Batman #373

This story about fear appropriately opens with Jason, not only having a nightmare, but screaming in his sleep. Batman and Robin manage to best the Scarecrow, but even in the next issue, Bruce is checking in on Jay and making sure he doesn't have anymore bad dreams.

Batman #374

So, in-universe, you could say that Bruce stopped actively working toward that connection with his Robins because of Jason’s death. He’s protecting himself from going through the grief that he went through after Jason died.

Not to mention that, at first, Tim already had an entire family and life outside of Bruce/Batman/Robin-ing. He didn’t need VENGEANCE, he didn’t need A FAMILY…he saw a job that needed doing and volunteered himself to do it.

But that meant that Bruce got out of practice at dad-ing.

Actually…I think the thing is…Bruce does really well with kids/young people who don’t have anyone on their side. Like Dick/Jay/Cass. And I think it’s because of two things.

1) He holds his parents up on a pedestal. They died when he was really young, and so Mom and Dad are kind of enshrined concepts to him.

2) He actually has a model for “sole adult caretaker” in Alfred. Who obviously wasn’t perfect, but he loved Bruce and he did take care of him.

Between these two things, I think Bruce gets how to be a guardian for those young people. He feels comfortable in that role. He’s not perfect at it, but he has an idea of what he can do, and what he should do.

It’s when kids/young people have active familial connections to other people that Bruce has trouble. He’s not great at that “adult who cares about them as family but who they don’t rely on solely” role. Because, well…Bruce didn’t have a model for that kind of relationship in his life. He’s not comfortable with not being needed.

So he tips more towards “Boss Batman” in…less than ideal ways. (See: Everything that happened with Tim and Steph.) (See also: Dick getting fired once he built a strong relationship with the TT.) (See also: Tim getting dumped in favor of Damian.)

(Lol poor Tim. He very much was a victim of Bruce’s fucked up emotional connections.)

Also, I think it’s worth noting that when Damian—the kid who actually calls him father—dies, Bruce goes absolutely off the rails including psychologically torturing Jason in an ill-advised attempt to figure out how he came back to life.

"I hated that Batman hit his kid in--"

nope stop right there. i'm going to give you a wonderfully freeing bit of comics fandom knowledge.

batman didn't hit his kid because batman isn't real. a writer wrote a fictional character hitting a child and an artist depicted it. if i defend batman, i'm not saying this act as a concept isn't gross, or that it's excusable-- i'm saying it's so reprehensible to me and incompatible with my preferred Batman shape that I'm stepping outside of the universe and acknowledging that this is a fiction created by people who might have done it badly (or differently than I would like, but not my cup of tea).

"but it's still canon--" this isn't a book series. this isn't a movie, or a show with a few seasons. comics are different. they're so incredibly different. it can't all be canon and cherry-picking isn't some mark of failure to accept "the difficult parts." in canon, dick let his siblings believe he was dead. in canon, superman spun himself a cocoon. in canon, alfred died and came back to kill bruce. in canon, bruce cloned himself. in canon, riddler tried to kill a baby with a ping pong ball. it's all canon. it can't all be canon. in canon, bruce retired to europe and never had a robin. in canon, bruce did a trapeze act on a cruise ship to try to impress lois lane.

comic book fandom is like the wild west. some of these towns are lawless, some of them assembled a functional community; the circuit judge has been murdered and the rangers left to join a war effort and some cowboy friends will teach you lasso tricks and some towns are going to hang a man for drunkenly riding away on the wrong horse. you get to pick where you go and where you stay. nobody is obligated to rationalize, justify, amend, or defend canon, and some people will go off and only write about the parts you don't like because that's what they find interesting.

it's not ruining batman. it's not ruining your fave, or harming your fave, or condoning things. they're fiction. they're made up. none of them are real. some writers will get it "right" for you and some won't. you aren't required to accept anything that comes out of the 80+ year stone soup that is canon.

just enjoy things and let other people enjoy things. if it's the wrong town for you, put your head down and keep going.

Anyone else ever think about how Jason was probably a rather quiet kid who'd learned early on that being loud, openly showing he's upset or throwing any kind of tantrum would just lead to more hurt and pain?

How on the streets the first rule, the most important rule was Don't Get Noticed Or You're Dead?

How the Manor was probably the first place where he was allowed to be loud in any way he wanted without fear of repercussions other than maybe a gentle reminder about minding his manners whenever it got too much?

How Robin gave him magic and now being noticed was the entire point of him, how he was wearing bright colours in the deepest night and didn't need to hide anymore?

