Interesting article, but going back to the essence of the character and writing about hope is as much important.

And that doesn't mean that there's no room for stories about disabled characters.

Was Oracle a role model for people in wheelchairs ? Maybe.  And maybe too that this role can be taken by some other character, maybe even that a new character can be created and become just as dear to the readers as Babs as Oracle was for many.

But please give hope some space.

Batgirl is back. She's Barbara Gordon, she is a proof that in comics at least there's room for hope, and sometime hope is what helps the most in the real world.

Newarama has an article written by a red-head woman who is in a
wheelchair. This news made her cry, because she lost her hero.

Plus to me this isn't hope; this is sad and insulting. (Restoring Batgirl
without intending it to be temporary while saying things like this is
exciting, good etc., is saying that being disabled make her less of a
person. )


Edited by Kip Lewis on 06 June 2011 at 4:34pm

No Kip. It just means that it was an error to do that to the character in the first place.

And frankly how would i have done it if i was in charge?

I would have used alternate realities. There's really room for an Earth one and an Earth two. For a Babs who is Batgirl on one earth and one who is Oracle on another.

As I said several pages back, Oracle is one of the only disabled female
characters and the only major one at DC, I can think of off the top of
my head. Losing her diminished diversity, not increases it.

(And what happens if Barb as Batgirl fails, even with Gail Simone
writing?)

The two versions (alternate realities) I could go with.

Stèphane, what you call an "error" someone else calls their life.

***************

We have to be very careful with that kind of comment. nobody i hope limits his/her life to a comicbook character.

That people in wheelchair feel for a character to who they can identifie themselves is understandable, and i'm all for giving them an earth 2 Oracle Babs.

On the other hand that people who are not handicaped use the pain of other people to keep a version of a character they preffer is not acceptable.

I can understand DC seeing some value in Dick Grayson as Nightwing. But Jason Todd? Damian Wayne? They're excess baggage.