Why Can't Steph Brown Be In Smallville?

So why do you think DC scrapped Stephanie Brown in favor of Barbara Gordon being Batman's partner in the Smallville comic?

It just seems kind of silly. Smallville's a separate universe, so it doesn't seem like it should matter that Batman has a female partner who isn't Barbara Gordon. Has Barbara really been a partner/sidekick for Bats other than in the cartoon universes? Oracle started out working with the Squad, and later lent her expertise to the Batcrew, so that doesn't seem like the same thing. I don't know, maybe New 52 Batman had Barbara as a sidekick for awhile too, wedged in amongst all the Robins.

And if it really did matter, if having Steph was somehow going to confuse all those new readers just getting their heads wrapped around Barbara Gordon, then why is it Alan Scott as Green Lantern in Earth-2 instead of Hal/Guy/John/Kyle? That book is much more closely connected to the new 52, yet it's apparently OK to use different characters there. All those poor new readers' heads must be spinning.

Or maybe not.

It's too bad, really. As much as I'd like to see either Steph or Cassandra Cain show up in the new 52, I'm frankly terrified of which creative team might get ahold of them. Cass could wind up with Beechen again, or Winick. Liefeld. Lobdell. There's a long list of writers I prefer stay the hell away from characters I like, and they unfortunately outnumber the ones I have some measure of trust in. When it came to Stephanie Brown, Bryan Q. Miller was absolutely on the "trust" list.

Not to be, though. For whatever the reason.