How in the end Jason died exactly because he didn't keep quiet but instead reached out to Sheila and told her about Robin and offered her his help. How Robin's magic in the end couldn't overcome the rules that had governed Jason's entire childhood?

Anyone ever think about how he then came back after his death, practically screaming in Bruce's face Look At Me, I Won't Be Silenced Again, I Won't Fear Being Noticed Ever Again and that the entire Red Hood shtick is practically the antithesis of both the silenced boy he grew up as and the side kick Robin was?

Because I do.

jason is just the “came back wrong” trope in action. The fundamental tragedy of jason todd is that he was once a sweet kid, who something horribly unfair happened to, and when he returned he was no longer that kid.

and anything that takes away from that concept makes for a less interesting story. Which very much includes canon’s tendency to retcon jason as a reckless and angry kid who was always destined to be bad, removing the tragedy of his fall–but ALSO includes fans’ attempts to rewrite jason’s return as some kind of noble cause, instead of a self-centered quest for personal vengeance

Let Jason be monstrous. Let him be selfish. Let his story be the great tragedy that it is.

Hold on, I have opinions about retcons of Jason’s death

Imo, Sheila Haywood is essential to that story. Without her, Jason is a foolish, impulsive kid who runs into danger even after Bruce specifically told him to wait. He’s impatient, he runs into a warehouse with the Joker inside to confront him, and gets killed

But with her there, Jason is a kid trying to save his mom’s life. He’s not driven by impulse or recklessness, he’s driven by love. He sees Sheila walking into a warehouse that he knows the Joker is inside, and he risks his own safety to protect her. He only just found out he has a mom who’s alive, and he doesn’t want to lose her. He trusts her

And she betrays him. She lures him into the warehouse and delivers him to the Joker. She stands by and watches while Jason is beaten. And when the Joker’s done, when he turns on her and leaves her in the warehouse with the bomb, Jason still tries to save her. She let him get tortured and he still tries to untie her so she can escape. When he realizes there’s no time, he lays down in front of the bomb to try and shield her

So of course, when he comes back as Red Hood, of course Jason doesn’t trust parental figures. Of course he can’t trust Bruce anymore, won’t listen to him when he says he’s wrong. He trusted Sheila, and she sold him out, got him tortured and killed. And Bruce, who he trusted to always be there for him, got there too late. Even if he doesn’t blame Bruce, that trust is shattered

Sheila Haywood is essential to the story of Jason’s death, because removing her changes how you understand Jason, both as Robin and as Red Hood. He wasn’t a reckless child who didn’t listen, he was a kid who just wanted to protect his mom

so tired of dc comics and their terrible convoluted plots like. i am dying for a drop of genuinely interesting character interaction in the batfam like. even something with little action or plot like an entire arc that’s just a really long stakeout with two characters that examines their characters and relationship. would be so refreshing and fascinating to me

but instead dc is like... what if an ultra joker came from another dimension.. and organized all of batman’s villains, so that batman had to fight them all one after the other. for the hundreth time. and the city could explode. and his family is there but only pitches in a little at the end and he realizes he appreciates their help but then. next arc he’s doing everything alone again because he’s batman blah blah blah blah someone has amnesia for some reason

i literally just now found out the upcoming batman arc is called “joker war” and i rolled my eyes so hard, it really never ends does it? it never ceases. the same nonsense. constantly. it’s like they fed a lot of batman comics into an old clunky computer and it just spits out a randomly generated batman plot assembled from old events every couple months and they’re like yep! that’s legit!

if you fed a bunch of old comics into a comics it’d spit out more character driven stories than this

any ways I love that all DC fans just check in from time to time on whats really happening in comics and go “what the fuck is this shit” and then go back to our own personal AUs and ignoring the real canon

People on this site really be like *make long posts about those four times Jason went overboard as Robin to prove that he was characteristically ‘such a brutally violent Robin, oh my!’*

Then they deliberately leave out the part where Bruce talked how uncharacteristic that was of Jason and how worried he was for his son because he was sure that uncharacteristically reckless behaviour was due to Jason finally feeling safe enough to grieve for his mother.

But that’s none of my business…

Four times, it was like FOUR times.

Two of those times were an abusive pimp and then a serial rapist, not common criminals, a third with Two Face, who killed his dad, and he felt bad about it after and said he pitied Two Face for his mental illness, we don’t have context for the fourth, but the first two give us an idea, huh?

Sorry, I’ll stop now.

If the fourth time you’re thinking of is when he gets benched in Death in the Family, then we actually do have at least some context.

