I buy the Oracle comic against my better judgement…should I have?

I love Oracle. So why was I reluctant to buy this comic? Well, first of all, the very strong possibility they will revert Oracle to Batgirl at the end of the comic. The idea DC would go back on years of character development to have a grown woman traipsing around calling herself “girl” just so they can jerk off to the Silver Age doesn’t appeal to me. (Not to mention what a blow it would be to have one of the most prominent disabled characters in comics magically cured of her “horrible affliction”. Like DC is screaming “HAHAHA! LOSERS!” to real disabled people, who aren’t likely to see a magical cure into their lifetime, and might possibly look up to a character like Barbara Gordon)

Second reason would be the covers. Behold Barbara Gordon, who apparently took an extra hour to apply gobs of eyeshadow while the world burned around her (because if there’s one thing Babs is known for, it’s being really concerned with her appearance), who apparently thinks the most comfortable attire to lounge in a wheelchair in the privacy of her own home in, hacking away at her computer, is a skimpy shirt with a dive-bombing neckline and super tight painted on pants. And she made sure to oil her cleavage and make it super shiny as well! Oracleavage!

Why do I have a feeling this cover isn’t trying to attract the average teenage girl? (Fun fact: In the second cover, the audience is literally looking down Babs’s shirt.)

Finally, the interviews have done nothing to convince me the writer cares or knows much about Barbara beyond the basics, and his backup in Birds of Prey was atrocious.

But, against all those factors, I decided to buy it anyway. Because I love Barbara so, and the Julian Lopez interior art was awful pretty.

Sadly, as I predicted, the story was pretty blah.

The first annoying thing was Babs calling Jim “Daddy.” I don’t know what comics problem is, but I’m always running into girls above the age of twelve calling their dads “Daddy” in them. Which, nobody does in real life, unless they are quite braindead.

The interaction with Jim and Babs was decent, I wonder if Kevin Van Hook knows Oracle’s revealed her identity to her Dad. There was nothing in the comic to directly contradict Jim knowing Babsy is Oracuddles, but some of the dialogue comes close (“You picked a hell of a time to come back since Batman is gone,” when clearly, Jim would know Babs would be aware of this as Oracle), so I’m betting no. But Jim was his typical caring dad self, while Babs was typically brainy and distracted.

There’s a lovely sequence of Babs practicing her escrima. I just adore the art, Babs looks feirce, and you can see the anger and power she puts in her workout.

Then, there’s the line that ruined this comic before I was even halfway. Barbara apparently “in her darkest moments” sometimes wishes the Joker had killed her, instead of paralyzed her.
WHAT. Babs the survivor, the woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, the woman who has done SO much good as Oracle, who has learned to get more out of life even without her legs, wishes the Joker had KILLED HER?

That…that is not Babs. Babs is a doer. She’s a fighter. She knows she does good as Oracle. She doesn’t give up. She’s tough. She is also not an idiot. She would never, ever wish she was dead. She knows being in a wheelchair sucks, but it’s not the end all. She knows how her death would have been devastating to her friends and family.

I can buy Babs wishing she was dead when she woke up in the hospital after being shot, before she put herself to work as Oracle, but not TODAY. Not NOW.

The rest of the comic is similarly mediocre. For some reason, Babs doesn’t seem to be doing her own hacking, but getting “Cheese-fiend” and some dude to do it for her. O…kay? Also, one of the hackers apparently likes to dress her online roleplay character in a skimpy Starfire style bikini. Even though she herself said the role play game didn’t have many guys in it to look at her. So I imagine that’s solely for the titillation of the readers. Nice to live up to the cover.

Also, for some reason, Barbara Gordon, one of the smartest people in the world with a photographic memory, had to look up Charles Babbage on Wikipedia. Epic fail.

I came out of the book with mixed feelings. The art was really pretty, and next issue says Oracle goes to Hong Kong to solve a murder, which sounds cool. It wasn’t quite as bad as I expected, but still pretty bad. Yet I’m oddly curious to see how the second issue is handled.

But overall, I wouldn’t reccomend this. Good art, off characterization and so far the plotline isn’t hugely interesting.