The Oracle Code
by Marieke Nijkamp
art by Manuel Preitano
2020
The Oracle Code is the second of DC Comics' all-ages graphic novel series. With the exception of Superman Smashes the Klan, I think that all the comics in this series might be origin stories (and honestly, you could make a strong argument about SSTK). Oracle Code is an origin story for Barbara Gordon as the wheelchair-using hacker Oracle. In the original comics, Barbara was introduced as Batgirl, was shot and paralyzed by the Joker, became Oracle, then got unparalyzed and became Batgirl again. In this version, she's a precocious teen who gets shot by a random nobody because she followed her dad, Police Commissioner Gordon, to a crime scene.
After this brief into, Barbara moves into a creepy and barely ADA-retrofitted residential facility inside a crumbling Victorian mansion to do physical therapy and learn wheelchair skills. Perhaps the most implausible part of the book is the idea that this rat-trap is considered a state-of-the-art facility and not a candidate for getting condemned and knocked over. I guess that's Gotham for you. Initially Babs is angry and tries to isolate herself. She rejects other girls' offers of friendship, misses her programming-buddy from before her injury, tries to rush through her PT, and keeps hurting herself due to over-exertion.
Barbara starts to make one friend, a girl whose parents died in a house fire who walks the halls at night, and tells Babs spooky stories to help her fall asleep. Barbara starts making a couple more friends, gets more comfortable using her chair, and stops fighting with her dad on the phone all the time. Then the girl claims that her brother has vanished from the facility (the director claims the brother died in the fire), and then the girl disappears too (the director claims she finished her therapy).
Obviously this is a mystery, and Barbara enlists her other new friends to help investigate. They use both computer hacking and lock-picking skills to access some hidden parts of the creepy old building where, quelle surprise, there was indeed something sinister going on in the secret areas. Babs doesn't do anything super-heroic. She just investigates, learns the truth, and calls in the police, without wearing a costume or performing acrobatics, as I wished Willow had done in Whistle. 'Oracle' is just a screen name. I don't know if Nijkamp's writing is better than Lockhart's per say, but I like the plot resolution a lot more this time.
Mauel Preitano illustrated both Whistle and Oracle Code, and his versatility is pretty impressive. His art in Whistle had a sketchier, rounder, warmer, more energetic quality. The palette had a lot of bright colors, especially sky and accents of orange. Here Preitano's drawings are cleaner, cooler, flatter, more polished. The colors are autumnal, even Halloweeny, with darker oranges and blue-grays. There's a recurring motif of puzzle pieces showing Babs thinking about the mystery. And Preitano also switches styles again to illustrate the bedtime ghost stories as though they're drawn by a teenager in a school notebook.
After this brief into, Barbara moves into a creepy and barely ADA-retrofitted residential facility inside a crumbling Victorian mansion to do physical therapy and learn wheelchair skills. Perhaps the most implausible part of the book is the idea that this rat-trap is considered a state-of-the-art facility and not a candidate for getting condemned and knocked over. I guess that's Gotham for you. Initially Babs is angry and tries to isolate herself. She rejects other girls' offers of friendship, misses her programming-buddy from before her injury, tries to rush through her PT, and keeps hurting herself due to over-exertion.
Barbara starts to make one friend, a girl whose parents died in a house fire who walks the halls at night, and tells Babs spooky stories to help her fall asleep. Barbara starts making a couple more friends, gets more comfortable using her chair, and stops fighting with her dad on the phone all the time. Then the girl claims that her brother has vanished from the facility (the director claims the brother died in the fire), and then the girl disappears too (the director claims she finished her therapy).
Obviously this is a mystery, and Barbara enlists her other new friends to help investigate. They use both computer hacking and lock-picking skills to access some hidden parts of the creepy old building where, quelle surprise, there was indeed something sinister going on in the secret areas. Babs doesn't do anything super-heroic. She just investigates, learns the truth, and calls in the police, without wearing a costume or performing acrobatics, as I wished Willow had done in Whistle. 'Oracle' is just a screen name. I don't know if Nijkamp's writing is better than Lockhart's per say, but I like the plot resolution a lot more this time.
Mauel Preitano illustrated both Whistle and Oracle Code, and his versatility is pretty impressive. His art in Whistle had a sketchier, rounder, warmer, more energetic quality. The palette had a lot of bright colors, especially sky and accents of orange. Here Preitano's drawings are cleaner, cooler, flatter, more polished. The colors are autumnal, even Halloweeny, with darker oranges and blue-grays. There's a recurring motif of puzzle pieces showing Babs thinking about the mystery. And Preitano also switches styles again to illustrate the bedtime ghost stories as though they're drawn by a teenager in a school notebook.
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