why are people not pointing all these fingers at Marvel as well, whose titles, and more so their youth titles, are constalty grimm and dark. You can have mass slaughter of children in Avenger's Arena, and a constaltly mopey and miserable teenage Jean Gray put on trial for intergalactic genocide in All New X-men and people say the books are great. A full grown woman fights the same kind of crime all her related Bat characters fight at DC and it's the end of the world. I wish I were a Marvel fan rather than DC because they obviosuly get a constant pass.

From what I did read, the reason I think people really like Waid's Daredevil is that Matt, while he does suffer, doesn't dwell on his past like he did in Brian Michael Bendis' run. He tries to adapt to the best of his abilities and tries to return to his 'swashbuckling' roots. The comic, in truth, isn't light-heartened, it's that the attitude has changed to be slightly more optimistic and having some sense of humor. Daredevil acknowledges that he's been through a lot of crap in his life and tries to not suffer from his past anymore. Even then, I think that's probably going to be thrown through a loop pretty soon with the Original Sins tie-in. As a DC fan, I think the reason Marvel gets a pass is that, from my limited experience with those titles, they've kind of always had this inherent darkness compared to DC. I'd even argue that Marvel is even more messed up what with what I've heard about Avengers Arena and what I did read of the current X-Men titles, of which I have since dropped because it got very old, very quickly.

Is that to say this new Batgirl run will be inherently light-hearted and turn Barbara into a 'flighty' girl? We don't know, no one's read the first issue. I think the problem may be that some of the official comics art is making her appear much younger then she actually is. The writers have stressed that they are acknowledging the Gail Simone run, that Barbara would be focusing on graduate school, and that they are featuring characters introduced during that time. I agree with Erikson that I think it's bullshit that Marvel seems to get a pass, dare I say, even a pat on the back when they are doing far more crueler things to their characters then DC's doing at the moment, now matter how much the New 52 screwed things up. As much as I had quite a few problems with Simone's run, I still enjoyed when it first started out but it got old after the first 12 issues or so with the constant crossovers with the main Batman title. I wouldn't mind if they did a revamp of that particular title, I just didn't think it needed to appear to go to such an extreme. We won't know until October to read the book and see what the damage, if there is any, is.

Actually I would say Marvel and DC went dark at around the same time in the 80s. Sure Marvel in the 60s was more complex and mature, but it was not uber dark either. When comics began to go seriously dark you had Miller's Daredevil over at Marvel, and Dark Knight Returns at DC. You had Death of Jean DeWolfe in Spidey, and Death in the Family in Batman. The Marvel characters started off as more complex in the 60s (when DC was still playing ball with the condictions imposed on comics by the code), but by the seventies DC was breaking up Batman and Robin and Green Arrow's Speedy was a heroine adict.

About the BG title, I'm giving it a try, but in my mind they should have lightened the tone a tad rather than trashed the character entirely, giving her a rediculous childish looking costume and made explicite that the tone will be "light hearted". I've heard people say they are trying to replicate their success with the Harely Quinn title (that title is funny, but how is all the constant violent murder light hearted exactly?), but she is an ancillary character the bairly affects any other titles. This is taking a major member of the Bat line of titles and putting her off limits.

[Suicide]

Then you should have the same issues with this that I have but on an even larger scale.

They don't from me. I fucking hated Avengers Arena. The way comics handle teen heroes is quite sickening from most ends. DC loves killing off Teen Titans and whenever a teen group shows up on Marvel they have to kill ALL of them or traumatize them to a point of not being heroes anymore. I'll say it again. Dark or light tone doesn't matter to me if it's a good read. But the companies are gonna do this kinda thing all the time. They've rebooted in the middle of individual runs constantly to keep intrigue and interest up well before New 52 was conceived. For me it all comes down to that intrigue and opinion, nothing more. When they rebooted Fantastic Four and split them in the FF and Future Foundation I found myself gravitating more toward FF than future foundation because it looked different and like a call back. But lo and behold the writing ended up being better on the Future Foundation side once I started getting into them. So maybe this will be utter crap when it comes to the Gail Simone run but I was just so thoroughly bored by that run I stopped getting it. I'll pick this run up and see how it is. So they did something right for me at least cuz I'm gonna buy it

[erikson]

Then you should have the same issues with this that I have but on an even larger scale.

They don't from me. I fucking hated Avengers Arena. The way comics handle teen heroes is quite sickening from most ends. DC loves killing off Teen Titans and whenever a teen group shows up on Marvel they have to kill ALL of them or traumatize them to a point of not being heroes anymore. I'll say it again. Dark or light tone doesn't matter to me if it's a good read. But the companies are gonna do this kinda thing all the time. They've rebooted in the middle of individual runs constantly to keep intrigue and interest up well before New 52 was conceived. For me it all comes down to that intrigue and opinion, nothing more. When they rebooted Fantastic Four and split them in the FF and Future Foundation I found myself gravitating more toward FF than future foundation because it looked different and like a call back. But lo and behold the writing ended up being better on the Future Foundation side once I started getting into them. So maybe this will be utter crap when it comes to the Gail Simone run but I was just so thoroughly bored by that run I stopped getting it. I'll pick this run up and see how it is. So they did something right for me at least cuz I'm gonna buy it

ok, we shall see . I'll admit that my dislike of the severity of the change and the art style (for this title, not the style in and of itself), and my complete loathing of the new costume have colored my vission. All I hope is once this is done we can hav a lighter version of Babs that is still written as an adult and wearing a real Batgirl costume.

My complaints about dark and light though are not directed at you, but it seems to be in the zeitgeist now to attack DC but not Marvel for producing the same or even more gruesome content.

oh, and do you enjoy the current FF title where the Reeds have lost their kids and all the members hate each other now?

[Suicide]

Naw can't say I'm reading FF at the moment.

[erikson]

Naw can't say I'm reading FF at the moment.

Out of curiosity what do you think about people proclaiming that this new Babs is not being "sexualized"? I see people who are criticizing the costume charged with just not liking it because her breasts are not visible. Does this make any sense? Comics today are being strangled by PC. Babs wears almost the exact same costume as Batman but becuase she has a female physique and he doesn't that is misogynist some how? Do all abult women now have to be drawn to look like they're fifteen? Do you need to intro Bat burkas and Super parkas for all superheroines now? Are the same people complaing that Gal Gadot is too skinny to play Wonder Woman the same ones that want BG drawn to look like Sarah plain and tall?

[Suicide]

You will never hear me agreeing with a costume being "sexualized." It's a comic book. Everyone is an over muscled perfect embodiment of human physique. So no I have no problem with her other look or Harley's Arkham City look. It's silly. Her whole character is based on wanting to bone a psychopath. Of course she's sexualized. But I will say this new look also falls inline with why I'm interested in it. It looks DIFFERENT. When I saw the reboot designs that were all done in that Jim Lee style with the "FUTURE" line patterns in all the costumes I yawned. Pretty hard. Bab's looked like her classic introduction look which was nice but it had those same spandex-y line breaks all over it (http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2011 ... inting.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Those aren't inherently bad but it just dragged me back to how EVERYTHING else looked. I understand consistency but consistency of boring doesn't resonate with me.