1. It was child pornographers

image description: a comic panel of a bids eye view of a warehouse. The caption reads, “it took me three weeks to track down the kiddie-porn ring’s main warehouse. the bust was all set to go. robin and i and were in hiding, waitng for our police back up. suddenly my partner runs out of patience. that’s the way it goes sometimes with the best laid plans of mice and men.

2. Alfred and Bruce think it’s a grief response.

image description: a series of four panels of a comic. the first is an outside view of wayne manor. the others are of Batman sitting in an armchair and talking to Alfred.

Panel one: Caption: When I get home to wayne manor a couple of hours later, I find Robin’s not yet returned. In a way I’m relieved. It gives me a chance to talk with my oldest friend.

Bruce: I think I’ve made a terrible mistake, Alfred.

Panel 2:

Bruce: The kid’s losing it. He dived into those thugs like someone looking to die.

Alfred: I’ve been noticing some disquieting things about Master Jason, myself.

Panel 3:

Alfred: The lad avoids talking about his parents lately. I’ve come upon him, several times, looking at that battered old photograph of his mother and father, crying. When he’s seen me, he’s hidden the picture and left the room, refusing to talk.

Bruce: In other words, I may have started Jason as Robin before he had a chance to come to grips with his parents’ deaths.

Panel 4:

Alfred: Being your partner is not exactly the best situation for a teenager adjusting to such a loss.

end image description

And, yeah, Bruce does note several times in the first few pages of this issue that it’s a change from how Jason normally is.

Oh so there was context for the forth time, and would you look at that, it does fit the pattern. No idea how I could have forgotten that.

And there are the parts with Bruce and Alfred talking about it too.

I will never stop reminding people that this is the context Jason was benched in, it’s my sacred duty now. Also note that if you look at that issue, Bruce’s primary objection is not that Jason is overly violent - Jason’s violence is second to his recklessness in both his internal monologue and his conversation with Alfred. Bruce says he acted “like someone looking to die” - he was worried Jason was going to get himself killed.

How ironic, then, that Jason died by obeying Bruce and staying behind with Sheila.

You’d think that people would remember this - you know, seeing as this is only from the most famous segment of his run as Robin. :/

This fandom tends to be very forgetfull. And yeah, he was worried about Jason, not mad or disappointed in him. Also an important distinction is that Bruce didn’t fire Jason permanently as Robin, he just benched him so Jason could have some room to process all of his grief and trauma. Because he loved his son and he could tell that Jason was going through a lot.

people need to realize that widely accepted headcanons are still just headcanons. They do not magically become canon because 95% of the fandom agree with you. 

Interestingly, where does the ‘canon’ end in a  mediums such as comic books, tho? I find that to be an exciting and also immensely frustrating thing, because stories we tell ourselves have been there since the beginning, people love stories, love to take them, retell them, add something from their own head to them - there’s a handful of ‘stories’ out there since the beginning of time, what changes is how they’re told… 

What interests me, however, is how canon works in the modern mainstream comic industry.

Because the current mainstream comic book industry is something that seems to centralise that idea while at the same time blowing the door wide open on more than one interpretations of ‘canon’. Because, what’s canon here? Say, let’s take Batman for example. 

What is Batman’s canon? 

If his adventures were a book, we’d have that. A definitive encyclopedia of the character and the world and the tropes his story employs and that would be it. Harry Potter has a MASSIVE fandom around the world, but canon is one and we will callback to the books when in doubt.

But what’s Batman’s canon? Who is the author we can trust to tell us the truth? Is canon the original run of the Detective Comics? With all of its ‘of the times’ strangeness and worldviews that are now outdated and, indeed, unpleasant to recall? At which point we can discard the pieces of these old stories as ‘not canon anymore’ or ‘not suitable’ anymore and why would we do this?

Which author is responsible for the ‘canon’ when in the cavalcade of the writing hands and heads many of them wrote in opposite directions? 

Is Batman who Laughs ‘canon’ of the same measure than the Batman from the Lego Barman? 

What do I tell person who wants to know Bruce Wayne? Do i describe him as a hero and a good father? As an emotionally crippled militaristic borderline fascist who abuses his family?  Do I tell them he’s a zombie in a land of nightmare? Or do I conjure a Bruce Wayne that my brain stitched together out of all of the pieces of media I have consumed, an image full and alive, but ultimately untrue. My Bruce Wayne is not canon and never will be, because canon does not support him for more than a minute. 

