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The thing that gets to me the most is that nobody knows what happened to Jason. No one alive but the Joker and Jason himself know how he got lured into that warehouse and exactly what happened there. And everyone is so fucking sure they know, Bruce fucking Wayne is so goddamn sure he knows what happened bc he started telling himself a story until he believed it and forgot there was any other reality available. And now he gets to be the arbiter of truth around Jason's death, an event he was not present for and doesn't know any details of--the filter through which everyone in the world hears about it. So everyone gets this story he made up where Jason got what was coming to him for disobeying Bruce, and Jason has zero credibility to contradict that, so why would he even try? It's all so fucking vile.

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rewatching the under the red hood movie and i gotta say as much as i love jason’s speech to bruce about how mad he is that the joker’s still alive, i still maintain that a severely underrated speech in this movie is from ra’s when he’s talking to bruce and in essence says ‘yeah so i hired the joker to distract you which was my bad because he totally went overboard and killed your son :/ and i felt so guilty i decided not to try and fight you anymore and then i stole your son’s corpse and tried to revive him via lazarus pit so i could like. make amends. except that was also my bad because we fucked that one up real good and when he came back out BOY was he weird in the head. killed my guys and then fucking jumped out a window and we lost him. my bad. and i thought he’d died again but apparently he’s in gotham and is like. totally destroying your whole lives which again, my bad. shouldn’t have tried to help. sorry about that. i’ll just stay out of your business from now on.’ which is actually the funniest characterisation of ra’s i’ve ever seen

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There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that somewhere in Ankh-Morpork, Sam Vimes has a drag king impersonater

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Texts From Superheroes

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Superman says fuck ICE. Be like Superman

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It’s Fourth of July Eve so make sure to leave some milk and cookies out for Captain America

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As fun as the aesthetic of the autopsy scar is I am very much team “the Lazarus pit left Jason with no scars” because of the subtle body horror of it all. To go through a trauma so great that you did not survive it, so great that you look in the mirror and expect to see a mangled corpse, only to find that you are entirely uninjured? That’s body horror. Not only that but every other mark of the life you lived is gone, no physical proof that anything has ever happened to you. The mind is scarred but the body does not remember

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she

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It's time for some compare and contrast!

Robin & Batman: Jason Todd #1 and Batman and Robin: Year One #8 both came out in June. Both are retellings of the early days of a Robin. And most interestingly to me, both have examples of a Robin crossing a line, and Bruce's response - and while the former is, I think, pretty similar, the latter is very different.

In RABJT, Bruce and Jason are pursuing criminals. Bruce gives Jason a command ("Stay behind me!"), and Jason disobeys. Bruce then tells Jason it's okay to pursue the leader, Cuckoo, by himself, but Cuckoo gets away and Bruce tells Jason it's not his fault. Jason is angry at himself, though, and when one of the tied-up henchmen mocks him, Jason kicks the restrained man in the face.

Bruce tells him his actions are unacceptable and sends Jason to wait in the car, but when the the already bleeding henchmen mocks him again, Bruce punches the still-restrained man in the face.

They return to the Batcave. Jason is still upset - not because he was reprimanded, but because "I know I messed up. I'll do better" and because not being perfect "could get me or you or some innocent killed." Alfred decides this is the perfect time to give Jason a lecture about speaking more respectfully to Bruce, and when Jason gives him some "you're not my real dad" sass and leaves, Alfred tells Bruce that there is something "not right" with Jason and that they should get rid of him:

So that happened.

Meanwhile, in BARYO, Bruce and Dick are fighting criminals. Bruce gives Dick a command ("Don't taunt! Grill!"), and Dick disobeys. One of the criminals pulls a gun on Dick, and Dick takes the gun and points it at the criminal.

Bruce tells him his actions are unacceptable, slapping the gun out of his hand and yelling at him for three pages.

In the next scene, Bruce asks Commissioner Gordon for parenting advice. Gordon asks if Robin is giving him trouble, and Bruce says no, that Robin is a good kid.

So to be clear, in both comics:

Batman tells Robin to stop doing something he shouldn't be doing, and is ignored.

