The Truth Behind The Viral Batgirl Bathroom Meme | #computerhacking | #hacking | #hacking | #aihp

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover the truth behind the Batgirl bathroom meme that has gone viral recently.

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and thirty-second installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

An artist drew an unusual bathroom for Batigirl in a comic book where the door to the room was behind the toilet and the bathtub.

STATUS:

False

This is a funny one for me, because it is one of those rare times (another one was the Black Panther meme that oddly decided to credit Jack Kirby for doing the Don McGregor-written issues of the Black Panther fighting against the Ku Klux Klan) where I’m doing a legend simply because I keep finding myself correcting people about the meme online and I thought, “Hey, why not just do a Comic Book Legends Revealed on the topic and address it like that?”

Now, as I’m sure you are all well aware, one of the things that social media does “well” (quotes because it is debatable how good this is, but I guess I should just say that it does it efficiently) is pick up an image from a comic book and quickly spread it around the internet, poking fun at it. This is almost always in good fun, although I’ll admit that there have been some occasions that probably go beyond simply good fun (for instance, I can understand people not liking J. Scott Campbell’s art style, and it’s certainly fair to criticize the guy’s work if you’re not a fan, but the whole idea of “fixing” Campbell’s very distinctively stylized work seems like a reductive idea to me. It would be like “fixing” Jack Kirby’s artwork because the characters are too blocky or whatever. It’s obviously a stylization. You can like it or not like it, but you don’t “fix” it).

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In any event, like I said, one of the things people like to do (myself included) is look at old comic book artwork and poke good-natured fun at it, like Cyclops sending a photograph of himself and Madelyne Pryor in bed together on their honeymoon to Professor Xavier

Especially, well, you know, WHO TOOK THE PHOTO, CYCLOPS?!

Beyond silly stuff like that, people also often poke fun at silly errors like Rich Buckler drawing Reed Richards with three hands in the splash page to Fantastic Four #152…

or Sal Buscema drawing Captain Barracuda in Incredible Hulk #219 looking through a periscope with the eye that he wears an eyepatch on…

Buckler and Buscema were both star artists, so it’s not like anyone’s seriously knocking them for these mistakes. It happens sometimes.

That, though, brings us to a similar drawing that has been making the rounds on social media recently.

A lot of people shared it, but I believe this Zach Burrell tweet is the one that drew the most attention…

The page in question comes from 2016’s Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #5. When you look at it, it sure looks like the door to Batgirl’s bathroom is behind her bathtub and her toilet, which makes no sense, obviously, from a structural perspective…

The artist is Roge Antonio, who is a really good artist who is currently drawing She-Hulk for Marvel. In any event, the set-up for the panel that this image is cropped from is that Batgirl and the Birds of Prey are dealing with a mysterious person who is doing computer hacking using Batgirl’s former alias, Oracle (the computer hacking superhero name she used when she was paralyzed from being shot by the Joker). They track this ersatz Oracle to a penthouse apartment at the start of the issue, where they see that this Oracle is obviously a huge fan of the REAL Oracle…

He then walks in out of the bathroom, and yes, it is a bit curious that his bathroom doesn’t seem to have an actual door on it, just a doorway….

He geeks out on meeting the REAL Oracle and as the heroes all debate what to do with this guy, Barbara needs a minute to compose herself, so she heads to the bathroom…

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Now here, with the full page visible, we see that that is NOT a door behind the bathtub and the toilet, but rather some unusual wall design element and that the doorway is further down in panel…

Some people have noted it is unusual how big the bathroom is, but that’s because it is not Batgirl’s bathroom, but this bad guy, who is living in a penthouse apartment, hence the large bathroom. Now, are there still issues that you can quibble with with this panel? Sure, like the shower curtains don’t seem to make sense, but suffice it to say that it does not actually show a door behind the bathtub and toilet.

So now, when you see this shared on social media, you’ll know the truth.

SOME OTHER ENTERTAINMENT LEGENDS!

Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Was Vicki Vale Going to Die Originally at the End of Tim Burton’ Batman?

2. Did Mattel Really Make a Barbie Friend Named “Wheelchair Becky”?

3. Did Vincent and Mia Steal the Twist Competition Trophy in Pulp Fiction?

4. Did CBS Create An Alternate Version of Gilligan’s Island Where The Boat DOESN’T Get Lost to Show How That Was a Better Idea for a Show?

PART TWO SOON!

Check back soon for part 2 of this installment’s legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com

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