Is the main requirement of ‘canon’ to be written by someone who is paid for it? Even if they do bad job of it? Even when they contradict the ‘canon’ that came before them? Even when they decide to write a scenario that is at odds with everything else, because they wanted to explore it? 

Or is it the rule based on the lasting effects of the story? Barbara was paralysed for decades, so Killing Joke has to be canon, right…? Is it, tho? When the author wrote it as a personal idea of exploring Joker as a villain… just like fanfic writers do with their fanons? The only difference is that he was paid for it.

But then we have these big wipes where the characters get their Continuity reworked every couple years and so many things from ‘before’ gets discarded - are these not canon anymore? They happened, we remember them. What is Jason’s canon? Was he resurrected by Ra’s or by some mystical power? How can these two ideas be canon at the same time? 

So, like, what is canon here? 

The idea of the readers making up their own canons from these scraps seems to make sense when the ‘word of God’ is basically multiple gods shouting over one another. 

What I’m saying is, we are living in an age where people put so much worth into a ‘canon’ of a story that they will put it above the readers’ understanding of it, above their retelling, above their headcanons, as if it was more valid and had more ‘worth’ than the real human natural engagement with the material and it baffles me a bit. 

But, I am not arguing the OP, just airing out my own thoughts late at night.

Mod Bee here. Yeah that’s fine. I don’t care about people having headcanons. Just don’t… feel like you’re entitled to shove them down people’s throats.

Doh no, I totally agree on that point:)

This above I think was caused by the constant confusion the mainstream comic industry causes me and the headache that comes from my attempts to make it make sense🤔

mrsmarymorstan replied to your post “Do you prefer Steph as Spoiler, Robin or Batgirl? (I like all three…”

(also sexism)

the CW hasn’t earned the right to use Batman characters: a comparative essay ft. Titans, a show that has.

Man, you can talk about how unfairly Tim is being treated nowadays, but you can’t lie that Tim got the best Robin experience out of all the Batboys so far. 

During the 90′s until Bruce’s “death” he got a fair share of time being Batman’s sidekick and having classic Dynamic Duo adventures, but at the same time he was still allowed to be his own hero (Tim’s solo book was the first and longest Robin solo book with 185 issues) and have his own cast of supporting characters, not to mention that we also got to see him outside of work with some civilian moments here and there.

The same can’t be said about Dick and Jason as Robins (And I’m not including flashback comics, I’m talking about 40′s to 70′s Robin Dick and 80′s Robin Jason) who for the most part were the definition of a sidekick and didn’t really burst until they became Nightwing and Red Hood, or Damian who particularly sleeps in his Robin costume with zero social life and is literally not allowed to be within 2 miles of Batman while he’s on patrol to the point where they had to let a giant Bat-Demon take his place as Damian’s partner instead of Bruce.

And this isn’t a contest, all of the Batboys got their time to shine in both good and bad comics, I’m not trying to take anything from Tim, I’m just using him as an example to how I personally think the character of Robin (Regardless of who is wearing the costume at the time) should be handled, which would be the same way Tim was handled while he was a Robin; with having a balance between being a sidekick/partner, a solo hero and a relatable kid all at the same time.

honestly dudes, i never fully understood why jason wanted revenge on bruce until i really analyzed the situation. So here are my thoughts (which nobody asked for):

Jason grew up in the bad part of town- the part where you don’t call the police for your problems, you solve them yourself. Bruce’s vigilante justice is the same thing, so jason grows up believing justice and revenge are one in the same.

The fact the Bruce let the Joker live means that the crime (jason’s murder) is still unpaid for. So Jason will serve justice himself- he’ll kill the Joker- and then, he can finally make his peace. But Bruce disagrees. Bruce thinks the punishment has fit the crime, and Jason interprets this as Bruce not caring enough to take an eye for an eye. 

So Jason tells himself, if i cannot make Bruce sorry I died, I’ll make him sorry I came back.

dumb addition: Bruce did not take revenge, and therefore he did not serve justice. And isn’t the Batman supposed to be the bringer of justice? Jason is still a kid when he comes back to Gotham- he’s emotional. Jason isn’t just angry that the Bat didn’t do his job- he’s confused and he’s shocked and he’s heartbroken because his dad didn’t honor his memory. 

Detective Comics #618

I am so thankful that Tim doesn’t think of Jason as “Bruce’s greatest mistake”. Tim doesn’t say “One day I’ll be as good as Dick, and then I won’t end up like Jason”. Jason is not a parable, warning him against being rash, or disobeying orders. Jason was a person. A hero. This is something that suffers from shoddy retconning later on, but in the beginning Tim aspires to be like Jason, and Jason is not defined by, nor blamed for his own death. 

