labellementeuse

So I really am enjoying Bryan Miller's run on Batgirl. I think he has a fairly good grasp of Steph's character, a great way with dialogue, and I love what he's doing with Oracle and ♥ Proxy ♥ (was that a wooden lightsaber and a Jedi-training-laser-sphere-thingy in #15?! Amazing.) But there are three things that bug the shit out of me.

PROXY IS A JEDI

1. I feel like he buys in too much to ignorant fanboy characterisation of Steph, i.e.: that Spoiler was incompetent; that Steph's affections for Tim were not returned (SOUP, PEOPLE. This one really mystifies me since they dated in canon and Steph's the one who didn't want to date Tim right now); that Steph was only ever in the hero business because she had a crush on Tim (patently untrue: she meets him when they're in costume and she hits him with a brick). This is frustrating to read because even though I think Steph getting character development is fabulous, and I do understand the need (although it makes me want to cry) to "rehabilitate" Steph in the eyes of the target asshole audience, it means that sometimes I think the development is a retread of stuff that's already been addressed and sometimes I feel that it's pitched at a problem that Steph doesn't have (like needing approval from *Batman* to be *Batgirl* when she already had approval from *fucking Oracle*.)

SOUP. HE FUCKING LOVED HER. (There's a panel of him saying that specifically, in fact. While they make out. Look I think Tim is as gay as the next slasher but they were for realisies.)

2. Sometimes this verges right over the line into pandering, to an extent that enrages me. I like that he knows Steph is flawed. But Steph isn't, and has never been, all flawed, and she has never in my opinion been as flawed as he portrays her. For example, in the most recent issue where Steph is beating up that kid who frigging two issues ago was a *bad guy*: "Is this why everyone hated Spoiler?"

NO. NO, IT'S NOT.

Because for one thing, Spoiler wasn't like that, and she spent most of her time on a book where most people (including Tim) were, like Steph, just starting out as heroes or villains or, um, Lonnie. (;.; re Lonnie lately, by the way.) Spoiler was hard-working and did have character development. Yes, some people blatantly did hate her, and fuck them. They are not reading Batgirl right now! They hate Steph! On the other hand, people who LOVED Spoiler ARE reading Batgirl right now, and these jokes are just goddamned PISSING US OFF. OK, one or two jokes, one or two times calling her an incompetent waste of ink until you started writing her, I can swallow those. But I don't want to keep swallowing something in which the entire, what, twenty-year history of a character I adore is being dragged through the mud.

3. I miss Cass.

I think all of these issues come from one place: a slight lack of familiarity with her Robin run and, I'm going to go ahead and guess, a complete lack of unfamiliarity with the previous Batgirl run (starring Cass). Apart from anything else it leads to idiocies like no mention of Cass in the BatFamilyHistoryPanels and a general amnesia (which I think is DC-wide) that Steph was ever Robin.

It also, to my mind, contrasts very poorly with what's going on in Red Robin right now. Although there are things that I really dislike about Red Robin at the moment, it is absolutely soaking in Tim's history. Steph's guested a few times in meaningful ways (including ways where she got to smack him in the face!), Ives just showed up and gave a meaningful update on his cancer and on Zoanne, and even Cass was sort-of-vaguely-okay-written. (Better than she's had for ages: I'll take it.) There's no reason not to demonstrate in the same way that Steph's history is remembered - as opposed to all the times Steph fucked up, and forgetting all the times Steph triumphed. (Or made out with Tim. Can't forget those make-out sessions.)