Who Needs Another Batgirl?

   So Oracle: The Cure is coming out today, with the veiled implications that Barbara Gordon will be walking again (and the strange semantic shifting that implies that being shot through the spine is an illness). The assumption is that the moment she's free of her wheelchair Barbara will be back in the tights as Batgirl. Kind of a dumb assumption, given that she can still operate as the world's best computer hacker/digital resource/deus ex machina when ambulatory. Angelina Jolie could walk in Hackers. Bill Gates can walk, as can Steves Jobs and Wozniak (even though Woz does use that Segway).

   The implication of the title, especially the use of the word "cure," is that Barbara Gordon will be restored. To what, though?

She's done more as Oracle than she did as Batgirl. She's been a member of the Suicide Squad, the JLA, and the Birds of Prey. She's been Oracle (1988-2009) about as long as she was Batgirl (1966-1988), longer if we add up published appearances. Though it is not intrinsically heroic to be disabled, it is inspiringly so to overcome tragedy and redefine one's self in the wake of loss and trauma (like that kid, the one who saw his parents die and vowed to fight crime...I'm blanking on the name just now...). Even those who want Barbara back in tights would agree. Their main problem with the Oracle persona isn't that she is in a wheelchair, it's that Barbara should still be in a wheelchair in a universe where Batman can have his spine severed and fully recover.

   So, why is Barbara Gordon still in a wheelchair (at least for now)? The most obvious answer is that it's because she's a fictional character and the writers/editors charged with her published appearances have decided it. But that's not the answer that most people want to hear.

   Denny O'Neil has stated publicly that Barbara is still Oracle because she is a good role model - and other than that bald mutant guy, she's about the only 

mainstream super-hero who with a visible physical disability (there's Niles Calder, but he's a dick with really messed up continuity). But, that bald mutant guy has had his injured body replaced with an undamaged clone, had that body injured, fake healed, restored to injury, and then healed again. Why can't Barbara get some of that recursive plotting? A lot of fans get mad, saying that Barbara has access to a Lazarus Pit (Paul Dini's suggestion, I believe), a Purple Ray, Nth metal, cool cyborg stuff, and magic. It makes no sense that she wouldn't have had her spine healed by now.

   It's a good point, no question. There is no internal DCU logic preventing her from walking again. It's a fictional universe, so it would only be as hard to write that story as it is to write any story: Zatanna says "niaga klaw" and everything's fine. I sympathize with this desire to create order out of the often-paralyzing mess of the DCU. There hasn't ever been internal consistency in the application of magic and technology, and that's complicated further by the charming self-deception of the Batman editors who contend that their comics are grounded in more realistic shenanigans. 

   

The more important question is what purpose would it serve to restore Barbara to her Batgirl identity. Just because she needn't have been in a wheelchair all this time isn't a good reason. Picking too hard at any thread of the DCU unravels the fragile logic of 70 years of continuous publishing. The DCU has always needed to balance its "anything can happen" sci-fi/fantasy storytelling with real stakes. If Barbara, an athletic but normal woman whose spine was damaged by a bullet, can be healed, why not every single other victim of a spinal injury? Again, you could write something to answer that question, but it would only address the superficialities of Barbara's role in the DCU.

 

  For me,  she's more heroic as a person who found a way to continue to function as a super-hero despite living daily with a disability than as another masked vigilante. How many Bat-people do we need? We have Batman, Robin, Red Robin, Batgirl II, Batwoman, Huntress, Spoiler, that whole Club of Heroes, and whatever Jason Todd is going to be up to (Nightwing? Catwoman?) If Barbara became Batgirl again, who would be Oracle?

   She is a good role model, as silly as that may sound. What's so wrong with having a character who serves the extra-textual function of being a point of identification?