The Killing Joke, once one of the most lauded Batman stories of all time, has, in the last decade, become one of the most controversial. Even creator Alan Moore, usually notorious for defending his own work against criticism, has called his violent and horrifying use of Barbara Gordon as an instrument of torture, wielded by the Joker against her father and Batman, a “regrettable misstep.”

An animated feature of The Killing Joke promised to treat Barbara with more respect and as, *gasp*, a human being. Alas, it executed this seemingly simple brief by earning an R rating and having Batman and Batgirl, only ever previously depicted as enjoying a father-daughter relationship, banging on a rooftop. (Selina sees you and Alfred is appalled, even though he doesn’t have any diamonds to clean up this time.) Barbara is then kidnapped and treated exactly the same way she was in Moore’s book.

Thanks,  I hate it.

That said, Barbara Gordon as Oracle is one of the very few instances of good disability representation in comics, erased when she reclaimed the Batgirl mantle. And since it was excluded from Birds of Prey (the movie), I was concerned that new comics readers would never know of Oracle’s existence and how integral her skills were to the success of heroes such as Batman, Nightwing, and even Red Hood. How she saved as many (if not more) lives than the capes-and-tights brigade by virtue of being brilliant, determined, confident, curious, and angry.

Which is why I was thrilled when Marieke Nijkamp and Manuel Preitano’s The Oracle Code showed up at my door.

The Story

In The Oracle Code, Barbara is shot when she and her best friend have hacked into the Gotham PD system and are tracking Commissioner Gordon’s whereabouts from the rooftops. Concerned for her father’s safety, Barbara follows him and accidentally ends up in the line of fire. After she is discharged from the hospital, her family places her at The Arkham Center For Independence to finish her rehab. (Why do people keep bringing family members to places with “Arkham” in the name? The world may never know.) Being Barbara, she finds a mystery that needs solving and a fair bit of mortal danger.

She also finds her anger.

The Lesson

The headmaster of the school, Barbara’s instructors, and even her beloved father see her anger as a sign that she’s given up – that she believes she doesn’t have a future. They’ve fallen into the trap so many people fall into of seeing emotions as easily divided into good and bad, positive and negative.

Everyone wants Barbara to relinquish her anger. They want it for her (at least the folx who aren’t evil masterminds; this is a graphic novel after all); they also want it for themselves because Barbara’s anger makes them uncomfortable. Because they see anger as a negative, Barbara’s makes them feel guilty and causes them pain. Anger, in their view, is “bad.” And so long as Barbara is experiencing it, neither she nor they can be comforted or end a terrible chapter in their lives.

Here’s the thing: emotions aren’t that simple. If they were, they’d be logical. They’d be predictable. They’d be easy.

Our brains have developed over millennia. Provided they’re functioning properly (if you don’t have enough neurotransmitters, the store-bought variety is fine), they react to certain situations in certain ways because that’s the way they’re supposed to react. Calm and peaceful? You’re somewhere you feel safe with people who have proven themselves trustworthy. On edge? Something is warning you to remain vigilant.

Angry? Something bad has happened and you need motivation to push through it, to keep going, to find the other side.

Of course Barbara is angry. She’s been paralyzed. Her life has changed in a way she never anticipated – suddenly and irrevocably. Everyone is telling her she’ll get used to it, she’ll accept it, it will get better. And she will and it will, but it’s going to take time and work. It’s going to be frustrating and exhausting, and there are going to be days she wants to give up. She’ll have periods of depression, periods of anxiety. She’ll mourn. But if she wants her life back, she’ll have to push through those.

And some days, anger is the best way to light a fire under your own ass.

Anger, as a trickster god once said in the hull of ship on a TV adaptation of a beloved book, gets shit done.

When most people think of anger, they think of the disproportionate type. The dysfunction type. Anger that causes harm – a destructive force that can level all existence if given free reign.

That’s not anger; that’s rage. Rage also has its uses but is a much more dangerous grenade to throw into a crowd, and it’s far more likely to leave wreckage in its wake. That’s obviously not what I’m taking about here. I’m talking about the heat that motivates, the electricity that breeds focus, the sense of justice that makes it impossible not to take action.

We spend a lot of time telling our children not to be angry, especially our girls. And if they do feel it, they’re certainly not supposed to express it. Doing so is nasty, cruel, sinister, or even “crazy.” But how does that make any kind of sense? If our brains are wired to feel anger and respond to it, then why are we telling one of our most vulnerable populations to repress it? Why are we instructing them to disregard a protective response?

Can they go around punching everyone who says something obnoxious to them? Screaming at a teacher who gives them an assignment they don’t want to do? Absolutely not. Because there are appropriate and inappropriate outlets for anger. The underlying feeling though? There’s a reason for it. It means something needs to be fixed, either in our own lives or in the larger world.

We, as trusted adults, have an obligation to pay attention to when that happens not to make light or dismiss but to delve into why our kids feel that way. We need to ask what they saw or heard or experienced that sparked the emotion in them, because very rarely is it as simple as it seems at first glance. The trigger is rarely the reason, but kids may need our help to excavate that trench.

It’s also our job as trusted adults to help them figure out what to do about it. They may still have to do that assignment. They may have to spend school days sitting next to the person who made fun of their hair. There might not be an immediate solution to seeing children their own ages in cages. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing at all to be done. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a positive outlet for the strength summoned by anger.

In The Oracle Code, Barbara Gordon uses her anger to solve a puzzle that saves lives. The stakes for our kids may not be that high, but that doesn’t make them any less immediate or any less important.

We are, after all, the spark that will light the fire that will burn The First Order down.

The Oracle Code by Marieke Nijkamp and Manuel Preitano (DC Comics for Kids) is scheduled for a March 10 release.