Shankie&#39;s House of Guns &amp; Spandex

Not a clue. The year on this is 1996, so I guess whatever came second wins. But I've never read that, so I couldn't tell ya.

Posted by

senmut

Babs just struck me as slightly bitchier than I remembered from what I have tracked down of her Suicide Squad appearances.

Posted by

::laughs:: No freakin' kidding. Projecting anger much?

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Suicide Squad was after she had found a purpose for herself and so wasn't as angry with herself and the world. So yes :)

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None of it intentionally - it was written by John Ostrander and his wife (who was in a wheelchair) at about the time Suicide Squad was running, meaning that any retcon was purely accidental.

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arch-schatten.livejournal.com

Erm... she sounds.. kind of bitchy. And.. shouldn't she you know.. the thing about talking of real rechnology in the media is that 10 years later, you sound like you were living in a cave. It's a weird read.

And stalker Bruce, go team!

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Who's the writer on this one?

(Hi, here from s_d.)

This one does come across as bitchy, but when you think about it as the writer's attempt to staple Babs' character back together after Killing Joke, it sort of makes sense. The "I didn't use the peephole" part sounds like me the first time I read TKJ - "What, a cop's daughter doesn't know any better? Our Babs? Come the fuck on!"

And the "It was all just a way to get at you" is also my big argument against TKJ; what happens to Babs was nothing to do with Babs. It could just as easily have been the random passer-by who got caught in the crossfire, and for that matter, it didn't even have to be Gordon. Gordon and Babs were just convenient set-dressing, and not even written to character very well. THe story was all about Bats and Joker, and would have worked just fine if it had been new-to-this-story characters; one of Bordon's lieutenants and his wife, perhaps. The mayor and *her husband*. (Gosh, it didn't have to be all sexist?)

Excuse rantiness. I really dislike TKJ.

It's also pretty darn natural to be a bitter, angry bitch when you've just been crippled. In that hospital bed, I'd have said the same damn thing to Bruce.

Escrima doesn't make much sense to me either, I admit. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm convinced half the moves wouldn't work with a chair in the way. There are CHinese kung-fu alternatives intended for 'cripples' and blind people; and frankly, in a wheelchair myself, I want a damn range weapon. It's not like I can *run*.

And the villainess in this is just cracky. Why is she yellow? She's like Cruella De Ville on a drain cleaner binge.

And the art is kind of annoying, and Babs is a redhead damnit.

Posted by

Hi! :)

It's written by John Ostrander & Kim Yale, both names unfamiliar to me.

Mostly I was annoyed with her saying that to Bruce... because it wasn't right after it happened. From the look of how she was able to sit up, she'd been there for perhaps months. Long enough to not want to take a cheap shot like that. But maybe that's just me. I've never been disabled like that.

The only times I've been in a wheelchair was when I was on so many painkillers I couldn't walk. :X

But even high as a freakin' kite, I can remember enough to know... yeah. I don't think escrima would help much. And, as an archer, I'm all about the ranged weapons in general. I'm sure by now she can weild a mean crossbow, having hung out with Huntress and all.

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Ostrander's done a lot of interesting stuff in the DC-verse. Kim Yale was his wife.

I guess I just assumed the hospital incident was fairly soon afterwards, or at least the first time Babs saw Bruce since the Incident; otherwise why is she explaining the bullet to him? (And nice work on the writers for explaining how she survived a .45 to the gut at point blank range.) She shouldn't be sitting up, it's true. But she may still be logy and labile on painkillers, and thus more likely to be excessively bitchy.

My experience is different from Babs'; I'm all-over semi-crippled and use a powerchair because I'm too weak to push myself, so punching people and swinging sticks at them isn't much of an option either. (Although a fancy manual speed chair will ovver a lot more arm-swinging room than a hospital chair or my powered one.) But you need at least one hand to maneuver any chair, which means you're gonna want a range weapon. Although she has been seen to use batarangs, which makes sense; upper-body strength plus throwing weapons is all good.

Me, I covet the wheelchair-taser that took out a squad of ninjas. It'd be worth the battery drain.

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Who knows about the time lapse; could have been weeks, could have been months. I suppose I could never see myself willingly following someone, knowing the risks, only to be so bitter after something happened. Even under these circumstances.

I've also seen her using batarangs, the tazer-thing, and even escrima to defend herself. But later, after she'd been training herself in upper-body focued exercises for years, which made it more... logical in my head.

It also reminds me of Bruce's Bat-wheelchair (http://victoria-wayne.livejournal.com/60778.html). XD

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I don't get why Babs doesn't have a Bat-chair. Even an unpowered version. We've seen what she can do with voice-activated controls - come on, voice-activated wheelchair motion during combat would give her so much more mobility!

And I covet the Bat-chair too. But with a better paint job.

Frankly, I think part of it is that Babs feels like she screwed up - she failed. She let the Joker in, he kidnapped her dad, she majorly screwed up and got herself shot - and Bruce isn't chewing her out for failure in the least. She's beating up on herself, and trying to make Bruce do it too - or at least drive him away. All that bitterness and anger coming out at other people is nothing compared to the Bat-angst Babs is dishing out versus herself.

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I suppose I could never see myself willingly following someone, knowing the risks, only to be so bitter after something happened. Even under these circumstances.

Backstory: she had given up on being Batgirl before The Killing Joke and was simply a civillian who got caught in the crossfire.

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From the look of how she was able to sit up, she'd been there for perhaps months.

