Thread by @GailSimone

Okay, I want to have a talk about one aspect of the @birdsofpreywb movie that I was withholding judgment on, that did bug me. I think it’s pretty obvious I loved it, but I do have a sizable gripe.

However, that is only meaningful in a larger context.

So mute this, maybe. :)

All right. I am looking at this from an unusual pov.

When I wrote BOP, I was so obnoxiously and fiercely protective of the characters that I likely made editors want to look for new careers. I would fight if they were portrayed even REMOTELY off-model, even in major crossovers.

And to this day, these characters are so important to me that I buy every action figure, I still have a little warm feeling every time I see even a drawing of any of them.

In that regard, I am a bad potential audience member for a movie that changes everything.

And some of the initial stuff I saw did not feel very BOP to me, just like many of you.

I have not tagged on people who want it to be comics-accurate.

Because I get it, and I have felt that many many times with characters I care about deeply.

Someone saying, ‘I want it to be like the comics,’ in a way, that is just saying they loved the stories we all told, from Chuck to Jimmy and Amanda, to me (hopefully). And that is definitely a compliment.

So yes, a part of me is that reader, for sure.

I will also say that some of the insider stuff was even further from the finished film, some changes were made to bring it more in line. And some of those were a bit hard for me to take because I felt they were missing some of the power behind the concept.

But thankfully...

...they made those changes and it really shows.

Okay, so I get it. It would be lovely to have Barbara, it would be great to have Zinda, all that stuff.

But here are some things to consider. And at the end, I will say the one bit that does still feel like a missed opportunity.

Now, here is how I feel about different takes on these characters. This will take a bit. Strap in. :)

When I was a kid, I was a fan of pulp adventure series novels. And there were essentially two kinds...static and open.

The static series were essentially the same book over and over...most Avenger novels are basically the same status quo. I loved them, but they were.

More interesting to me were things like Conan and Tarzan, that skipped around in the timeline.

You had Young Conan and old man King Conan. All valid, all parts of his timeline.

You had Jungle Tales of Tarzan, which shows him as a boy, and others where he is a grandfather.

This is how I think of most iconic chapters in comics...you go from Wolverine Origin to Old Man Logan, it’s all different points on the timeline, all valid.

You go from Batgirl Year to Oracle. We messed that one up, but you can still place my Batgirl run on the timeline between.

MOST of the changes in the movie DON’T clash with the iconic versions, the core characteristics, of these characters.

It’s just very early in the timeline, when they are still figuring out who they are. And the end points that they are headed towards something more recognizable.

And I am okay with that, I embrace it. Because why?

Because I believe the truly great characters are elastic. You can pull them and bend them, you can stretch them. The great ones snap back. We all know what their core is. They snap back.

And if you know that,mid you know the comics are always there, then it’s not an abomination when someone stretches them a new way, it’s a journey, it’s a ride, and we all get to have fun watching.

I actually love that.

I love that there are a hundred versions of Superman. I love that there’s cartoon Batman and Dark Knight Batman.

We’re used to that, we are completely accepting.

It’s harder when a character, say, Huntress, only has one big screen showing, we want it to be ‘right.’

I didn’t go to the movie expecting my Bop, or Chuck’s Bop, I wanted to see the vision of Cathy, Christina and Margo.

You don’t hire an artist and then tell them to do someone else’s greatest hits album. You hire them to bring something to the table.

If you hate that Barbara isn’t in it, and she was never going to be because she’s spoken for elsewhere, would you rather there be no bop film at all?

That’s fine, it’s valid. But we would be missing a lot of joy over something the filmmakers couldn’t change. I want the film.

My core Canary is not a series of continuity connections, she’s not a roadmap. She’s a force of personality.

My question for the film was, does she have heart, does she put others’ safety above herself, does she kick ass and smile after.

And the answer is, damn right she does.

My feeling is, with Canary and Harley and Huntress, they gave us fresh, updates takes layered on top of EXACTLY what I love in the comics. Is Huntress quirky from years of isolation? Does vengeance leave her empty? Yes. That IS Huntress.

Her awkwardly making friends IS Helena.

What costume she wears pales in importance in comparison.

These are icon characters. We have seen a lot of slavish adaptations fail. I say, give the characters to people with vision and see what comes up. That’s what has made ALL the most memorable films AND comics.

