InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "where's the beef?"

sailorlibra (sailorlibra) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-31 16:21:00

Entry tags:

char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, char: lois lane, creator: gail simone, creator: nicola scott, publisher: dc comics, title: birds of prey

When Babs met Lois Lane
From Gail's run on BoP comes one of my favorite Lois showings in a non-Superman book.

Context: Babs is in trouble with a government agent she used to know who is seeking to control her. While she's talking to Katarina--the government agent--someone interrupts them. (Note that the first two scans are from BoP 101, whereas the rest are from BoP 102, thus staying within the scan number limits.)

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bluefall
2009-11-01 12:02 am UTC (link)

It's called Mutually Assured Destruction. Like she gives a shit what the cape community thinks of her for outing Superman. If she outs Superman, it's because Lois outed her, and at that point, she's running for her life. "Oh no, Bruce won't take my calls" is not particularly high on the priority list compared to "oh no, Blockbuster is knocking on my door with a bag full of dull knives and bamboo splinters."

It's absurd and OOC that Babs should be worried about Lois as a threat, absolutely. But to threaten Lois with the outing of Superman is an absolutely valid and appropriate nuke.

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	jlbarnett 2009-11-01 12:29 am UTC (link)
	except any decent superhero would help her if her identity were outed and supervillains were coming after her. I just thought of a better question. Who got her that picture? COuld that person be trusted completely? (Reply to this) (Parent)

jaybee3
2009-11-01 12:54 am UTC (link)

Still ultimately she's being threatened by Spy Smasher here. That's who's feeding Lois info IIRC. SS is a bit player in the world scheme. Bruce Wayne (outside of Batman) is one of the richest, most connected, most powerful men on the planet. Superman is revered as a god by some people and (since this is prior to all this Sam Lane nonsense) has the ear of Washington (and his best boyhood friend is the former President of the US). Wonder Woman is the most admired woman and listened to woman in the world (even after the Max Lord stuff). Babs' own best friend is one of the founders of the JLA. Heck, all Bruce would have to do is place a phone call to Sasha Bordeaux (of Checkmate) or Lorraine Reilly/FireHawk (who is also a US Senator from NY in the DCU) and Spy Smasher's threats (and her personal/professional life) will start to fail quickly. All Babs would have to do is ask Bruce to talk to Lois or Dick or Dinah to talk to Superman (who would then talk to Lois).

Instead Babs thinks trying to threaten to expose the wife of the most powerful and most popular man on the planet is a good idea? In any reality? She's supposed to be one of the smartest people in the DCU - she knows Batman and Superman are BFFs. Being who she is she probably knows Lois and Bruce are tight - to the extent he gave the Kents their home and they live in a Wayne Building (and Oracle has probably done her research on LL prior to this meeting so she should already know that). If Lois does know about Oracle, she would also know through her connection to Clark and Bruce the connection between Oracle and Batman. And Lois would protect Batman over a story (not to mention the fact that when this story came out I believe Bruce still owned the Daily Planet). If Babs is using that big brain of hers, she should be connecting the dots here and the fact that Lois knows a lot she has never written about (heck, just a few months later Lois was one of the few civilian attendees at Dinah's Bachelorette Party/Shower with Babs in attendance as well)

If she's exposed by Lois or Spy Smasher, the super-hero community would 100% circle the wagons to protect her, Bruce would make sure of it. If however she exposes Superman, even Black Canary would wash her hand of her - and then she'd have no friends at all.

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bluefall
2009-11-01 01:11 am UTC (link)

That's beside the point. Whether heroes would circle the wagons and protect her after her whole goddamn world collapses does not even begin to be relevant. Outing Oracle destroys Oracle. She and everyone she's ever loved gets a giant red target painted on their foreheads, all her contacts disappear, the government puts out warrants for her arrest, and even if she doesn't get sniped by a pissed-off black hat, she spends the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, requiring 24/7 watchdogging from her friends, or she and everyone she loves starting a new life under a new name from absolute scratch. Period. No amount of "but superheroes still like her!" makes the least bit of difference to the utter obliteration of the world knowing how to find Oracle.

