#Batman says Red hood is misunderstood not a villain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scandalsavagefanfic · 3 years

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Never said that it was actually all that similar, or intended as such, just that it kind of reminded me of it? (The weird stuff with babby!Jason killing someone actually reminds me of All-Star Batman and Robin’s Dick, but that was intended to be that version of Dick’s villain origin story, and Millerverse!Dick was established as unambiguously a villain in that world’s future, and he was under a lot of stress when he tried to kill Hal, considering all the shit he went through)

The original comment, for reference:

The fact that they babby Jason kill someone sucked, but the bit with Jason and the guns reminds me of Batman Odyssey, where DICK does basically the same thing- Bruce is telling a rambling gibberish story about a time Bruce went on a train, to explain that Guns Are Bad, and as part of this, he gives Dick a gun, causing Dick to enter a gun fever, which is resolved by a philosophical discussion about gun fever in a battle royale.

I'm going to treat this comment like it was made in good faith, and not like you're trying to gaslight me into thinking I somehow overreacted or misunderstood. I'm not sure where you're from or if English is your first language, so I'm trying really hard not to make assumptions here.

Ok. This is going to be hard for me to explain because it's a simple concept for me and things that I haven't had to think about much are always hard to break down. But please, bear with me.

While it's true that you didn't use the exact words 'similar' or 'intended', what you did say is that one event reminded you of another. I... I don't know how to explain that this is a comparison and comparisons are made on either similarities or differences (or both) and that everything you wrote grammatically indicates you are comparing similarities. I'm not a high school lit teacher. I don't know how to teach this stuff. I am genuinely not trying to be condescending, I just don't know how to phrase this.

I'm just going to break down your og ask real quick:

Baby Jason killing someone sucks, but [important indicator that what's coming next is something you think doesn't suck and isn't a bad choice] the bit with the guns reminds me of when DICK [in all caps. interesting choice] does basically the same thing [this is you literally stating the events are similar and that similarity extends to the intent] and Bruce explains to Dick why guns are bad with a philosophical discussion [this is you literally stating what you believe to be the intent, teaching Dick that guns are bad]

So yes, you did say that they were similar, and specifically that the intents of both scenes were the same.

And as I explained in my response, they’re not.

Now, your new example, of Millerverse Dick is, even though you phrase it like it’s not by saying “BUT that was actually intended to be Dick’s villain origin”. That phrasing tells anyone who’s reading, that you don’t think the same is true of the scenes in UL.

But again, you’re wrong. The intent with both scenes in Urban Legends (young Jason with the guns and young Jason killing someone) is explicitly to show that Jason’s origins as the Red Hood, as the Robin that kills and uses guns, as a villain, are rooted before his murder. And the intent wouldn’t matter so much except that the narrative reinforces it.

To be perfectly honest, I do believe you are trying to gaslight me, and I believe your intent is to say “See? They did it to Dick too, so it’s not like they’re picking on Jason.” Which is wildly disingenuous and a false equivalency. Dick doesn’t use guns. Dick doesn’t think that killing super villains is necessary. So retroactive stories with Bruce teaching Robin Dick that guns are bad, are just that. There is no agenda attached to them because of who Dick grew up to be. There is for Jason.

If that’s not your intent, I sincerely apologize. You didn’t specifically say it was, so I’m basing my suspicions off subtextual clues in your asks. It’s very possible I’m wrong and I’m answering you under the assumption that I am indeed incorrect because I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt.

But stories have structures and narrative devices that do very specific jobs. Flashbacks are never arbitrary. They always serve the broader story in some way, so they have to be taken in context with the story they are embedded in.

In Batman Odyssey, the flashbacks of Bruce’s early encounters with firearms are used to contextualize his reasons for teaching Dick guns are bad and being real, it does this extremely poorly.

In Batman Urban Legends, the flashbacks are there to contextualize the iteration of Jason Todd we see in the rest of the story.

In both cases, the flashbacks serve as context for the story we are reading.

But while the flashbacks in Odyssey can be extrapolated to provide context for why Dick is an upstanding hero who doesn’t kill, Urban Legends uses the context provided in the flashbacks to rewrite Jason’s backstory and turn him into “a bad seed” who was a killer considering using firearms, as a child even before he was brutally murdered.

#Jason Todd #batman urban legends #batman odyssey #all-star batman and robin #dick grayson #meta #dc comics

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lysical · 6 years

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I was introduced to a lot of the Batfamily via the Morrison run. How screwed up is my perception of them? Comics are an effing minefield of characterization—I know, I’m a Hank Pym fan because I ran into him first in one of his highly rare likeable periods. Any tips/recs? It feels like everywhere I go the characters aren’t the “real” ones, and idk where to find these “real” ones. (This goes for Tim too, although you seem understandably down on him lately & might not want to talk Drake anymore

It does vary by character, actually. There are some fundamental things he does that are a bit out of there, and other things that are just plain offensive, but he’s not the absolute worst to come in on, as damned by faint praise as that is.

Long post ahead

Bruce: Morrison and I fundamentally see the character very differently. He sort of subscribes to some ideas about Bruce as Batman that I just don’t like re: emotions, life, family. He uses a lot of allegories and devices in his work and the depth is there, I just don’t agree with what he was doing and had to say about Batman on a fundamental level. Post-Crisis Bruce is a bit all over the place. A lot of different writers got their hands on him and the dark and gritty post-Jason transformation of the character was intense and permanent. Because of this, coming into Morrison doesn’t really hurt you that much--especially since for a lot of it he’s functionally dead. Maybe check out some runs like Hush (more emphasis on the family), Dark Victory (some young Dick Grayson), Batman: Year One (say what you want about Miller, but it’s a decent book and the atmosphere and art are great for an introduction to the modern character), and then hop over to some of Bruce’s team books. Sometimes characters get distilled well over in their team books compared to their solos (especially since the Bat Department is...weird at times). Maybe check out Superman/Batman, the old team up from the early 2000s. For Bruce it’s just best to cast a wide net and read a variety. JLA: Tower of Babel is a good one to see Batman and the wider superhero community in conflict, which brings in a lot of Batman’s negative aspects in a way that was decently balanced and didn’t villainize him via narrative even as the characters might have felt that way about him (Young Justice certainly did XD), but I havent’ read it in a long time so ymmv.

Dick: One of the few characters that didn’t get that bad a hand by Morrison, or too much of a characterization shift (his character shift had happened during the Chuck Dixon and Devin Grayson period, although the latter more than the former). Unlike new 52 onwards, while he was softened a little to pair effectively with Damian, it wasn’t too much as we saw at times later and how fandom kind of tends to portray them (’Shut the hell up, Damian’ comes to mind). The Dickbats run was a nice change and development for Dick, a natural progression. The things that were sort of tweaked to create conflict with that transition (Dick not wanting Batman, some characterization behind that) were pre-Morrision, during Battle for the Cowl and the setup to Morrison, so while they follow on from that they’re mostly absent from the run. For the modern Robin Dick stories, go for Teen Titans: Year One, Dark Victory, Batman: Year Three, a couple of the other year ones are decent, although some incorporate those characterization shifts, but that’s comics. I’d go back to New Teen Titans (starts in Pre-Crisis, goes into Post, but the book doesn’t have a huge change due to the crisis and it’s just a really good run, deserving of being the benemoth during that time period that it was) to get the best of Dick on a team, then maybe check out Prodigal (follows on from Knightfall, Dick’s first run as Batman), skip Nightwing: Year One (it’s got tiny amounts of Dick and Jason bonding but Dixon ripped everything else about Dick’s early Nightwing period to shreds). From there, depends if you want his solo or his team stuff, he’s a pretty easy character to follow. I like to start chronologically with him because then you see the shifts happen as he falls back under control of the bat-books, and his solo and team stuff have some interesting contrasts (I lean towards his team stuff generally because Dick has always been about that for me, rather than running solo).

Babs: Birds of Prey is her essential stuff, I don’t think Morrison really did that much with her but my memories of it all are a bit vague now. I’d personally take anything when she’s romantically involved with Dick with a grain of salt, that relationship was a bit of a disaster and they both do terrible things to each other (I believe the one responsible for it all is Devin again but it’s been a while since i visited that train wreck) and there’s some victim-blaming that happens that’s not so good. I prefer Oracle having a bit of distance from the Batfam, as she’s just surpassed being someone who is under Batman’s authority and is just crucial to the entire operation of the superhero community in general, so Bird s of Prey.