Except? Tim Drake’s first appearance was in Detective Comics #436 (August 1989) and by #455 (1990) we have this:

and in #456 (1990):

and in #469 (1991):

so if anything, the panel that you posted is “shoddy retconning” and an instance of Tim being OOC because Tim has been victim blaming Jason from the beginning and there are more instances of him doing so than him “(aspiring) to be like Jason”.

#seriously can we please stop trying to erase dc’s mistakes#to make tim look better #jason was treated terribly from his death onwards #it wasn’t something modern DC decided to do #the reason jason died in the first place was because they were terrible #and they blamed him from the moment they created the story

#death in the family is explictly not jason’s fault #but the writer and editors said of it that jason was basically being punished for disobeying #just accept that it happened and move on 

#jason was victim blamed by everyone#and this fanon idea that tim idolized him is nonsense#there is a grand total of what #that one panel to support it #up against everything else tim’s ever said for the next twenty years #and the books are clear that tim idolized robin and particularly dick grayson #not jason who he barely mentions

#so idk why everyone keeps trying to shift that to jason #it didn’t happen #you’re looking for the new 52 if you want that #at best tim abstractly admired jason as robin #when he thought of him at all #it’s horrible and uncomfortable but this is the history of jason’s character and treatment

via @lysical

This is an important conversation!!!!

I was speaking solely of one iteration of the Tim Drake character, who was very early on in his journey. There are countless different imaginings of these characters and stories, not only from the writers, but from the audience. Every reader views the story through their own unique lense, and this only adds the infinitly expanding canon and fanon in which these characters live. I’m sure that this Tim’s ideas and opinions will change with his experiences, and I didn’t want to erase all of the instances of him victim-blaming his predecessor. That happened! It’s shitty, but it happened and it was an important part of the story. I simply wanted to share a heart warming panel that I really liked. This one panels does not define Tim as a character. No one panel could ever define a character. These people are made up of many many year’s worth of conflicting and shifting panels. But I thought this panel was a nice sentiment, describing how Tim felt at that time.

And perhaps “shoddy retconning” was a poor choice of words. I’m just upset that a lot of the “sun-shine and rainbow” plot points are not in later iterations. (That’s just my personal beef!)

[also: I think it’s kinda part of your admission fee to the fandom to admit that DC is really shitty. That’s a given]

Just a friendly canon reminder that Dick and Babs liked Jason.

No. Really. I have no idea why this is so hard to remember, and yet not only does fandom seem to struggle with this seemingly straightforward concept, canon writers are apparently completely incapable of comprehending this as well (Scott Lobdell, I am looking at you. I am looking at you so hard.)

I think the confusion seems to come from two major misconceptions that have been perpetuated in the years since Jason’s death:

(1) That Jason, in his role as “the bad Robin”, was so abrasive and unlikable that he never got along with the rest of the Batfamily, and was disliked by all.

(2) That Jason was clearly “doomed” from the start, and the other Batkids never saw him as fit or capable of carrying on the legacy, but knew right from the beginning that he would never succeed.

However, the bottom line is that both of these ideas are complete, utter, 100% nonsense.

Jason had some issues as a kid, sure. But contrary to what some people would have you believe, he did not actually go around antagonizing people just for the heck of it. He was angry at people who deserved his anger, not at the entire world. He was a sweet, lovable kid much of the time, and he had no problem getting along with others. Once everyone got adjusted to the idea of a new Robin, he got along perfectly well with both Dick and Barbara. They liked him. He liked them. They genuinely cared about him. End of story.

Am I saying no one ever accused Jason of being angry or impulsive? Not at all. Those qualities were there, and the rest of the Batfam worried about it. But you can’t define Jason, or his relationships with the rest of the Batfam, solely by that. Yes, he could be angry and impulsive. But he could also be kind, clever, determined, sweet, funny, lovable, and brave. And when Dick and Barbara looked at him, they saw all of that. They didn’t see some bad seed who was sure to meet a bad end. They saw a kid who had some issues, but who also had outstanding qualities. Someone they fully expected to succeed as Robin.

And he was someone they both loved, very much. They were shocked and horrified by his death, because it wasn’t inevitable. Because whatever story DC tries to sell you now, Jason Todd was not a doomed, angry misfit right from the very beginning. He was a a nice, likable kid (issues and all) who was like a little brother to Dick and Barbara. He could and did get along well with others, and the other Batkids were devastated when he died.

Why is this so hard to understand?