The idea is to not let it get to that point. That is irreversible bullshit, the complete destruction of Oracle. She does not out Superman because it helps her. It clearly doesn't. She outs Superman because it does to Lois what Lois did to her, which Lois doesn't want to happen to her any more than Babs does... so Lois will not do anything to Babs in order to protect herself from that retaliation. That is what Mutually Assured Destruction is. That is why there has never been a nuclear war. It's not because we think shooting our nukes at people will somehow magically fix our bombed-out irradiated wasteland of a ruined country. It's because if you do that to us, you're doing it to yourself, and no one wants to hurt us so badly that they'll pay that price.

Babs is making sure Lois knows the price of hurting her, and that it's more than Lois is willing to pay. This prevents hurt of any kind. That's about as smart as you can get, and the only way to guarantee protection from as powerful a weapon as the one Lois has in knowing Oracle's identity.

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	warpedhand 2009-11-01 01:18 am UTC (link)
	I disagree that it's necessarily too high a price for Lois. She was never actually considering outing Oracle in the first place. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-11-01 01:20 am UTC (link)
	Well obviously. But for whatever inane reason, Babs seems to think she is, in which case playing the Clark-is-Superman card is an appropriate response. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

warpedhand
2009-11-01 01:27 am UTC (link)

I agree. Of course, I think one reason Lois is doing it this way is because She doesn't necessarily know who Spy Smasher is, or why she's doing what she's doing. She's warning Oracle without blowing her own cover, and also ensuring for herself that her connection is indeed full of shit.

Just as an aside, I don't think that MAD is a particularly smart move in this case, because Babs would be so much more screwed than Lois it's not funny. Not only would she be without any sort of protection, she would have pissed off Superman, and a whole bunch of the JLA and assorted teams. Probably including Bruce. Now, Lois would be under the protection of "if you fuck with her, Superman (among others) will find you. And he will not be happy" However, Babs would have alienated a whole bunch of people, and friends would be a precious commodity indeed in that situation.

Of course, the whole thing is ridiculous, because Lois was obviously not actually threatening to reveal her. (I almost wrote "out" her, but...) I agree that the situation is silly, but it's always nice to see how a Super and a Bat work together and against each other, which I think was the broader point here. I mean, no matter how much she tries to deny it, being a Bat is still a big part of who Oracle is.

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bluefall
2009-11-01 01:37 am UTC (link)

It's the best card Babs has to play, though. She's got no way to discredit Lois on such short notice, and no way to guarantee she's destroyed all of Lois' evidence if she tries. So she really can't protect herself against Lois running the story, and her only recourse is to convince Lois to choose not to run it. And she is a Bat, after all, she's hardly going to appeal to Lois' better nature. :P

And I'm not sure how relevant it is to bring in "oh but all her friends would be pissed at her," anyway - I mean, it's not like Clark would be particularly pleased with Lois if she destroyed a fellow Leaguer, and Babs may not have more friends than Clark in the cape community, but she certainly has a hell of a lot more friends than Lois, so she's facing basically the exact same sanctions that Babs is. It's not like Dinah's going to go "hey, Lois destroyed your life, but whatever, my loyalty to Superman means I'll overlook that and just be pissed off at you." And Bruce would probably already be prepping retaliation of his own.

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warpedhand
2009-11-01 01:41 am UTC (link)

I think the antagonism might come more from the fact that both women alienated Superman and Batman by proxy than anything. I'm not saying they wouldn't help, obviously, I'm just saying that it's a situation that would affect more than the relationship between Babs, Lois, and Superman. Of course, it's still silly to think about.

I still like this more as Babs meeting her Super counterpart than anything else.

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	bluefall 2009-11-01 01:43 am UTC (link)
	Interesting. I don't think Babs really has a Super counterpart, post-Crisis, but if I had to pick one I'd have said Steel before I said Lois. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	warpedhand 2009-11-01 02:05 am UTC (link)
	I don't mean as a dispatcher or supervisory role or whatever, but the more information side of things. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-11-01 02:29 am UTC (link)

Sure, but all of the Bats are information-gathering. I suppose Lois is better at it than Clark, the primary hero, just as Babs is better at it than Bruce, the primary hero, but that role doesn't really have meaning in a Super story the way it does in a Bat story, so it wouldn't occur to me as a point of comparison. I was thinking more in terms of John being the same kind of foil to Clark as Babs is to Bruce - both originally joined up of their own accord due to admiration for the symbol and an innate sense of responsibility, rather than the standard relation to the hero (shared tragedy in Bruce's case, the theme of family in Clark's), both typically serve in a consulting capacity rather than a physical ass-kicking one since neither is on a physical par with the others in the franchise, both have satellite legacies and young charges of their own who are more about their thing than the original guy's thing.