Robin loses his temper and escalates violence to an inappropriate level.

Batman tells Robin his behavior is unacceptable. Robin is defensive but obeys.

Batman discusses the Robin in question with an older mentor figure, one meant to represent wisdom and moral authority.

And yet the conclusion drawn by the adults in these respective comics are that Dick is "a good kid," while Jason is "not right." This despite the fact that in RABJT, Bruce literally crosses the same line Jason does - except in Bruce's case, it's worse, because he's a highly trained adult who should and does know better.

It's also worth noting that Jason states repeatedly that it's his fault, that he needs to keep trying, that he needs to be better, that he doesn't want anyone dying on his watch.

Meanwhile, Dick's motivation? That he was trying scare his opponent and it's hard to do in a costume like his.

Oh, also at the end of each issue, when the Robin in question is in danger, Alfred runs into the room in panic over whether Dick has been hurt, while Bruce immediately accuses Jason of murder.

I'm withholding judgment on RABJT as a whole until we have a few more issues, because frankly Bruce is so breathtakingly hypocritical here that I find it hard to believe Lemire isn't aware of it. And in general, Bruce is quite warm with Jason in that book - he repeatedly reassures Jason that it's okay to still be learning, that any blame lies with Bruce. If anything, it's gruesome character assassination for Alfred, who comes off like the villainous headmaster in a children's movie, insisting they send a child back to the orphanage because he isn't polite enough. (I mean, seriously. Jason is upset because he doesn't want to get anyone killed and Alfred's response is "You need to be more respectful"? What???)

And I really don't want to turn this into the usual endless cycle of "DC is doing this because they hate Jason! Because of classism!!!" DC does not hate Jason. DC loves Jason. Jason makes DC lots of money. I think arguments that boil down to "they write this character bad because they don't like them because they're bigots" are facile and honestly pretty silly. No one is trying to make a bad comic. It's possible there is some unquestioned classism churning under the surface of RABJT, but again, I'd like to see where they take the recurring motif of drug use and Jason's trauma over his mother's death before writing it off entirely. It's only been one issue.

Mostly I just wanted to point out that DC published two extremely similar scenes a week apart, and drew extremely different conclusions from them. Both books have the same group editor, too, so there's not much excuse here, either for the repetition or the inconsistency.

But it's also a good reminder that when you argue that Batman is always such and such way, or Batman is this or Batman is that, that Batman is a character who can react to the exact same circumstance in a completely different way within the span of a week. A better question is: what story is this creative team trying to tell by having Batman act this way? And that's not a question we can answer until the story runs its course.

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This is Jason Todd-coded for sure.

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every so often I come across a kink post about like being kidnapped and tortured or held at gunpoint or begging for ones life for sexual purposes and I understand its going for a very haggard frail thing being taken advantage of vibe but in my mental image it really just comes off the same as that picture of wolverine strapped to a nuke

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Their punishment is being shoved together in Mephistopheles’s dungeon in Mephistar for eternity

SO chimkennuggies on here for coming up with that ship name and making elite art 🙏

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I like thinking how casual is Dark Urge about his name

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Actual sibling behavior We love to see it

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I’m not sure what’s funnier. All of gotham seeing Jason Todd out about with the Wayne family again after being definitely dead a few years ago, and the family not at all explaining it

Journalist: Is that the late Jason Todd with all of you here tonight?

Tim: Yeah

Journalist: Did he not die 5 years ago?

Tim: He did. Now he’s not.

Journalist: What exactly happened with him?

Tim: What are you a cop?

Or the whole family gaslighting everyone in Gotham into believing that Jason never died and was there the whole time

Journalist: Mr. Grayson, Is that your late brother at the hors d’oeuvres table?

Dick: (annoyed) Sure is. He can’t show up in time for Bruce’s speech but he can be here for the pigs in a blanket.

Journalist: I meant late as in… no longer with us.

Dick: I not sure what you mean, he’s always with us. You must not have seen him at all the other galas. He’s shy so he’s easy to miss.

Jason: (towering over everyone in his vicinity and shoving his mouth full of croquettes)

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“He would not fucking say that” except its the badly written source material so he did, in fact, say that