Wednesday 22 October 2014

Rebooting one character: Batgirl goes to college

Despite comics loving to restart series at issue 1, Batgirl gets a big reworking with a new creative team, base of operations (Burnside, the none-more-cool part of Gotham for college kids) and costume in issue 35.


This is coming after the previous reset to being able to walk (after almost as many years in a wheelchair as out) and generally moved her towards young while keeping the super-capable genius bit. Since things tend to remind me of Buffy, it reminded me of issue 1 (see?) of Season Nine, in which our hero also gets a new apartment, new roommates and overdoes it somewhat at a party.

In a sense, it’s a reboot without going back to origins. Character X Goes To College always is, it’s just a reboot that a lot of us actually go through. Add the new look and new creative team, and the emphasis on modern issues (she uses her smartphone more than Sherlock and fights Web 2.0 crime with it) and this is really a new book. How much it will involve ongoing Bat-continuity is unknown, but I hear fairly low.

Which is where roleplayer rambling comes in. Ever had a player shake up a character like this, due to in-game events or otherwise? I’ve mostly seen it in supers games, and then mostly with one character who went up and down the power curve from needing power armour to extinction-level event. But a heavy-duty modernisation could also come from a new edition or sourcebook. And a new player taking over an existing character can have a similar effect as well.

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