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The problem with Oracle is not whether she is an interesting character, but how we got to that character. Whether the editorial mandate "Cripple the bitch!" really was handed to Moore or not, it does reflect am attitude that was starting to make itself felt in comics, on both sides of the counter.

I have often pointed to the fact that when Wolverine joined the X-Men there was an initial very negative response from readers. Many saw him as usurping the proper place of the Beast in the group, and wanted Wolverine to LEAVE.

Just a few years later, when Kitty Pryde was introduced, there was also initially a negative response. But this time the readers who did not like the character wanted her to DIE.

Should I offer a mea culpa for that? Was it the Death of Phoenix that sent the cart down that road? The dark clouds had been gathering for a while. If they had not, my response to Jim Shooter's command that Phoenix be "sent to a prison asteroid to be horribly tortured for all eternity" might not have been "F*ck that! I'd rather kill her!"

The crippling of Barbara Gordon came from a very dark place in our history, and was made all the worse by being completely unnecessary. If the shelf life of Batgirl was deemed to have expired, she could simply have LEFT. Oracle could have been an entirely new character.

Perhaps Oracle should have been a different character, but she wasn't. Is it right to undo 20+ years of a charcter because older people want their superhero back?

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Is it right to undo 20+ years of a character because current writers are bored with her? That's what happened to Batgirl. So be careful where you swing that sword. It has two edges.

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And your source for this is?

The organic webshooters were a bad idea because they DON'T MAKE SENSE.

Now, granted, that seems like a crazy thing to say in the context of a guy who is bitten by a radioactive spider, and from this gains the abilities of that spider, I grant you. But think about that for a moment.

He is bitten by a radioactive spider, and from this gains the abilities of the spider.

Nowhere, anywhere on Earth, are there spiders who spray their web from the ends of their legs under high pressure. Not a one. Spiders produce their webbing slowly, and not from their legs (or their mouths, as some seem to think). So the spider bite does NOT give Peter Parker the abilities of a spider, if the webbing is organic. The spider bite completely redesigns how spiders work, making the production of webbing very convenient for someone who goes on to be a superhero, but nothing at all like how real spiders work.

I gotta think Lee and Ditko knew this, when they concocted the character. Hence, mechanical webshooters, which make sense not only "realistically", but -- and this is perhaps even more important -- DRAMATICALLY.