Unearthed: The Batman Chronicles #5

Today has been International Women's Day and I hope your day was... womanly...?

To that end, leave us take a look back one of comicdom's greatest female characters and a beloved woman comic writer; neither one is with us today, yet the legend lives on.

Alan Moore originally didn't intend for his Batman: The Killing Joke one-shot to be part of DC Comics' continuity, much less for it to be considered one of the definitive works in the Batman mythos - yet, it certainly has been since its publication in 1988. Even then, the comic elicited a strong reaction over the scene in which Barbara Gordon was shot by the Joker. It brought an end to her career as the costumed hero Batgirl. At the time, DC were certainly determined to pare Batman down to the status of a loner as he'd likewise lose his sidekick Robin (only Nightwing was spared as he wasn't considered a Batman character then, but was instead a Teen Titans character). Many fans felt the offhanded way in which Batgirl's career ended was unworthy of her.

Among those fans were John Ostrander and his wife Kim Yale. In the pages of Suicide Squad they introduced a mysterious computer hacker named Oracle who began assisting the Squad and, over the course of about two years, was finally revealed as the wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon. This new identity proved a clever one as in the 1990s the internet's usage spiked dramatically, making Oracle's mastery of computers all the more relevant. She was soon welcomed back into the Batman family as an indispensable ally, led her own team the Birds of Prey and joined the Justice League! Pretty gratifying for a character who could have easily been kicked to the curb. Through it all, she remained a heroine despite her circumstances which helped inspire many fans who were themselves dealing with one form of disability or another.

And then in the 21st century DC Comics went, "Whoa! Look at my navel! Why have I never realized how amazing this navel is? Check it out, everyone!" And so, Babs went back to being Batgirl. Pity. But I'm not here to talk to you about that; in 1996, Ostrander & Yale finally gave Babs a proper origin story to detail how she went from the hospital in Killing Joke to becoming the mistress of information. It's called "Oracle: Year One - Born of Hope" and appeared in The Batman Chronicles #5, an anthology comic with various creators offering tales about Batman characters. This was one of three stories in that issue. The cover above was drawn by Howard Victor Chaykin & Tommy Lee Edwards, while the story itself was drawn by Brian Stelfreeze and Karl Story.

The story opens with Barbara in the hospital shortly after The Killing Joke. Batman visits Babs, but she's not particularly happy to see him. You see, Batman knew all of her secrets as Batgirl but had never told her he was Bruce Wayne and there was some lasting resentment between them due to this (something which also came up in Ostrander & Yale's Suicide Squad). Babs sums up what the Joker did thusly:

"Shooting me... kidnapping my Dad... it was all just a way to get to you. Do you understand how humiliating, how demeaning, that is? My life has no importance save in relation to you! Even as Batgirl, I was perceived just as some weaker version of you!"

The Killing Joke ended with Batman and the Joker laughing together. Babs remarks: "I heard how you two stood there, laughing over some private joke. Tell me -- was it me?" Batman exits the hospital. "Good. I hope I've hurt him." Babs states. When she finally leaves the hospital with her father her first attempt to enter her Dad's car is shown in great detail as it takes more than a page for the task to be done, Babs' first taste of how complicated her new life will be. Of the next six months she concludes: "Worst of all was the fear I felt -- of being physically helpless, unable to defend myself, of having no sense of self, of feeling that I meant nothing, that my life was now over." She also worried that if her father died in the line of duty she would be left to live on charity.

Deciding to revisit her old investigative skills Babs puts together a computer lab with some financial aid from the Wayne Foundation (and thus, Batman secretly repays part of his debt to her). With her computers, Babs becomes engrossed with the internet. One day, her father mentions the trouble the department is having with a computer-based felon called Interface (a villain from Ostrander & Yale's Manhunter) who has the metahuman ability to link herself to computers. Babs tries to use the internet to dig up information on Interface but is noticed by the villain, who catches up to Babs one day in the street and shoves her wheelchair in front of a car. Babs survives, but now finds she has the determination to see this investigation through to the end.

Returning to the internet, Babs looks for someone to teach her a new form of self-defense to avoid another episode like the one with Interface. Batman, using his identity of Matches Malone, directs Babs to Richard Dragon, the 1970s DC martial arts hero. Dragon teaches Babs how to fight using the escrima method, learning how to wield twin batons as weapons. One night, Babs has a dream in which she appears as Batgirl and confronts the oracle at Delphi; the oracle turns out to be Babs as well and this gives her the idea for her new identity. Now disguised as Oracle, she contacts Interface and sets a viral trap in Interface's own computer so that when she attempts to link to it it causes Interface to be caught in an unending loop. To win her freedom from Oracle, Interface agrees to admit all of her crimes to the police.

