Don’t get me wrong, I like Batman and all, but I don’t see why every DC comic has to be equally grim and dark. Surely each should have its own feel? (The same should be true for the movies, by the way. I remember describing Man of Steel to a friend as “Superman Batmanned”.)
So thank goodness for Barbara Gordon, whose Batgirl takes a completely different route. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t have difficulties, or face challenges. She just handles them differently.
When you think of gender-bending in Norse myth, the trickster-god Loki springs to mind. Would you be surprised to know that Odin and Thor have also dragged up, albeit not very successfully in Thor’s case? (One of the areas they did not compete in during the flyting in Hárbarðsljóð; imagine how that would have gone.)
Incidents like the tug-of-war in the Njord-Skadi myth, the various humiliations meted out to Thor (being peed at by giantesses, having to hide out in a giant’s glove, forced to disguise himself as Freya, and being seriously cheeked by Odin in Harbardzljod) and of course the insult-fest that is Lokasenna has made many people wonder how on earth anyone took these gods seriously.
