Jill Pantozzi (The Nerdy Bird on Twitter) might be one of my favorite geek writers out there. She’s thoughtful, smart, funny, and she knows her stuff. When news broke that Barbara Gordon was coming back as Batgirl, Jill was pretty upset and hurt. Not just because she’s a fangirl, but because Oracle was perhaps her most inspring superhero. In case you’re not familiar with Jill, she’s got Muscular Dystrophy and is in a wheelchair a lot of the time herself.
She wrote a very good piece about it here.
Gail Simone then requested that she be able to do a one-on-one with Jill for Newsarama and I think it’s pretty much required reading.
For those of you interested in the tidbits she may have offered about the nature of the DC Reboot, I think this selection might be the most enlightening, but you should go and read the entire interview.
The decision to roll back the experience clock on the characters, to show them as learning and growing and exploring again, which is a concept that I heartily endorse. In theory, I think it’s the most exciting thing in the world. In practice, it means some hard choices and some surprising twists and turns that take a while to adjust to.
But the two elements that gave me most pause were decided whether or not I was on board. Bryan’s run was ending, sadly, and Barbara was going to be the Batgirl again. The first part was heartbreaking, and the second, well, honestly, the thought of writing Babs-as-Batgirl stories is one of those dreams a writer holds in her heart, like the hope of writing the Marvel Family, or Plastic Man, or Spider-Man, or any of the other things I’m not sure I’ll ever really get the chance to do. But before I would ever come on board, it had to make sense, it had to have a purpose. I have other books I can write, and DC could find someone else to write Batgirl.
But here is the key decider for me. It’s the relaunch.
That really moves all the goalposts, Jill. I could never really get behind, taking the Babs that’s been running the Bat-verse, toppling countries, helping herd the JLA, all those things…I could never see, even with the very heartfelt and passionate words of many people with disabilities who asked for it, putting that Babs back in the cape and cowl. I don’t think I could ever have done that.
I think that indicates that the stories we know and love might still be in the futures of these characters. Who knows.
They’re putting some of my favorite creators on the books I’d be most worried about and it’s calming me down about a lot of this. But at the end of the day, what I want are good comics. If this gives me good comics, I’ll be happy.
I’ll just be sad about Steph and Cass and Tim and all the characters I love that have been part of the good comics I’ve loved.
In any case, this interview is a must read. Jill really knocked it out of the park and should be proud.