Hellfire and Brimstone

In the past week, I've been (at various times):

( Don't talk to me about healthcare. No, seriously. )

( Welcome to Canada: Consular services now available in 'Whites Only' and 'Fuck You'. )

· On a related note, I finally found my boxing handle last night: Hellfire H______, pleased to meet you.

· One an unrelated note (except possibly my passion for justice), DC's Batgirl reboot hits the stands next Wednesday. DC's house blog, The Source posted a preview that is frustratingly vague on the identity of the new Batgirl. About the only thing that is clear is that it's not the last holder of the title, Cassie Cain. Fanboy speculation is split between Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown and Barbara Gordon's protege, Misfit. No one seems to consider Barbara Gordon, the Silver Age Batgirl as a realistic candidate... except me.

True, Babs is supposedly stil paralyzed, although the last two pages of the leadingly-titled Oracle: The Cure potentially offer a fix to that problem*, and the first five pages don't seem particularly Barbara Gordon-esque (except for the weight-gag: "thank you" strikes me as an older woman's response rather than a teens). While the Phil Noto cover-art certainly matches his earlier illustrations of Batgirl and Barbara (he always paints her with blue eyes), that really doens't mean anything. At the same time, the five-page preview really doesn't sound like Spoiler or Misfit, either. Batgirl in those pages also strikes me as too capable to be either Spoiler (the Batarang move and where would she get the outfit?) or Misfit (any of it) and not good enough to be Cass (who's supposed to be one of the top two martial artists in the DCU) - I could just buy it as a just-getting-back-into-the-game Barbara Gordon, out for kicks.

My personal hunch is that we will see Barbara Gordon kicking ass in the book at some point - why the false suspense about who the new Batgirl is otherwise? At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if we find that there's more than one Batgirl out there, either. I'm not thrilled with the idea of Spoiler taking over as BG - I think she's more interesting as a foil for Tim Drake (although Red Robin is a terrible book) and I'd like to see new characters grow into their own rather than cycling throw the Batcharacters like a revolving door.

At any rate, we'll see in another week.

· I'm both looking forward to District 9 and intrigued to see the different responses. One of the things that frustrates me about the anti-racist dialogue on LJ is the overwhelming USian perspective. Representative of the English-language population of lj, I know, but frustrating for me as a Canadian. I'm interested to see how the North American interwebz respond to a movie set in Johannesburg made by a white South African who now lives in Vancouver but grew up during the last days of Apartheid rule in SA and produced by a New Zealander. It seems to me that there are many perspectives on history and racism at work in District 9 and none of them (other than Sony's marketing department) are USian. Also, as a Canadian, do I enjoy the idea of a story where aliens arrive somewhere other than the United States? Hell. Yes. Squared.

*If the Anti-Life Equation somehow fixed Barbara's injuries by transferring the damage to the Calculator's daughter, that would give an angsty-guilt-ridden edge to Babara's character of the sort that the Batbooks seem to love. I'd imagine trying to find out if she could restore the girl's mobility while loving her own restored freedom would form a large part of Barbara's arc. There would also be an interesting debate in Babs' own mind about whether or not the good she could do out of her wheelchair outweighed the harm to the girl.