The other recent addition to this year's comic book outcries came just this past week, from a very unlikely source. Since DC rebooted their whole continuity (long story) (long, stupid story) Barbara Gordon has been out of the wheelchair she was put in during classic graphic novel The Killing Joke and back on duty as Batgirl, with a new series written by regular Gail Simone which introduced one of the company's first major transgender characters in Babs's room mate Alysia Yeoh. Simone recently left the book due to editorial intereference that made the book uncharacteristically dark, something which has been totally undone by a fresh new take on the character by writers Brendan Fletcher and Cameron Stewart and artist Babs Tarr, who have moved Batgirl over to Gotham's equivalent of Brooklyn (hip, young, free of masked vigilantes) and attempted to provide a progressive, modern take on young womanhood. Casual sex and all. It looked like everything was on the up and up until a recent issue where it turned out an impostor Batgirl who had been bothering Babs since the new creative team's debut issue was actually a man, who was depicted as being dangerously deranged and murderous not a particularly helpful characterisation of gender fluidity. Unlike the rest of the mistakes on this list, Stewart, Fletcher and Tarr actually apologised. And did it properly, which was nice.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
