DC Needs to Bring Back Stephanie Brown

I've never been a huge DC Comics fan. I don't even read Batman regularly, I just try to follow the more memorable storylines when they come out in trade--usually via one of my local libraries. But I follow it enough, and back when Stephanie Brown was Robin and then Batgirl, I used to pick up both of those titles on occasion on account of the fact that I have daughters, and my daughters like superheroes.

Stephanie Brown as Batgirl

It's not particularly easy to find superhero comics that aren't either steeped in dark-and-brooding anti-social loners or continually populated with half-naked hyper-sexualized pin-up dolls--or both!--but for awhile there, I felt like DC had managed to put something out in the form of Ms. Brown that was both kick-ass and female-friendly. Unfortunately, that now seems like an aberration in the grand scheme of things, more like an accident of fate than a conscious decision or good storytelling, to the point where the girls and I don't read anything from DC anymore. I mean, I don't consider myself any kind of feminist, but there are still limits to the kinds of things I'll allow my daughters to be exposed to, and more to the point, I don't want them to feel either intimidated or marginalized by the comics they read. Now, that may not seem like such a big deal, but actually, it's been frustrating to find things for them to read that I thinks are actually empowering for them, to the point that now, off the top of my head, I can't think of a single female-friendly superhero title besides Marvel's Captain Marvel.