I hear people say, ‘well, that’s not MY Bop’ or ‘that’s not MY Superman,’ and I get it, I think it’s awesome that we all of us care, that we love something so much we feel proprietary.

But I wanted to see the characters’ hearts up there, which is their true core. We did.

I would say they triumphed in that regard.

The complaint that it’s a Harley movie seems weird to me, I do pr think they ever said otherwise. But Margo was incredibly gracious both behind the scene and onscreen giving everyone a chance to shine. And they did. :) so much.

Truthfully, I feel a little bad if people won’t go see it because it’s not the comic, exactly. They are missing a ton of fun, and grit, and heart.

I get it, I have been that person. But I would rather have something in exact that makes me cheer than something exact that bores.

There are different versions of these characters. It’s a good thing.

All right, so, to the thing that does stand out, that I wish had gone another way?

It’s not Barbara. The Birds of Prey can function with different line-ups. And she was never going to be in this film, it just wasn’t in the cards.

It’s Cass.

I have held back commenting on this, mostly, because I wanted to see for myself. But essentially, this Cassandra Cain is a new character.

I like her, she’s fun to watch, the actress is adorable (Ella Jay Basco) is great in the role. But she bears no resemblance to Cass.

I don’t think of it as an insult so much as a missed opportunity.

Like basically all of the Asian martial arts characters of that era at the big two (I do not exclude myself from this at all), there’s stuff in her early stores that reeks of exoticism and more. Fair enough.

But she became so much more. She was also one of the first truly successful solo Asian heroes at either company. Her struggles with speech and reading and socialization were hugely meaningful to so many people. I love Cass dearly, and this is not a Cass I recognize.

I think it was an easy fix, just give her a different name.

It’s possible that they didn’t want another voiceless Asian flawless goddess assassin, and that’s perfectly fair, but it would have been the same movie character if they had names her Nancy Floogenbottom, not Cass.

So that was my only major gripe. I love Cass, I think she’s very special and precious as a character.

However not everyone writes her well and the first TWO times I wrote her, I messed it up completely (bugs me to this day).

Which leads me to my final point...

And this is a big one.

When we say, ‘that’s not Black Canary from the comics,’ well, okay, true.

But it’s also cherry picking. We are comparing it only to the stories you liked best, the absolutely most memorable, top shelf stuff.

Because speaking as one of the world’s biggest Black Canary fans, there are a TON of lousy Black Canary stories, in the COMICS.

Stories where she has no agency, stories where she is just a hostage or a wet blanket, stories where she;s an empty-headed sexpot.

In the comics.

When I wrote Bop, all I wanted for Canary was to make her so resourceful, so determined, that she would never be a goddamn helpless hostage again. And a LOT of writers picked up that torch.

We worked hard on that, making her an uncrushable spirit.

It was the central the,e of her arc, I worked on it for years.

The very FIRST story she appeared in after being taken out of Birds of Prey?

They had her on her knees, helpless, with a villain sticking his sword in her mouth.

That’s comics, too.

There is nothing even REMOTELY as disrespectful to the characters as a lot of the routine horseshit that some of these characters endured in comics, even in books with their names on the cover.

So for me, the outrage over a costume change for the movie seems weird.

Okay, too long, I apologize, but it’s been asked of me a thousand times and I don’t want to jot this all down over and over. :)

I am not tagging in anyone who wishes for a more comics-accurate Bop, or any comics character. But I feel two important things about that;

First, consider that timeline I was talking about. This movie functions as a very good introduction to the characters and concepts of BOP. It is clearly an opening salvo, and seems to be saying SPIN-OFF in huge letters. It see,s to set up what you are asking for.

And second, again, the good characters, and especially the great ones, they need occasional fresh takes and new paint. I love comics Canary, but she already exists, I don’t know that I need an exact embodiment.

I want her FORCE, and we got that absolutely.

Birds of Orey has been a huge thing in my life. It kept me reading comics when I had mostly given up. It gave me a career and a life I couldn’t dream of. ‘I almost got fired many times defending the characters.

And I enjoyed the holy FUCK out of this movie.

:)

That’s it, sorry it took so long and the million typos, I’m typing this on an iPad while my dog is trying to get my attention.

I loved it, I totally get people complaining, but I had a blast and will probably see it eleventy times.

It’s part JOHN WICK and part MY LITTLE PONY.

PS. The soundtrack absolutely BANGS.

Thanks for reading!

Good LORD, that’s a lot of typos.