I’m glad you liked it…but I think people are seeing meta commentary where there is none. It’s not me or DC speaking to the audience, it’s Bruce, speaking to Barbara, the way I always like to write him, with love to someone he thinks of as a daughter. Truthfully, I think meta-commentary in fiction is getting really trite and tedious…I feel like they are always trying to pander to me. It’s frustrating…and I’m kind of glad to be slowly moving away from it, if that makes sense. Also, this doesn’t mean Cass or Steph couldn’t be or have been Batgirl, that never even crossed our minds. It’s just that Barbara is the first…then she had a hiatus. What happened to the name during that time is still open. But I am glad you enjoyed it!Yes, that one line isn’t doing anybody any favors and I hate it just as much as the rest of you. But to write off an entire issue, an entire series, based on a single sentence that Bruce probably only told Barbara because he felt she needed to hear it? That says more about your own feelings than…
Babs had a “hiatus”? No. She was Batgirl. Then she passed the name to other heroes that deserved it, while she went on to bigger things. Then she took the name back for no adequately-explained reason. That’s not a hiatus, and calling it that basically says that Steph and Cass were never ‘real’ Batgirls, they were just keeping the cowl warm. This is why people object, it’s Bruce ignoring 2 Batgirls and Oracle to pump up Babs, which is the exact same thing editorial has been doing since the reboot was announced. Assuming that’s metacommentary isn’t a big stretch.
I wouldn’t use the word, ‘stretch,’ maybe. But I’ve read quite a few long posts that present authority on what this ‘invalidates’ that couldn’t be further from the truth.
People have concluded that this means there was never and will be no Cass Batgirl, was never and will be no Steph Batgirl, and was never and will be no Oracle. And I have to say, that is a lot of weight to put on a single sentence in a single panel under the best of circumstances.
Some of the conclusions are not correct. Some are not in my control or haven’t yet been decided by editorial. But none of it has anything to do with that sentence.
It’s Bruce telling Barbara that he trusts her and that she’s earned his trust.
This is still VERY early in Barbara’s actual career in the cowl.
I mean this with the utmost respect and care, so please, I hope you understand that that’s how I mean this.
You miss Cass, and Steph, and Oracle. I do, too. There’s a lot of stuff in the new DCnU we haven’t yet seen come back in force. And things always move slower than we would like. I am writing Barbara right now. I want there to be a successful Batgirl book in the DCU. I want Barbara to have a place in the DCU. No one is ever going to get me to write a sentence that erases Cass or Steph in any way.Their role might evolve somewhat, it might not be in my hands at all. Maybe the next B.Q.M. is out there, or the CURRENT B.Q.M., even, to rebuild those characters. I might not get to bring them back personally, but if anyone thinks I want them on the bench, they are very mistaken.
Again, I understand WHY people look for meta-commentary in so much genre fiction right now, and we lose ownership of the meaning of a story once it is in front of a reader’s eyes. It’s never a good idea for a writer to get down to parsing individual sentences, I think it sort of diminishes the reader and the story both, and it’s even a little bit patronizing, and I don’t want to do that.
So all I can say is, looking at every Batgirl through the lens of missing Cass and Steph, it’s understandable why people think this is some kind of shut-down of those characters. But there is nothing in that sentence that invalidates any of those characters either before or after Barbara put the cape back on.
I’m a little bummed that it’s taking longer than I had hoped to get some of these characters off the bench, but it doesn’t mean we’ve stopped trying.
