The Oracle Code

by Marieke Nijkamp, Manuel Preitano (Illustrator)

Overview

#1 New York Times bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp and artist Manuel Preitano unveil a graphic novel that explores the dark corridors of Barbara Gordon's first mystery: herself.

After a gunshot leaves her paralyzed below the waist, Barbara Gordon undergoes physical and mental rehabilitation at the Arkham Center for Independence. She must adapt to a new normal, but she cannot shake the feeling that something is dangerously amiss. Strange sounds escape at night while patients start to go missing.

Is this suspicion simply a result of her trauma? Or does Barbara actually hear voices coming from the center's labyrinthine hallways? It's up to her to put the pieces together to solve the mysteries behind the walls.

In The Oracle Code, universal truths cannot be escaped, and Barbara Gordon must battle the phantoms of her past before they consume her future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781401290665
Publisher:	DC Comics
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	12 - 14 Years

About the Author

Marieke Nijkamp is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Is Where It Ends and Before I Let Go and the editor of the YA anthology Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens. She is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and geek. She resides in the Netherlands.

Manuel Preitano is an Italian illustrator and graphic designer, and the co-creator of the Destiny, NY series. He has worked on a wide range of toy designs, book covers, illustrations, and comic books, both in the US and in his home country. He resides in Italy with his comic book collection and his beloved drawing tablet.

Editorial Reviews

02/10/2020

Shot while intervening in a robbery, Barbara Gordon loses both the use of her legs and her best friend, who stops talking to her after the incident. Enrolled in an in-patient rehabilitation program at the Arkham Center for Independence, Babs finds her anger and withdrawal lessening after she makes a group of new friends, who share stories of change and play card games and wheelchair basketball. When one, a girl named Jena, suddenly goes missing, Babs suspects foul play and immerses herself in investigating the unsettling mysteries of Arkham, utilizing her skills as a hacker and the help of allies inside and outside the center. This sharp-edged mystery nods to the Batman universe while centering Barbara, grounding her story, and granting her agency. Preitano excels at depicting emotion, particularly anger, through faces and body language to portray an intent young woman learning to move forward from trauma. Nijkamp repeatedly explores the idea that people with disabilities needn’t be “fixed,” along the way considering how stories can be used to reveal hard-to-communicate truths. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)■

Publishers Weekly

01/31/2020

Gr 6 Up—An accident devastates a superhero but can't crush her spirit. Before, Barbara Gordon was an elite hacker. But when an attempt to help her father, police commissioner Gordon, with an armed robbery goes wrong, Babs is shot, leaving her paralyzed below the waist and unsure how to reawaken her curiosity and sense of daring. She enrolls at the Arkham Center for Independence (ACI), where patients with disabilities are rehabilitated. Though Babs finds the ACI ominous and director Dr. Maxwell unsettling, she stays at the behest of her father and finally rekindles her determination as she realizes that students are going missing and her mistrust of the institute may be more than paranoia. In this fast-paced and thoughtfully crafted mystery, Nijkamp gives comic book lovers a refreshing take on Barbara Gordon's journey to becoming Oracle (the persona that in the late 1980s replaced Batgirl as Barbara Gordon's alter ego). While Babs copes with post-traumatic stress disorder, and some doubt her abilities now that she's in a wheelchair, she realizes that though her life looks different, that doesn't mean that the future she envisioned for herself has to change. She's a winning and deeply relatable protagonist, though her friends are more thinly developed and function more as plot devices. Shadowy illustrations evoke film noir and set the perfect tone for Babs's escapades; imagery of puzzle pieces represent her growing understanding of what's really going on at the institute, as well as in her own heart. VERDICT This strong and empowering addition to DC's growing line of origin stories will resonate with superhero fans while also enticing newcomers.—Darla Salva Cruz, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

School Library Journal

2020-01-23
Nijkamp (contributor: His Hideous Heart, 2019, etc.) reimagines the backstory of Oracle, computer genius and ally to Batman.

When skilled hacker Barbara “Babs” Gordon and her best friend, Benjamin, attempt to intervene in a robbery, Babs is shot. Six weeks later, the newly paralyzed Babs reluctantly rolls into the Arkham Center for Independence, where teens with disabilities undergo physical and emotional rehabilitation. Despite her father’s well-meaning advice, Babs resents being there. Even the mysterious cries within the mansion’s walls can’t lift the teen’s despondence—until Jena, a burn survivor full of haunting tales, disappears. Aided by supportive patients Yeong and Issy, whom she gradually befriends, Babs must accept her new reality in order to find Jena and escape a sinister plot. The author sensitively portrays Babs’ frustration and trauma and realistically addresses her challenges, such as mastering wheelchair ramps and negotiating stairs. Babs’ increasing self-confidence is heartening, and the message that people with disabilities don’t need to be “fixed” in order to thrive is empowering (albeit slightly heavy-handed). Balancing bright and dark colors, Preitano’s (contributor: Puerto Rico Strong, 2018, etc.) illustrations vividly convey Babs’ anger and determination, and a jigsaw-puzzle motif reflects Babs’ quest to piece together her new identity as well as the institution’s secret. Most characters present white. Yeong, who walks with forearm crutches, is cued through her name as Korean; Issy, who uses a wheelchair, presents black.

A refreshingly disability-positive superhero origin story. (Graphic fantasy. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews