Hot damn, Batman! It’s time for the Standard!
As promised last week, let’s talk about Batgirl. You guys know I’m usually pretty spoiler conscious, so I figure this will be up a good two weeks after Batgirl #1 hit stands, so it will be fair game to talk about the spoiler of the day.
The spoiler being….The Spoiler!
That’s right to the six of you who somehow read the Standard and not the rest of the internet, Stephanie “The Spoiler” Brown is the new Batgirl! Effectively destroying my full prediction of Batgirl being two or three people in a rotation led by Babs! Then again, Babs is in the book, and she has already figured that Steph is the new Batgirl, so that much is cool, but I still wanted some Misfit!
I will say that the debut issue of Batgirl was far better than I had been expecting it to be, as I do tend to go into books by unfamiliar writers ready to be struck with the worst. So it was nice to see a well handled little character introduction as Stephanie steps into her new status quo. The flashback with Cassandra Cain abandoning the mantle took a few read-throughs to really grasp, but after reading what the writer was getting at (and seeing I was pretty close), I felt relieved.
Cassandra Cain, the previous Batgirl, has been manhandled without any true purpose since One Year Later, when her book was canceled. She took over the League of Assassins, she became evil, she joined up with Deathstroke (because Bruce left Harvey Dent in charge of Gotham), hunted her father, and hey, according to wikipedia, Bruce Wayne even adopted her! That’s quite a listing of events for such a short time. And thankfully, most can be blamed on Adam Beechan, and while I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy, his runs on Robin, Teen Titans, and Countdown were just….atrocious. He torpedoed the character of Cassandra Cain and left her dead in the water and in need of a revamp that nobody figured would be coming any time soon.
But Stephanie, after years of being Robin’s annoying vigilante girlfriend, has finally stepped up into the spotlight on her own. She’s not relying on her relationship with Tim to keep her in the eyes of the fans, she’s moved on up and in the world to the mantle of Barbra Gordon and Cassie Cain. She’s the God Damn Batgirl! And from the looks of things, her status quo is going to push the character forward into new stories and plots instead of crutching her on old ones. In other words, I’m not getting the feeling that she’s going to spend this book pining after crazy ol Tim “Red Robin” Drake. And hot damn is that a good thing.
Now how about a Blackest Night theory? We’ve all made jokes about the White Lantern and how it must be Hal because he’s worn all the colors. Well, we’ve also seen Don Hall immune to the rising powers of the Black Ring because he’s at peace, as well as Dawn Granager not be able to be read by Black Lantern Hank Hall. Two agents of Order, pacifists, wear white. Is DC going to reference the Agents of Order deal? I mean, they haven’t mentioned the Order, Chaos, or Balance since the Hector Hall Dr. Fate was bitchslapped to death by the horrible magic arc of Infinite Crisis, but could that be the plans? Johns had been playing heavily with the plot before the character was killed during a fill in arc.
It could be a a cool idea, but it would have to be played up, and let’s be honest, it won’t happen. It will most likely get played off as they believe in peace or something. That their emotions are perfectly peaceful and thus can’t feed the BL’s.
And then things happened
So that’s where I was in my column when I heard that Marvel had been purchased by Disney. When I was completely taken out of my comic wits and just sat thinking about what the hell had just happened. Mainly because I didn’t see it coming and my OCD makes that the sort of thing that messes with my head. Yes, I like surprises, but generally surprises don’t potentially change the landscape of something I love…..well, I haven’t had a pregnancy scare with any girlfriends yet, so knock on wood. So this just left me kind of out of it….well, this and things in the personal life, but hey! Grey is back!
Things can be awesome again!
I’ve been playing some Champions Online lately, and I have to say, it’s far from perfect but it is a lot of fun. Definitely a great initial effort that can only get better from here as the developers keep working on it. The only problem is that with so many options in creation; from powers to design, that I can’t stop making alts and playing them! I’ve got like, five characters and I keep wanting to make more! Back when I played World of Warcraft I rolled a Paladin, got it to 20, then changed servers and rolled a Shaman. Never bothered with another character, just played the one guy for forever. Now I can’t make up my mind! That alone makes Champions awesome for me.
I also played some Batman: Arkham Asylum on my cousins PS3 and I have to say that it is easily the best superhero based video game I have ever played. I’ve played a lot of stinkers….several of them Batman, and some lukewarms….X-Men Legends, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Punisher (Xbox/PS2), but this one is just….whoa. It’s perfect, you ARE Batman. You can kick the crap out of goons in every direction and just….I can’t even explain it. It’s just so freaking cool! Well, aside from the Poison Ivy fight. That was murder. The game deserves all of the praise, and it’s definitely A+!
And then more shit happened
What the fuck? DC Entertainment? Yes, sure, it’s far less of a change then Marvel just went through, but Paul Levitz is stepping down from being the President of the company in order to write Adventure Comics? Is he going to be like when Shooter wrote Legion a few years ago and sucked?
And what’s next? Is Fox going to buy Image next week? Maybe Lions Gate can buy Dark Horse? Oh! I know! Microsoft can buy IDW and get the GI Joe license!
Fuck it, why doesn’t someone go and buy Ring of Honor, give them an asston of money, and help them get a TV deal akin to TNA’s. They actually need the boost.
But I get what DC is doing, I mean, Marvel got bought, Marvel is now owned by a different company. DC was already owned by Warner Brothers, and now they’re just rebranded as DC Entertainment and have been folded more under the WB umbrella. I imagine that the biggest difference that will come out of this is that the synergy for movies, cartoons, video games, all of that, will be improved. Essentially making DC into what Marvel was back when they had Marvel Studios going, only, you know, owned by WB.
I dunno, I don’t understand all of the things going on with this, and I shouldn’t give it too much talk just because of that. I don’t understand how these businesses run, just how I personally feel. And to be honest, I’m more excited about the DC change.
Just like I’m excited that Flash is getting the creative team of Johns and Manapul, even if I wish that they could just stay on Adventure Comics while Johns and Kollins took over Flash.
That would be win.
Now my mind is still all sorts of frazzled, and Beatles: Rock Band is calling to me, so I’m going to wrap up short.
Next week? Wes has sent me an e-mail about TV shows based on comics, and it’s given me a few ideas, so I think I’m going to go with that.
Have a good one people!
The Gold Standard