I don't see that at all. She doesn't appear to have the strength to stay sitting up - she shoots up when startled, but then collapses back down onto her arms - in all those scans, she is being supported by her right arm. I see it as shortly after she came out of intensive care.

Posted by

the-bumper-car.livejournal.com

Escrima doesn't make much sense to me either, I admit. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm convinced half the moves wouldn't work with a chair in the way. There are CHinese kung-fu alternatives intended for 'cripples' and blind people; and frankly, in a wheelchair myself, I want a damn range weapon. It's not like I can *run*.

Oh, word. I'm Filipino and used to take up escrima (it's more commonly known as "arnis" over here), and I have no idea how the heck you're supposed to fight using it while sitting down. I think that the author just went browsing in an encyclopedia for a non-Japanese fighting style that had as much range as possible. If I were in a wheelchair, I'd probably learn how to fire guns, though, but that wouldn't be appropriate for a Bat-family character now, right?

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I think that the author just went browsing in an encyclopedia for a non-Japanese fighting style that had as much range as possible.

I think that part of the attraction of Escrima was that it's an armed system of combat with quasi-concealable weapons (at least if you've got an entire wheelchair to hide them in. In a wheel chair, there's no way that she could take on a normal person without weapons, and she wants something with reach. She obviously can't use a sword as that's too lethal for the Batfamily (and would be very hard to explain), so a stick would be better. Therefore they picked one of the organised systems of stickfighting - even if it is utterly impractical from a wheelchair (and the writers simply didn't know that).

Posted by

the-bumper-car.livejournal.com

Heck, they should've given her a taser, and maybe tonfas (those don't require as much up and down motion, I think? Not sure though). Oh well, comics are real anyway. :P

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sweetdragon.livejournal.com

I always thought she should get crossbow training from Ollie or Helena.

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doctorv.livejournal.com

Um. ... o_0
It's nice and all. (Though does "Ashley Mavis Powell" remind anyone else of Madame Medusa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Medusa) from The Rescuers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rescuers)?) But...the thing that really stands out for me is the third panel of the second page: "I don't remember much else, fortunately. I'm not sure what else happened except I woke up in the hospital with part of my spine shot away."
Call me crazy, but hasn't she said exactly the opposite on more than one occasion? Like that part of why she's so good as Oracle is that she remembers everything, that she in fact can't forget anything. And that, specifically, she remembers everything that happened up to, during, and after the Joker shot her.

...Damn, I wish I could remember where I read that. I think it was Birds of Prey, possibly also in a Bat book or two. Anyone else remember that?

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Yeah. That whole memory bit is her gig. I can't remember specific examples about her recalling that event in particular, but it's been mentioned a few times.

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I would fudge that by saying that short-term memory can get pretty screwed up by trauma and painkillers, and she doesn't remember the details untils he's recovered.

Or for that matter, she may have been unconscious for the rest of it, and that's why she doesn't remember what happened between hitting the carpet and waking up in hospital.

The Babs-photographic-memory schtick is particularly used in the BoP sewuence with her versus Brainiac, and I think also in (her) Batgirl Year One. It gets mentioned elsewhere of course, but it's a huge plot point versus Brainiac.

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I can't think of many things that would be more likely to be repressed as memories than being molested by The Joker. When she was back on a stable emotional footing, she probably got it all back.

(Either that, or someone messed up the continuity after Ostrander stopped writing her).

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Hey, would you mind if I put this up on my LJ and link it back here? I'm Filipino and I've been a big fan of escrima/arnis for a long time now. Seeing freaking Batgirl learn it is a Filipino Geek Boner for me. Just wanted to share it with fellow Filipinos. That cool with you?

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::laughs:: That's totally cool, go for it. :D

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thanks to you!

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lieut-kettch.livejournal.com

Nightwing uses it too. And I'm beginning to suspect both Nightwings are using Kali/Escrima/Arnis. Jason Todd, armed with a kris, seems to be using the more aggressive, knife-fighting styles, while Dick Grayson uses the less lethal stick-fighting styles. The fact they're embracing different aspects of the same martial art kind of amplifies the fact that they're two sides of the same coin.

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that's effin' awesome. hey, how come you know what a kris is? you some martial arts enthusiast? or a filipino? or both?

Posted by

lieut-kettch.livejournal.com

Hint: My level of martial arts expertise is limited to kung-fu movies. Oh, and Kamagong starring JC Bonin and Ruel Vernal is the extent of my Arnis knowledge.

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that... really doesn't say much. oh wait, so you're pinoy?

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jeazard.livejournal.com

Came here from s_d - thx a lot for posting this! ^^x
It *does* sound a little weird, thinking that I'm reading it on the Internet itself. Hard to imagine that it was once new and, dunno, terra incognita. XD

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Thanks :-D

Only thing is that it's so disjointed because the story's incomplete. (I know of at least two scenes missing from that - the scene showing what she does to Cruella de Ville and a scene showing the problems shifting from a wheelchair into a car (Kim Yale was in a wheelchair herself)).

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I have the entire thing, but I didn't post the entire thing. XD

There's a few problems with Babs post-TKJ in general, they just made themselves more apparent here. While Oracle is awesome, DC really doesn't handle it's female characters very well, and this was no exception. ::shakes fist at DC::

Also, I'm all up on her backstory and everything, heh, I know she quit being Batgirl before she was shot; twice, actually. And when I mean that she was able to sit up, spinal injuries are severe to the point where it'd take months before she'd be able to safely move, not have the strength to.

But ask anyone around here, I'm terribly critical and nitpicky. XD

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