Okay, so now I've totally talked myself into desperately wanting to see John and Babs have a team-up.

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jaybee3
2009-11-01 02:19 am UTC (link)

I would agree - if I thought at all that Lois would ever out Oracle. Part of the problem of the story IMO is that the reader never gets the tension and fear Babs is feeling (and by reader of course I mean me - :) ) because we never think for a second that Lois has any intention of doing what Katrina wants. Spy Smasher does not know that Lois is married to Superman and her loyalty is first to him and his friends (most of whom she knows very well by this time - this is near the end of Gail's run so it's not that long ago in DCU time). But Babs should know this by now. She's been Oracle for how long? And Batgirl for how long before that? And she's super-smart and knows everything with her photgraphic memory and so probably knows all about Lois - and the fact that Lois has never, NEVER, written a revealing story on one of Clark's Superfriends Crew (especially the Bat-Crew since Lois is also friends with Bruce, something Babs also should know).

I think the Mutually Assured Destruction thing works only if you think both sides are actually willing to pull the trigger. As it is, Lois (and the readers of this issue) know Oracle is safe from her pen - because that's who Lois is. And even if on the Bizarro World chance Lois would run that story - there is no point in Babs putting that picture on the web as she claims she would. If the story runs, Babs is finished (as you say) and on the run from her enemies and need all the friends she can get. The super-hero community will be mad at Lois and Batman may prepare retaliation (he does own some of the Daily Planet, he could spike the story anyhow) but Lois is not part of the cape community and outside of 2-3 people her best friends are outside it (and her husband is Superman, attack her and he will go after you even if he thinks Lois is wrong). However once the story is in print, if Babs then exposes Superman (and this photo I think makes it clear he is Clark Kent, tie-and-all) what does she gain from that? Zero. Except now instead of everyone being mad at Lois, everyone will turn on her (and if she purposely outed Clark, I do think most of the Bat-Crew including Bruce would indeed turn her on her). So we're left with a scenario where Lois never meant to out Oracle in the first place and Oracle's threats are empty because even if Lois ran with the story, her exposing Superman would not help in her any way.

I mean, I love Gail's writing, but I think this whole sequence makes Babs look dumb, unprepared, and not knowing who she is dealing with. And even if it seems Lois is toying with her (with her Pulitzer Prize reporter face on), I think Lois comes out looking the bigger woman because I really do think Lois came into this meeting thinking (as others have said) that Oracle would know her and where her loyalties lie from the start. That's the problem I have with it at least.

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jarodrussell
2009-11-01 03:42 am UTC (link)

I think the Mutually Assured Destruction thing works only if you think both sides are actually willing to pull the trigger.

Yes, but at the time when this was published, most people who read Birds of Prey lived in 1950, and weren't aware that Batman had been around for sixty years. They just were not accustomed to post-modern thoughts like "Of course the hero will win."

I mean, that's the only way I can figure anyone found this kind of thing interesting.

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	jlbarnett 2009-11-01 02:46 am UTC (link)
	of course playing it could make her into a villain in Lois' eyes in which case the threat of exposing Oracle would just change to I'll discredit and expose you. Lois isn't afraid of Lex Luthor. Oracle has nothing Lex doesn't also have. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

jaybee3
2009-11-01 03:10 am UTC (link)

Yes. That's why I think Lois comes out of this looking better. She did not come into this meeting thinking of exposing Oracle only for said Oracle to threaten her and her husband. Lois Lane does not like being threatened, Lex couldn't do it and he was both (at different times) a spurned suitor, the owner of the Daily Planet and the frikken' President of the United States.

There could have been some real drama here if Lois had not only called bluff but told Babs that although she had no intention of exposing her in the beginning, Oracle's clumsy attempts at blackmail had made her decide to do it after all. That's what Lois Lane is like - you do not mess with her (she's been a famous reporter since Barbara was a teenager, after all). Then Barbara would have looked even more stupid.

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	unknownscribler 2009-11-04 07:06 am UTC (link)
	Lex didn't have the correlation between Superman and the Kents (Reply to this) (Parent)

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