dishpan

i read all those and i couldnt tell you if jla is caught up in time yet. its definitely later than the first story arc but i dont know how much. yes its the same line-up.

spoilers
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/...eague-9-review

Hokeyboy

^Is your first name Gil?

dishpan

if youre asking me, no

madcougar

I thought it had been semi-established in the New DC that Dick and Barbara had been an item. The Nightwing/Batgirl shippers will not be happy if it's her.

dishpan

it has, and that still can be true. they were young and human sexuality is a continuum.

dc should prolly just tell us and prevent this from turning into some kind of gay witch-hunt or forced outing though.

madcougar

Uh... yours maybe!

kgrogers1979

If Nightwing Annual #2 is still canon, then that likely turned Barbara off men.

Supermallet

Making Guy Gardner gay would be kind of awesome, now that I think about it.

Hokeyboy

One fist! ONE FIST!!

PhantomStranger

I bet the gay character will be a supporting one like Alfred the butler. It will crush me if it's Barbara Gordon. It always could be a villain, I don't think the fans would cry out in protest if we find out someone like Poison Ivy is a lesbian.

LorenzoL

The gay character is supposed to be male.

dishpan

i am leaning towards jimmy olsen

Josh-da-man

God, that's disturbing on so many levels...

fujishig

So who wrote that charming piece of retcon-in-a-throwaway-annual-that-ruins-a-character? That's almost as bad as Nightwing getting raped (thanks for that, Devin Grayson).

Ah, ok, it was Andreyko. It's worse than i thought:

from the recap at http://www.comicvine.com/nightwing-a...art/37-108584/
So he finds out she's crippled, goes over to see her and give her the invitation and then does that? Ugh.

PhantomStranger

I always wanted Dick to marry Barbara at some point but that whole scene is crazily bad, damaging to both characters.

stingermck

If I remember correctly, that annual set up them getting back together, but Nightwing had to join the fight in Infinite Crisis, and after that soft boot was One Year Later, and it was dropped.

ytrez

Wait. Nightwing was raped???

And that scene above...wow, I'm at a loss for words. I like the line "...now I can't feel my legs" but for the writer to ask me to believe that Dick would do that takes some nerve. What was the point of that scene? If he wanted to show me that Dick is human, makes bad decisions, has moments of weakness, or something like that, there are a million better ways to do it. Toying with the emotions of one of his oldest friends, through sex no less, is not something I see Dick doing. I know it's just one page and doesn't show all of the context but it makes it seem like he was throwing Babs a bone, giving the crippled girl a sympathy shag then rubbing her face in it with that engagement announcement. Ugh. I'm happy I went back to reading golden age comics.

When I started reading comics Babs was older that Dick. He was in high school/college when she was a congresswoman (and before that a librarian who must have already been through college). I believe 25 is the minimum age requirement for Congress so there were at least 7 or 8 years difference between them but somewhere along the lines they seem to have become pretty much the same age and romantic notions between the two became more prevalent. I don't think I ever thought about them getting married, she was always the big sister in my mind.

fujishig

That annual was all about their relationship, so I assume the writer was showing flashbacks to show how they've been on again and off again for so long. Although Barbara obviously sees it differently, I don't think Dick was "throwing the crippled girl a bone" but that deep down he still had feelings for her. Like stingermck said, it was all about them getting back together but him making the tough choice to go join the fight in Infinite Crisis, and then for whatever reason to join Batman on his one year jaunt where he and Supes and Wonder Woman just didn't care about the world for a year. I mean, he had a ring and proposed, even, before it was dropped.

Still makes that scene crappy all around, for her, Dick, and Starfire.

Their relationship had long been fanfic material, which considering the whole new 52 Catwoman thing, seems to be where they're heading with some of these books anyway.

Oh, and yeah, Nightwing was raped, by a woman. Well, the author, Devin Grayson, doesn't call it rape, just saying it was non-consensual, but I don't really see the difference. Hopefully that was wiped out too, whether by Superboy Prime's punch or by the new 52.

Hokeyboy

Anything Devin Grayson ever wrote should be wiped out. By a punch or flamethrower, I'm good either way.

Spiderbite

What issue is this? It sounds so bizarre that I now have to check out both it and that annual mentioned above.

fujishig

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/sca...ly/366943.html

madcougar

Is there REALLY such a thing as non-consensual sex for a straight man who is being sexed up by a woman? This same thing happened to the Hulk.

She must have been screwing Mark Waid something crazy to get as much work as she did.

stingermck

Pic:

kodave

Not sure if you're serious, but a male erection is very much a physiological reaction. It's possible for a female to rape a male in this way without the male's consent. Just like when males rape other males and the male being raped finds it pleasurable and even ejaculates.

Devin Grayson also doesn't appear to understand rape. If its non-consensual, its rape. That's basically the whole basis for the idea of "rape." The lack of consent or the inability of the person to consent in a meaningful way. If he does understand, then he's purposely avoiding the word rape because of the societal implications the word has.

In the picture posted by stingermck, without any further context of the preceding or following pages, shows rape. Something isn't right with Nightwing, he's injured and seems delirious, he explicitly tells Tarantula not to touch him - this request seems to to be not to touch him in any sense - thereby denying consent for sex with her. Tarantula essentially climbs on top of him (which in turn pins him down and if he's injured, he may be unable to move her off of him), its implied an erection occurs, and Tarantula gets on it and rides him and basically tells him not to fight it. If they just got done with some huge battle and Nightwing is injured and just out of his mind, there isn't really any meaningful implied consent to reverse the explicit denial of consent at the top of the panel. (Again, an erection isn't implied consent and the most physical action we see from Nightwing is him trying to sit up in some way.)

PhantomStranger

It's the problem with a woman writing a male character. That scene is written as if Dick is a female. I don't believe Dick, an Olympic-caliber athlete trained by the world's greatest human superhero, could not overpower Tarantula if the contact was not welcome. It does not add up, emotional trauma or not. Maybe if he had been stoned out of his mind in a delirium, but even that is questionable. The scene is supposed to be shocking for its own sake and is just not plausible.