Re: Unreachable Star Reviews July 23rd, 2008 (SPOILERS)
- From: William George Ferguson <wmgfrgsn@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:36:01 -0700
On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:40:27 -0700 (PDT), Peter Dimitriadis
<ghost@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is our 267th edition. Two books this week, as I decided to
skip New Warriors after all, since on a quick flip through I
didn't see anything to make me change my mind. Consider the book
dropped.
This week we have...
Batgirl #1 (of 6) - 3 Stars
Uncanny X-Men #500 - 3.25 Stars
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Batgirl #1 (of 6) - "Redemption Road, Chapter One: Square One"
(Writer: Adam Beechen, Penciller: J. Calafiore,
Inkers: Mark McKenna and Jonathan Glapion,
Colorist: Nathan Eyring)
Batgirl was recently brainwashed by Deathstroke and her father
David Cain, and manipulated into killing.
And drugged, don't forget the drugs (they were the initial explanation
given when the 'batgirl's a villain now' was retconned in Teen Titans)
Now, although she's
promised not to kill anymore, she has decided to break that
promise, once she tracks down those two men.
[snip]
Firstly, he changes some of the more interesting aspects of the
Cassandra character off-panel, by suggesting that in her year
away, she was taught to read and speak English better, which
supposedly explains her talkativeness in her appearances in
Robin, and her ability to read. Except, her difficulties
communicating, because she speaks with the action of body
language and combat, are a big part of Batgirl. There's been
dialog suggesting that it's not as simple as just "she needs to
learn to read" but that her brain is structured differently so
that it's harder for her to learn than it would be for
anybody else. Her whole concept is based on the (admittedly
dodgy, but acceptable for a comic book) idea that she was screwed
up by being brought up with no language except combat, and so has
difficult communicating in any other way.
Without this part of the character, she's just a trained assassin
who's now a good guy. A problem she has been struggling with
throughout her series, and one of the more defining aspects of
the character, is tossed off to the side, off-panel to help cover
up for his own mistakes. It'd be like a writer covering up a plot
which hinged on Wolverine calmly and cooly fighting someone who'd
just killed all his friends, by saying that he'd been going to
anger management therapy to deal with his berserker rages, and
doesn't get mad anymore.
Well, they do acknowledge the 'speaks/understands physical action' bit in
Nightwing's dialogue, so it's still there.
As for speaking English, she pretty much always could understand verbal
language, and could speak it, with difficulty (sort of 'speaking as a
second language' type thing).
Barbara Gordon taught her to read, and pushed her to develop it to usable
levels, in the middle years of the Batgirl comic run when she was living
with Babs in the clocktower. In the last year, when she was living on her
own, we saw several examples of her working at improving her reading (and
speaking). A big driver for her to learn to read (in the original series)
was needing to read stuff she found at crime scenes in order to track down
bad guys. Also, in the last year, they had Cassandra narrate issues,
correcting her own grammer as she went.
So the path to Batgirl speaking and reading reasonably well was strongly
established before the 'Batgirl's a villain now' cr... storyline.
The computer literacy is more of a stretch.
--
"Oh Buffy, you really do need to have
every square inch of your ass kicked."
- Willow Rosenberg
.
- References:
- Unreachable Star Reviews July 23rd, 2008 (SPOILERS)
- From: Peter Dimitriadis
- Unreachable Star Reviews July 23rd, 2008 (SPOILERS)
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