Comments | sistermagpie: A Job...Done

sistermagpie

A Job...Done

May 05, 2010 21:23

I've been having a lot of trouble logging into LJ. Like, it didn't let me all day at work. Hopefully it will get fixed soon!

Anyway, this post...In which I make sad face about Bat comics. :-(

I was reading Red Robin #12 today and it was great. I’ve loved this comic from the beginning and this arc did everything it set out to do. But even though ( Read more... )

meta, bats, comics

Comments 32

pauraque May 6 2010, 02:37:31 UTC

Is it possible your work network has banned LJ? That didn't even occur to me because I was imagining you working from home.

sistermagpie May 6 2010, 02:43:48 UTC

I thought of that, but dreamwidth still works and they said they hadn't changed any security settings like that since yesterday, when it was working fine.

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sistermagpie May 6 2010, 03:31:34 UTC

Ooh! I must go and look at that again. Totally misread that sentence. So he's telling Damian it took him longer to figure it out than Dick?

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Thread 6

3goodtimes May 6 2010, 03:02:25 UTC

I completely agree. I think they fell off the good writing wagon in regards to Dick pretty quickly after Bruce 'died.' I worry because he's lost the Nightwing title. I want him to shine again, but it feels like they're just pushing him into the background. Concerning.

I was very disappointed that his Batman was sort of a watered-down Bruce.

I also think the whole 'Cry For Justice' storyline robbed us of all the nice Titans support we might have seen for Dick. And making Damian's journey an almost solitary one robbed us of some mentoring Dick could have done--there was a little bit but not enough.

sistermagpie May 6 2010, 03:35:23 UTC

I can't remember what writer it was recently who said something about how when this was over Dick was the one character who might have a chance to step up, like get promotion as his own hero. And I thought...could that be when he finally gets his story?

And yes, totally on that last paragraph. I'm sort of enjoying the most the times when Dick interacts with the Titans like Donna. He seems to get more acceptance in the JLA. And yeah, with Damian it really has been solitary. There's really not a lot of mentoring. It's more just that Dick's there and hasn't left.

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sistermagpie May 6 2010, 03:40:36 UTC

That's right! I knew it was somebody I should know.

Thread 5

parsimonia May 6 2010, 06:58:26 UTC

I was going to say, yeah, Judd Winick's brief run on Dick!Batman was lovely, in that it really showcased how Dick could make Batman his own identity, without having to become Bruce. And the interaction with Alfred. (Although I do want to nit-pick his omission of any bat-ladies being present when Supes and WW broke the news of Batman's death. Cass at the very least would've been there at the time.)

Honestly, my fear all along with this Bruce-is-dead-so-Dick-becomes-Batman business, is that it's meant to prove that only Bruce can be the One True Batman, which reads like Dick's efforts are a failure.

After all, if they played it so that Dick were to succeed and even improve upon being Batman, then what the hell do we need Bruce for? (Personally, I think it'd be fun if Dick stayed as Batman and Bruce stayed in his civvies and did more behind-the-scenes work.)

(Dick's turning of Damian is rather personal rather than a hero thing. In a way he's melting Damian's heart the way he melted Bruce's as Robin.)In some ways, I can be happy just ( ... )

sistermagpie May 6 2010, 22:21:42 UTC

In some ways, I can be happy just with that, because that's so true to his character and such a big part of him, that he's able to bring out the goodness and compassion in others, just by being himself.

TBH, I don't have a problem with that either. It was probably the only way to do it, and I do think that's a good thing about Dick that's pretty unique in his family. Just saying that it doesn't really have to do with Dick being a good Batman.

I didn't like Morrison's RIP. In general I don't really like what he does with Batman either. It just seems really meta. I was saying to someone that when the Joker was revealed in this issue it just seemed like he was there because he was the Joker and that's a Batman thing.

It just seems crazy to me that people would devote a whole series to proving the main character fails at the job. And what's annoying is they could at least do it in such a way that says that Dick would be freer if he was someone else rather than he's just not doing a good job with Batman, you know?

Great Post--well said! Also, I wrote like a novel here. ava_jamison May 6 2010, 12:07:17 UTC

It’s not that they are always writing Dick badly, really, it’s just that he’s not special either. Thinking back I feel like Judd Winick was practically the only guy who seemed to have an idea of writing a story for Dick!Batman rather than just Batman who’s not Bruce.

Very much agreed. And that was only for a brief, brief early span.

Often they seem more interested in any character in the book other than Dick--Damian's the one with the arc in B&R and Streets of Gotham, Tony Daniel's Batman was crowded with people, with Dick not much more important than anyone else.

Yes. That's the way it appears to me as well.

Thinking back over the year, it seems like there’s been endless references to Dick being not good at things, but without the satisfying payoff of how he's uniquely good regardless.This! And a payoff would be satisfying, so I don't... get why it feels like we won't see it. Or, if we do, that it'll be saved for the very end and have to do with (in B and R) the difference in something... small and not particularly canon-related ( ... )

Re: Great Post--well said! Also, I wrote like a novel here. sistermagpie May 6 2010, 22:27:44 UTC

Yeah, I've said it sometimes seems like GM's basic idea about Dick is that he was Robin in history and so that's his role. The years in between, any actual personality Dick has, doesn't matter. Or actually, it's more like they might be mentioned but they don't serve the story so they're out. Like the one moment I liked in his book was when they met Knight and Squire and Knight confessed that he was terrified of Dick as a kid because he seemed nuts. The idea is great, but unfortunately we never see that in B&R because it would conflict with Damian center stage. He only used it in that story to refer to Dick putting Bruce in the pit which wasn't Dick being crazy, it was Dick being OOC ( ... )

Re: Great Post--well said! Also, I wrote like a novel here. ava_jamison May 8 2010, 14:56:59 UTC

It just seems like when I think of big success moments from the past year they are always about other people.

Very true. And I also meant to note that Dick doesn't seem to have an emotional arc in ANY of his books. Not in B and R, not in Batman. Not in SoG, although I did like that story where Huntress and Dick worked together. And I liked the more complicated side of Dick we saw a flash of in his interactions with Selina and with Helena (at that party and right after)--if only for a minute--oh, and the dream sequence, in Batman.

Yet, no real arc, and no arc for Dick at all in Batman and Robin. (As you say, Morrison almost seemed like he was building one in, with that conversation with Alfred.

But then it went away, never to be referenced again, like Morrison got distracted by his own sense of awesome self-satisfaction in writing Pyg do a lap dance for a ten-year old. So OUT THERE, man! /sarcasm