Friday, May 15, 2009

The Cure #3

I read Oracle: The Cure #3 with some eagerness this past week. I'd enjoyed the first two issues and I was really looking forward to finding out what was going to happen in the third issue.

Imagine my disappointment.

Everything was going quite well until the last few scenes. Then everything seemed to fall apart. Suddenly nothing made sense. I had to reread the last couple pages because I felt somewhat confused.

But I don't think it was the writer's fault. It really felt as though he had to go back and quickly change around the ending of his story. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it felt as though DC up and changed their plans for Wendy, Orcale, and/or Batgirl and thus the writer hand to move things around.

Or maybe that's just me being overly generous. What do those of you out there who also read the comic think?

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8 Comments:

At 11:32 AM, Blogger SallyP said...

It did seem to end with a palpable thud, didn't it? What confused me, is that Oracle has always been so careful about safeguarding her acual identity...one of the reasons the Calculator was interesting, was that he was SO obsessed with finding out who Oracle really was.

Heck, he's even met Barbara before at a Nerd convention, and liked her,but he STILL didn't know that she was Oracle, although he did believe she was working for Oracle.

And now here she comes, and practically takes out an ad in the paper, letting everyone know who she is! Good Grief!

 
At 1:22 PM, Blogger Scipio said...

Oh, no, no, no.

You're missing it.

Cassandra Cain is slated to die; it's shown in the "Battle for the Cowl" symbolic portrait.

Barbara is going to be healed and become Batgirl again. The plot threads that she's lost confidence in her work as Oracle and is increasingly dissatisfied with her physical limitations lead this way.

Wendy is previously established as a computer genius through her appearance in Teen Titans. Awakening from her coma, she cannot feel her legs. She will find new purpose as the new Oracle.

 
At 1:29 PM, Blogger ShellyS said...

I thought the ending was flat, too. And I'd really been enjoying the story until the last few pages, too.

If Scipio is right, if Babs becomes Batgirl again, she will cease to interest me. You can't go backward. She's not a girl anymore. As Batgirl, she'd be "junior" to the new Batwoman, a character will less experience than Babs. It would be an insult to Babs.

And the thought that being paralyzed from the waist down is a requirement to be Oracle, as if that was a job and not an identity Babs carved out for herself, and tied to one's physical limitations as much as to their intellect and computer skills is even more insulting.

 
At 4:41 PM, Blogger Jake said...

I really, really hope your analysis is wrong, but even if it wasn't I think the miniseries failed due to being remarkably uninteresting.

What did we get for the money we spent on this mini? We saw some horrendous computer speak which doesn't make any sense, a low-quality Tron parody, over-the-top gore that didn't advance the plot, and the series ended without anyone who was hurt before the series being cured.

Apart from the whole thing hinging on a really pointless interpretation of the Anti-Life Equation, which spun out of Final Crisis, which was the predecessor of Battle for the Cowl, it didn't seem to have any point to me.

 
At 8:14 PM, Blogger Diamondrock said...

Sally: That did seem strangely out of character, now that you mention it.

Scipio: You may be right. But I still don't care for the intimation that you have to be in a wheelchair to be Oracle...

Shelly: I tend to to agree on Batgirl/Batwoman. I just can't see Barbara going back to Batgirl when you've got a Batwoman running around. If Batwoman didn't exist, then I wouldn't have much of a problem with it.

Jake: It *did* turn out to be a bit of a dud, didn't it?

 
At 5:53 PM, Blogger Derek said...

Jake: "... a low-quality Tron parody..."

It was a Second Life parody, I think you'll find.

But yeah, the whole miniseries seemed kinda pointless.

I figure it was called "The Cure" because the driving force of the plot was the Calculator trying to heal his daughter. Well, that and to make the readers think Oracle was going to walk again so we'd buy it out of a mixture of outrage and morbid curiosity.

But the whole situation with Wendy seems so thrown together in the first place that I couldn't bring myself to care about her fate or Calculator's angst.

Plus, I am so. sick. of Oracle versus Calculator.

 
At 10:19 PM, Blogger Jake said...

It was a Second Life parody, but then it turned into net avatars fighting each other, although there's a cleaner reference that can be made. Apparently somehow you stay connected to the internet at all times and when your avatar gets hurt you get hurt too.

Maybe they're Stands!

 
At 10:22 PM, Blogger Diamondrock said...

I guess it's like the Matrix? Who knows...

 

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