The winds of change come fast and mighty. When DC launched their New 52 three years ago, one of the key reboots was Batgirl. Oracle vanished from the DCU, replaced by a Barbara Gordon who had regained the use of her legs. DC didn’t completely wipe Alan Moore’s brilliant Killing Joke out of the canon, but in the New 52 Batgirl had received an operation that returned her to battle-ready status.
Being Batgirl again was the end of the good news for the daughter of Commissioner Gordon. Ace comics writer Gail Simone came in and threw everything but the kitchen sink at Batgirl. Her brilliant run was stylish, layered, and overall very dark. Now, with Simone’s three year run (minus a few issues here and there) ending, a new light is cast over Batgirl in the form of writers Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher and artist Babs Tarr. Issue #35 has launched a new age in Barbara/Batgirl’s world, one that’s upbeat, light and with a dash of hipster. New York Comic Con seemed like the perfect place to get the skinny on these two young writers, their talented artist (who is also immensely cute and difficult not to develop a crush on) and talk about their new take on Batgirl.
CraveOnline: So, in one issue, you have completely changed the tone of Batgirl. Was that the plan from the get go?
Cameron Stewart: It wasn’t necessarily a decision to change everything out of spite or anything like that. I wanted to do the kind of Batgirl story that I wanted to do, something that was fun and light and upbeat. If they were going to offer the book to me and give me the creative freedom to change the direction, then that’s what I wanted to do.
Is this a reboot?
Stewart: No, this isn’t an erasure of everything that’s come before, we’re just trying to start a new chapter in her life. This new arc seems like a totally different thing, but there’s a specific purpose for it. It’s all about her trying to balance extremes. She’s definitely gone from one extreme to the other, and this is how she resolves that and finds balance.
Most Batgirl stories have been focused on the hero, not the woman, is this new direction different?
Brenden Fletcher: Definitely. It might have been okay in the fifties to tell plastic stories, not that Batgirl stories have been plastic, or one-dimensional stories of good guys smashing bad guys in the teeth. The audience is more demanding these days, they want more depth, and to get that depth you need to talk about the people under the mask. We needed to dig into Barbara and who she is and where she needs to go in her life. It just so happens that where DC has taken her since The New 52 is a very, very dark place with a lot of really awful things happening to her. To us this is a natural place in her narrative for Barbara to turn herself around and realize no, she’s not Bruce Wayne, she doesn’t revel in this darkness, she can rise above it, and as you’ll see, she makes note of that and makes these choices. Now, as she discovers her center or her true north, she’s going to make mistakes. She’s not the most adept at social situations.
Who is? Realistically if you’re going to write about the person, she can’t be perfect.
Stewart: I think a protagonist who is perfect and never makes mistakes is boring. It’s interesting to build a character that is defined by the choices they make, and sometimes those choices are the wrong ones. That’s an interesting thing to explore. We all learn from our mistakes and grow from them.
Some readers might miss the darkness, or the focus on just the hero.
Stewart: The problem with serial fiction is that we can see the whole picture and the readers can’t. They may have an initial reaction to something we do without realizing the context of it. We’re aware of the mistakes Barbara is making, but there are in service of bringing her to another place.
Babs, this is your first time on a major book, and your art is outside the DC wheelhouse. How did you get pulled into this?
Babs Tarr: When Cameron first contacted me I said to him that my style is not really DC style, and I didn’t want to work on something where I had to be someone I’m not. Before Batgirl I was working at a gaming studio, and doing freelance and always drawing to somebody else’s style. When Cameron contacted me I didn’t think that DC would go for me, but Cameron said “no, we love you, you’re exactly who we need”, and DC is in a place now where they actually went for it.
A few female friends of mine have commented on the girl-talk, that it’s spot on. How do you nail something like that being male writers?
Stewart: Some people ask, “How do you write women?”, and I think, “Well, we know women” and they’re just people. It’s just paying attention to the cadence, and the way people speak, and making sure it sounds natural. We spend a lot of time on the dialog. I sit and write it out and say it out loud and try to make sure it sounds correct.
Fletcher: And then I correct it and give him notes about how terrible it is and he changes it back and we go back and forth. (Laughs) We just keep rewriting until it sounds natural enough but includes the information we need to carry the story. I also have a niece around the same age as the characters, so I gave the book to her to make sure it was spot on.
In one scene, readers get to see Barbara’s photographic memory and detective skill set in action. That’s been largely glossed over in pas incarnations.
Stewart: We want that to be a signature thing in the book. When we started working on this, and were looking at older Batgirl issues, we noticed there was a lot of talk about her memory and her intelligence, but very rarely was it seen visually. We wanted to come up with ways to allow for the audience to experience her using those skills and solving problems. That way they’re an active part of what’s happening instead of just being talked about it.
Fletcher: This is what also sets her apart from the rest of the Bat-Family. It’s something that only Barbara has. She’s always had this photographic memory in the comics, but it’s only been spoken about. We wanted to see it because something like that can really help in the detective world.
Babs how has all of this been for you?
Tarr: The amount of attention is kind of insane. I was used to really flying under the radar because the only people who had to look at my stuff were people who liked it. Now I’m on this major book, and people who love the character, even if they don’t like my art style, have to deal with it. It’s been very positive so far, but when I first got the job it was hard to juggle everything.
The three of you also bring in Black Canary, another notoriously dark character and brighten her up. Was Canary in there from the word go?
Fletcher: No actually, that was something that came up in early discussions with editorial and it turned out to really be good for the story. I don’t think we’re brightening Canary up, I think she just seems brighter because of the circumstances. Part of what makes her interesting is you have this character with a military background who is very edgy, and you set her essentially in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NYC) with a bunch of really annoying kids.
Okay, I promised some friends I would ask about this. In the scene where Barbara is getting coffee, is there a nod to Sailor Moon?
Tarr: Yes there is. There’s also another element of Sailor Moon in it. There’s a nod to Gotham Academy in it, and a nod to a certain group of ladies that like comics. I’m trying to put all these Easter eggs in it.
Fletcher: There is also a certain dick pick on the wall of the bathroom, but we changed it to the Nightwing logo.
Explain that!
Tarr: I was drawing all this bathroom graffiti and I had a doodle wiener in there, the dumbest drawing of a wiener you can imagine. Cameron said they’d never let it fly, so we decided to make it a “Dick” Grayson or Nightwing logo.
So what comes next for Barbara Gordon?
Fletcher: As is teased in the end of issue 35, there is a mysterious antagonist who is calling herself Batgirl, and will continue to plague Barbara over the coming issues and it has an unusual connection Barbara’s past.
