Tony, I like that idea a lot.

I dunno; "Here's your replacement wheelchair-bound heroine" almost strikes me as being more insulting for those affected by the reversal.  I'm morbidly curious to see if there's a "replacement Oracle" in the new Birds of Prey book. 

And Alan Moore had nothing to do with Oracle's continued existance.  Babs stayed Oracle because she was popular as Oracle for going on 23 years now (2 years longer than she was Batgirl.  Huh.).  If nothing else, she stopped getting shunted over to comic book limbo every few years like she did in her Batgirl days.  If she wasn't, she would have been repaired and recaped long before now. 

So looking over the new Batman line...  11 titles?  4 of which are solo Batman books?  Geez.  For all the complaints of "convoluted continuity" (which for so many seems to boil down to "I want new creative teams to ignore stories/changes I didn't like"), things don't really get convoluted until you do one or both of two things:  screw with old stories and/or have the same characters appearing in too many places.  The former means a new reader can't go through the backlist with any sense of structure because of the contradictions and the latter makes it more difficult to find the right place to just read Batman stories and easy to feel overwhelmed if you feel obligated to get all or none of them.

And now that they've killed the continuing numbering, I really have to question the point of continuing with Detective Comics (and Action, too, for that matter).  Without the high numbers, it's just yet another Batman book and they'd be better off giving it a "Batman" name so it doesn't get overlooked amongst the rest. 

(So I guess now I have to get #282-295 to earn Detective Comics' membership in my elite "600 club" (so elite, there aren't any members yet).  I was going back and forth with continuing post #881 or going back.  Nice of DC to simplify it for me. :-) )

For these books, I had been getting three of them:  Detective, Batgirl and Birds of Prey.  No interest in the new Detective (and the main reason I got it was liking Snyder's take on Dick Grayson so no plans to follow him to Batman).  I don't mind the character upheaval in Birds of Prey so much as I can't think of anytime I've heard good things about Duane Swierczynski's work (although to be fair his biggest project that I know about was a Cable series that wasn't allowed to go anywhere).  That might get a flip test.

Batgirl's in questionable territory.  I hate to support this book as it represents exactly what I hate about the whole relaunch - using the "cosmic reset" button to fix what wasn't broken in the first place and putting the managements childhood over the generations that have followed, despite the lack of any real creative need for the change.  Heck, everything Gail said about Barbara sounds chapter and verse what they were already doing with Stephanie Brown in the current Batgirl series.  So instead of two compelling characters, we're effectively down to one due to misplaced nostalgia.  Plus I think of this as demotion for Babs more than a restoration.  She goes from being one of the most truly unique characters in all of comics to just another superhero (heck, she's not even the only "female Batman" running around right now).  It's the return of Barry all over again. 

That said, if anyone can make me suck it up and buy the book anyway...  And much as I loved Babs as Batgirl, there really aren't that many particularly good stories with her in that role.  I wouldn't mind seeing some more.  I just wish it wasn't like this.

So I guess we're at two maybes at this point.  It is a shame to see two books I loved wholeheartedly (Simone's Birds of Prey and Miller's Batgirl) be replaced by two books I'm not all that enthused about, though. :-(

(Edited to add a bit more whining. :-) )

Tony Tower:  "[The apparent continuation of The Legion Of Robins - as much as I like three of them - makes me wonder exactly what form of reboot this will be, if any. ]"

This one strikes me as a more widespread version of the post-Infinite Crisis "Earth-Cherry Picked."  (To borrow Newsarama's term.)  This isn't a "DC Year One" reboot, but rather a "DC Year Five," with some characters already in progress and others just making their debuts.  I get the impression some stories will be continuing as they had been going pre-Flashpoint, although the back story may be different (see Firestorm).  The characters Didio and company felt the strongest about "fixing" (see Batgirl and I suspect Superman and Lois are getting OMDed) get readjusted outright while others get reworked a bit. 

Chang on Wonder Woman?  Doesn't work. 

Why doesn't Chiang work?? Is his work too credibly straightforward? I'd imagine people thought Chris Samnee on Thor comics wouldn't work, and that was a great comic.

Oracle is Stronger than Batgirl

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/oracle-is-stronger-than-batg irl-110606.html

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Ah, yes, nothing like good ol' fan entitlement!

I can only imagine some of the complaints that would be coming from fans if there was an internet at the end of CoIE, especially with JB's Superman.

"His parents are dead!  Not alive!! And he was Superboy, too!"

"Why is he so much weaker now???  He can move planets!  That's so dumb.  Fail, DC"

"The cape keeps getting torn!  It's super like him, it's not just a piece of cloth!"

"I want Krypto!  No Krypto, I'm not buying it!"

"Why does Lois have brown hair?  She's always had black hair.  That's so dumb to change that."

And so and so forth......

Oracle fans had that character around longer (and for more stories) than Barbara-Batgirl fans did, so maybe it's time for the pendulum to swing back.

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Maybe for more stories, but not longer.  22 years for Batgirl, 22 for Oracle.  1 year she was just Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair.