I just found out that Batgirl is getting a new creative team in October. In other words, Gail Simone is being taken off of the book. Gail Simone. is leaving. Barbara Gordon. But if that's not enough, she's also being given a new look. Spoiler Now, I kinda like the costume. I don't love it, but I could see myself coming to love it. My problem is that apparently Barbara is aging backwards and is now 13. And it doesn't even look like Barbara. I'm not so much upset by who's replacing the old team as I am that the old team is leaving. But I guess all good things must come to an end. I looked up the writers who are replacing Simone and neither have done anything truly noteworthy from what I saw. And both are guys. I don't have a problem with that on a surface level, but Simone has a reputation for being one of the best writers for female characters (and since Barbara is her favorite character it's some kinda magic) and replacing her with relative no-names who are male, when this often spells disaster for female characters in comics, is frightening for someone like me who collects Batgirl and who is more and more coming to the realization that Barbara is one of my personal favorite characters in anything. im scared hold me and what the fuck is this going on MTV add insult to injury
they should have went with the spandex. how am i supposed to care about a female character if i can't see her boobies?
I don't like the costume. I don't think I've run into any superhero costumes that I really like, though. So this is kinda not representative of anything. Actually, I don't really like superhero comics pretty much as a whole. I mention it because this is one of the reasons why. Almost every series or set of characters eventually ends up being a legacy where they change the writing and art teams. In my opinion, that's a travesty and shows a lack of concern for quality and continuity. I get that people are used to this kind of treatment and it opens series up to episodic improvement, but that's it. It will never have consistent characters, imagery, plot, pacing and tone. Long story short, you knew this was coming and you gave them your money anyways.
Bleh. I like Simone, especially for Barbara, but I do have my issues with her writing. However, I do not want to see her off this book. Considering everything that Babs has been through, the way Simone writes her makes sense. Here, she seems too cheerful and I'm wondering what gave her that new lease on life considering she was shot, paralyzed, and physically disabled by the Joker (for three years, in the new continuity), Joker came back and gave her hell in a creepy way even cutting off her mother's finger in Death of the Family and wanting to marry Batgirl, accidentally killing her brother who is a psychopathic murderer in front of her dad who now wants Batgirl arrested (not knowing it's his daughter), having her dad shoot her boyfriend (After he lost a leg to Knightfall) and said boyfriend suing her father if not for Knightfall's intervention, her apparent arch-foe Knightfall pretty much always ending up on top in some form, Nightwing being unmasked and killed publicly, and now her father facing jail time for the death of a 100+ plus people. But hey, let's make her a happy teenager again. Now the costume is just inferior to her current one. I don't plan on picking up this book; I may give it a few issues because I want to see Babs in that setting, but we'll see.
I've seen people saying that the idea behind the new direction is that she "experiences youth culture" which apparently she never let herself do, being wrapped up with everything she was. I don't know how official this is or if it even is at all, but given the look of it I'm inclined to believe it's more or less true. I definitely like the current costume more, but I still like this one. And this art makes it look really cool.
I can't speak at all for the writing because I don't read the comics. BUT I don't like the costume in comparison to the former costumes I've seen for Batgirl. I don't know what it is with artists these days thinking that they need to give female characters such standard outfits. It's stupid for someone like Wonder Woman to look like a biker; she's an Amazonian warrior, why would she care about her battle outfit fitting in with human social norms? Her classic outfit fit her perfectly in character. This new Batgirl outfit...well, I'm glad the bat symbol and ears are there, because if this sketch was black and white (and didn't have the "Batgirl" name on it), I'd have no clue who this is.
Okay I love the JMS costume for WW. At least I like Jim Lee's sketch of it. At some point she stopped wearing the jacket and it just looks dumb. Plus I didn't care for the art so it didn't look good anywhere but the cover imo. (I didn't actually read it I just flipped through some issues.) And that costume's not even current. This is what she wears now and I love it. The silver trim and blue boots look much better than the gold and red. And I can't quite figure out what informs that perception because I've never gotten that feeling. Ever. Batgirl's costume is the most ornate of the Bat costumes, Wonder Girl now has some kinda golden armor or something (I don't know what that's about because I refuse to give Lobdell my time and attention), and Supergirl looks plain awesome. And the 2014 redesign of BG is perhaps the most unusual costume of any N52 superhero costume, the opposite of standard. Maybe I just don't know what you mean by "standard" in this instance. And yeah, I imagine if you took the defining details of any costume away you wouldn't know what you're looking at. I don't see how that's a valid criticism.
I'm not well informed with comics, so my bad with not knowing that was Wonder Woman's most current outfit. Perhaps I did exaggerate a bit with how artists are redesigning female superheroes. I meant standard by something that I could see in the actual world, realistically. A leather jacket, tights, and boots? Couldn't miss a day of high school without seeing that at least once. I admit, that was stretching a bit...to put it more accurately, this new costume is just disappointingly ordinary to me. I far prefer Stephanie Brown's Batgirl outfit: Spoiler
Batgirl always has phenomenal costumes imo. I can never decide which one I like most. It's a tie between Steph's, Cassandra's, both of Bab's N52 (puple/yellow cape), and her's in BG: Year One (so basically all of them lol). I think I may like Setphanie's most but I'm in denial because I like Barbara a tad more and want to like one of hers most.
Oh yeah, I like just about all of the other Batgirl outfits. Cassandra Cain and The Animated Series are also in my favorite looks.
Which animated one? Because I kinda don't like the first one. The second one is basically the same as her's in Year One, though Year One came well after that show.
Not sure how to feel about the costume. I don't know, seems like the odd man out of the Bat family. Everyone gets spandex but Barbara gets a leather jacket. And why de-age her? What's "youth culture"? Is Barbara going to be a hipster obsessed with dubstep and says YOLO swag with hashtag before every sentence? :C I'm not too up to date with my comic history, but whatever happened to Stephanie?
No one wears spandex now. They didn't literally de-age her. It just looks like they did and I'm none too happy about it given how her appearance exuded maturity before. I highly doubt that specifically but Barbara is very much an "all business" type of person so I suspect it will be her embracing a more "youthful" personality. or something. And my sources are "some guy on the internet said that" so it may not even be true. I haven't looked for any official statements yet Stephanie resided in post-Flashpoint limbo for quite a while and only recently has been brought back into existence as Spoiler once again. I don't think anything happened to her in continuity so much as things were reset and she was an unfortunate victim who is only now being addressed. Though I've not completed her run as Batgirl so I can't confirm this officially.
WHATEVER, POINT STILL STANDS. I wouldn't put it past DC to de-age her. Seems like the kind of stupid shit they'd do. Who wants to bet Barbara gets a Batgirl twitter account and tweets all her crime stopping activity? Ah. Probably had something to do with Barbara not being a cripple any more.