Jason: Hnng. Here’s where Morrison really just decided to throw away established DC continuity and try his hand at a bunch of crap that fell completely flat. Just toss it and purge, tbh. Winick got Jason back late in the run but it was too late for that. Maybe there are tiny aspects of characterization that aren’t bad (Pride and Prejudice) but Morrison misunderstood Jason on a much more fundamental level. Also the red hair was probably some attempt to make a witty visual pun and add ‘depth’ but there are so many problems with it. Continuity-wise it makes so sense with how pre-crisis and post- worked, particularly for Jason, and additionally Morrison is realllllly wishy-washy with his ‘EVERYTHING IS CANON’ stuff that it rings false, plus in Pre-Crisis he was like...blonde I don’t understand. The implications of Jason being forced to dye his hair are absolutely disgusting for Bruce and go back into that fundamental problem I have with how Morrison sees Bruce. Jason, Post-resurrection suffers a lot of DC writers not knowing what to do and unloading a lot of DC’s baggage and some unconscious, problematic tropes onto him. Read his Post-Crisis origin (Batman 408 on, there’s the origin and some issues after set up by his original Post-Crisis writer Max Collins) and maybe all his Post-Crisis, pre-Death stuff since there’s honestly not a lot and it’s fairly obvious when Starlin starts pushing for his death. For post-resurrection, Under the Red Hood, Lost Days (it goes off the rails at the end, so I only half rec it honestly), Outsiders 44 and 45, Countdown (but only if you’re skipping the plot and just reading the Jason (&Donna &Kyle) bits, it’s one of the most even-handed treatments he actually gets in Post-Crisis but the book is otherwise terrible). Then just go straight to RHatO Rebirth.

Tim: Ignore new 52 and Rebirth entirely. Red Robin is a book a lot of Tim fans really like but I personally think it’s bad in general and also don’t like what the writer does with Tim, but ymmv. Tim’s origin is also pretty weak and his initial mini and series aren’t that great at establishing him as a proper character outside ‘this kid is Robin pls like him we want to get away from the controversy of the last one’ so it’s hard to connect with him there without nostalgia glasses. By Knightfall (1994ish) on, that’s where he’s more of a character himself, and his stuff from about then through to the early 2000s is the best (before Geoff Johns got him in Teen Titans and Didio started doing Things, which basically led us to today to be honest). Personally, I think Tim functions best in a team, there are aspects of what his writers do in his solo where they just...missed the implications and it kind of grates on me. His stand out book imo is Young Justice (the og comic not the cartoon which only shares the name and nothing else tbh).

Steph: Another who actually got treated decently well during the Morrison-era, as opposed to the crap she was dealt earlier during her time as Robin and War Games. Steph’s Batgirl run is something I definitely recommend, and her stuff with Dick and Damian in Morrison’s era is contemporary with that. Her origin is actually really good and compelling, so I’d dig into that (TEC 647, i think, is her first appearance). She kind of just revolves around Tim during his run and their relationship is kind of...there are implications there that are a bit cringe. Her stuff with Cass on the other hand is really enjoyable so I’d recommend those. Her brief Robin run is decent if melancholy considering what we know happens, and I wouldn’t touch War Games with a ten foot pole.

Cass: Shafted from the mid-2000s on, tbh. She got a bit blessed with a solid creative team to start her off in her Batgirl run, it attempts some pretty deep and interesting explorations of her character that while not perfectly executed are still really good comics. I’d just read her No Man’s Land stuff, follow her book and stuff with Steph and pretty much just ditch out when One Year Later hits. Her Black Bat outfit is cool and there is some retroactive backpedalling by DC to justify shafting her but it’s all Morrison era anyway so you might be familiar already.

Damian: Morrison created him and he took a lot of liberties with that backstory which unfortunately have had a lasting impact for Talia, which is frustrating. As Damian’s creator, what you see is what you get. Morrison didn’t want him to be likeable and he also didn’t really want him to be permanent (ties in again to how Morrison sees Bruce and family tbh), other writers gave Damian development later, but despite being around for over a decade now, there is still a lot of push and pull between writers about his characterization and development. It’s unfortunate but there’s a noticeable lack of consistency with Damian and his development that is frustrating to read. Probably read Tomasi’s stuff if you want Damian’s softened, developed arc and avoid other stuff. I’m not the best for Damian because most of his stuff is during the new 52 which I wasn’t around for and am picking through only occasionally.

Hope this helps.

#asks #anon #opinionated opinions: dc comics #batfam #recs: dc comics #ymmv on all of this #and i put it together really quick off the top of my head #but i hope it helps #bruce wayne #dick grayson #barbara gordon #jason todd #tim drake #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #damian wayne #no one who came in later because obvs they weren't around for morrison #if i missed someone....rip

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