The story ends with Babs taking again to the streets, now more confidant than before. "I am no longer a distaff impersonation of someone else. I'm me -- more me than I have ever been. My life is my own. I embrace it, and the light, with a deep, continuing joy."

One year later, Kim Yale died of breast cancer. She is still survived by her husband, John Ostrander.

"And now we must reckon with what we have done to our own blood." Black Panther #1 review

Since I quit working for Marvel in 2012 I've mostly kept my distance from their comics (for a variety of reasons) but occasionally I do check in on some titles. Such a comic is the new Black Panther by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and artist Brian Stelfreeze. The series has, no doubt, come into being because the Black Panther is making his live-action debut this month in Captain America: Civil War, but it's also receiving a lot of attention because Coates is a noted journalist from the Atlantic; in the mere two years I've been reading the Atlantic I've certainly come to look forward to his essays. Coates has thus become the third black man to serve as the ongoing author of comicdom's first black super hero, the Black Panther - following in the footsteps of Christopher Priest (1998-2003) and Reginald Hudlin (2005-2009); further, artist Stelfreeze is likewise black, him being an artist whom Priest long wished he could have had as a collaborator on his own series. As I enjoyed Priest's Black Panther in part for its political side, from Coates' background I anticipated a similar interest in playing with politics.

I seem unable to keep from thinking of Priest's Black Panther - it was certainly one of my favourite comic series. Like Priest, Coates' first issue features T'Challa and his Dora Milaje bodyguards and a plot against T'Challa which originates from a neighbouring state and is fomented by a manipulator who tries to turn his people against him; even the Kimoyo technology is back. Whereas Priest's book was told through the eyes of the buffoonish Everett K. Ross (himself debuting in Captain America: Civil War but missing from Coates' pages), Coates' story is told primarily through T'Challa's perspective, something which goes against Priest's own belief that T'Challa should be somewhat inscrutable, kept remote from the audience.

Whereas Hudlin set out immediately to retcon much of T'Challa's world, Coates seems willing to play with the world he's been handed; Wakanda's enemy Niganda from the Hudlin run is brought back, T'Challa's mother Ramonda from Don MacGregor's work is given a proper reintroduction, T'Challa is dealing with the reprecussions of various recent events in other comics and the Dora Milaje - who were present only in the background of Hudlin's work - are again part of the series narrative. As teenage "prospective brides" for T'Challa, Priest had always intended them to be somewhat probelmatic characters, with one of his initial Dora Milaje - Nakia - developing a terrible obsession for T'Challa. Here, the Dora Milaje are called Aneka and Ayo; having recently killed a lecherous chieftain, Aneka is sentenced to death, but Ayo liberates her. It also appears that the duo are lovers.

Aneka and Ayo carry much of this comic because T'Challa is - despite providing a monologue of his thoughts - not much of a protagonist. In his day, Priest had to deal with fans' impatience at how T'Challa would seem to be running behind on the villain's actions, slow to react, when in actuality Priest always considered T'Challa as hyper-competant and several steps ahead of the villains, but it would often take 3-4 issues before T'Challa would spring his carefully-laid plans. Priest had in part based his interpretation as a reaction against the work of Don MacGregor, whose T'Challa seemed to be constantly losing fights and always lagging behind his enemies' plots. It's hard to know from one issue where Coates is bringing T'Challa, but as the hero's inner thoughts are maade available here I sense rather more MacGregor than Priest; throughout this issue T'Challa is shown mourning the death of his sister, brooding over recent battles, unable to confront the person menacing Wakanda, unable to intervene in the Dora Milaje matter and denounced by his own subjects. Although I trust T'Challa to claim some form of eventual triumph, if this is the character's opening position it's hard to imagine his life getting much better in the coming story. Overall, T'Challa is depressed; what a bummer.

While Priest withheld the identity of the person (Achebe) manipulating events against T'Challa until his third issue, Coates identifies the person responsible in this issue. And while the former villain used political theater to help sway opinion, this latter villain uses mind control powers, which is certainly in-keeping with the Marvel Universe setting, but a heck of a lot less interesting politically. Although Coates is new to the comic book form, he seems to understand many of the tricks used by today's popular super hero creators, such as the unwillingness to render a story with a beginning, middle and end; this comic is all middle and thus not satisfying as an individual unit of entertainment. No doubt the collected edition of this story will be the best way to judge his future in comics - I mean, assuming he wants a career in comics.