One of the things I was very proud of in my first run of BOP is that we had no serious romantic subplots through the entire five year run. I felt it was important to show that a book with female leads didn’t HAVE to be about romance or the girls talking about boys. There’s nothing wrong with that, but how many media portrayals of straight female leads actually manage to NOT have that element constantly? It’s a way of saying that women have no value absent from their relationship and value to men. Male action heroes can go without a romantic subplot and no one blinks twice. But there is a constant buzz in the air around all female leads about who they should be sleeping with.
Another factor was that the most likely candidate for a good romance plot was Babs, and to use the common parlance, I am a hopeless, unapologetic Dick and Babs shipper. I just…well, look at this panel. That’s not me writing, that’s just organic, it’s just what’s there before the page is written. They are fantastic together.
It was around this time that I started to seriously re-identify with Babs. Batgirl was THE hero of my childhood that meant the most to me. I was the only one in my school with red hair, and here was a red-haired woman who could kick ass and was smarter than Robin and, oh, my god, she’s the reason I loved comics in the first place. I started to think like her while writing her. I’ve said it before, but it’s a red-haired chick in glasses sitting in front of a computer all day controlling people’s lives. That seemed STRANGELY FAMILIAR.
The interesting thing was that Devin Grayson, whom I adore and who I idolized somewhat, was writing Nightwing at the time. Devin is an out-and-proud bisexual, and heavily into role-playing. When she writes, she adapts, she kind of becomes the characters (she’s talked about this before, I’m not revealing secrets). And we were playing City of Heroes for a while, where she played a Nightwing character and I played Batgirl. She’s the kind who stays in character.
So when we were coordinating the appearances of Nightwing and Babs in each other’s books, she would write in Nightwing’s voice, and she would call me Babs. It was a working relationship unlike any other I’ve experienced and it very quickly became oddly comfortable to think of the person on the other end as Dick Grayson emailing me, somehow the “Gail” and “Devin” part became a little more distant each time. It was a little scary, like being an observer to your own creative process, rather than the person behind the wheel.
I don’t suspend disbelief like that, it was a writing aid and not reality, but it’s very powerful to find yourself lost in a character, where some of the things they say don’t seem to come from your own consciousness at all, but some remarkable place where they really do live and carry on with thoughts of their own.
So writing these scenes with Babs and Dick was one of the most fun times I’ve had in comics. And I’ll add that while some female creators were a little chilly and unhelpful to me when I was starting out, Devin was ENDLESSLY supportive and helpful. I think she was a powerful, humane voice in comics and I miss her presence immensely. I have learned a lot from a lot of different writers, but no one I’ve met committed to their characters’ inner lives the way Devin did.
A very talented writer and a very special person.
Oh, and Babs + Dick 4evah, while I’m at it.
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