hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?
GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE
Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.
I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:
Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?
We're gonna go in chronological order!
Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:
Aww. Such a cute elephant!
Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!
Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:
SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.
(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)
Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:
Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.
Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.
Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:
Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:
... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.
Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.
For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.
Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.
Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?
tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later
Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!
The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.
(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)
Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.
By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.
So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)
Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do
Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.
(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)
The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.
Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."
But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.
Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)
Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!
(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)
Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.
Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.
Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.
So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.
And look, here we are:
Aww.
Whew - that's everything I could find!
Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3
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Alrighty fellas time for another one
(DPxDC) Batman Rogues ranked based on how good at parenting Danny (and co.) they would be
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Would probably actually be able to step up and be (relatively) good parents: The Penguin, Mr. Freeze.
They would have EXTREMELY different dynamics with Danny, but I think they could figure it out.
The Penguin would definitely only take in Danny to improve his reputation, and probably so that he could monopolize the use of a new meta’s abilities. (And perhaps to study him)
However, I think that attitude would last for at the absolute most a month, probably closer to two weeks, before he genuinely bonded with him. He’s like the dad who says he doesn’t want a pet, and then in a week they’re inseparable.
He’s not a good person, but I think he could probably end up being an awesome fucking dad. Also, there’s no way in hell anyone would mess with Danny. Not even close. If he found out Danny was getting bullied he’d ruin the bully’s fucking life.
He wouldn’t directly throw hands with a child, sure, but that’s only because it would look bad. He would, however, completely destroy their family’s careers and force them to leave Gotham out of shame.
Mr. Freeze is only a rogue because of his wife. Like, that’s it. He only wants (or wanted, depending on the version) for his wife to be cured and to live happily with her again. All of this is for her, either to help her or to avenge her.
That’s to say that yeah, if Danny managed to weasel his way into his heart, he would have a place with him forever.
He’d probably only interact with him at first because of the ice powers, but if Danny did manage to get closer to him (that’s a pretty big if) I think he’d do fucking anything for him, just like his wife.
He would raze the GiW to the ground for his boy.
They’d do alright probably. Nothing special, but it’d work out ok: Scarecrow, Ivy & Harley, Two-Face, Killer Croc.
Scarecrow is, funnily enough, not that bad. Like, is he genuinely deranged? Yes. Is he murderous and cruel? Yes. Does he have a moral compass that would absolutely support taking care of a child? Yes.
He’s been shown multiple times to genuinely care for people, even if it’s in his own way. Like, yeah, maybe fear-gas-themed murder and torture is a bit far sometimes, but it’s what he knows how to do.
Like, would he know how to take care of a kid? Hell no. But he does have a pretty good list of what not to do, courtesy of his own childhood, so he’d have a pretty alright start.
Ivy and Harley aren’t rated higher because I just don’t think they’d really be responsible enough for a child. I don’t doubt that they’d be able to love Danny, nor that they love each other, but they’re not very stable, and they don’t have a very good grasp on normalcy.
Like, they’d be incredibly cool aunts, or family friends, or something. I just don’t think that they’d do well being the sole guardians of a child or teenager.
I can’t stress this enough, I think they would genuinely love having Danny with all their hearts. I just don’t think that love alone is enough.
Avoiding that genuinely depressing thought, I think Two-Face would similarly be an awesome uncle to have, but wouldn’t do well at the actual “parenting” thing.
Like, he could keep a kid alive no problem, and he’d probably be awesome to have as a legal guardian and stuff, but there’s no way in hell he’d be able to keep Danny in line, for the sole reason of not really seeing a reason to.
However, if he got put in Arkham, he’d 100% not be above guilt-tripping Bruce into taking Danny in, so he does have backup options.
Killer Croc would be an awesome friend to Danny, but that man is in no way capable of being a parent.
He’s got a pretty short temper, and Danny is a little shit. There’d definitely be fighting. A lot of fighting. Croc still gets some points though because he’s a decent guy and I don’t doubt that he’d be willing to get help from the other rogues or even Batman should he need it.
Shouldn’t be trusted to keep a gerbil alive, yet are somehow still better at this than Maddie and Jack: The Riddler, Solomon Grundy
The Riddler is a childish, egotistical asshole with a bit of a god complex and a truckload of emotional baggage.
That being said, he’d still do better than Danny’s actual parents.
Partly because the bar is so low.
Like yeah, there’d be a lot of arguing, but I don’t think that he’d actually ever fight fight with Danny, mostly because he’d feel like he was turning into his father.
For the most part he’d be at the same level as Scarecrow or Killer Croc, I just put him lower because I think he’d forget to feed Danny sometimes. Still not as bad as the food coming alive to attack him though.
Solomon Grundy is pretty similar to Killer Croc in terms of how I think he and Danny would get along, I just think he’d be much worse at getting the things Danny needs to live and be happy.
He’d be cool as a weird uncle, or a friend, but he’d be pretty awful at being an actual parent.
The house is on fire, god is dead: Mad Hatter, Ra’s Al Ghul
Mad Hatter would have UNIMAGINABLE levels of beef with Danny. He would unironically throw hands with a child.
That being said, I think he’d genuinely like Danny.
Wouldn’t make up for anything, but I do think he’d at least not hate him.
Ra’s would be funny as hell no matter what.
He’d ALSO have unimaginable beef with Danny, but for entirely different reasons. He would spend all his time trying to convince Danny to become a member of the LOA and also to turn him fully immortal. Danny would buy him a “world’s okayest dad” mug and “I’m not the dad who stepped up” shirt. They would try to beat each other to death over Damian.
Danny would still probably choose him over Vlad in a heartbeat.
Getting dissected would have unironically been a better option: Joker
Your homework today is to watch Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.
Because I know you won’t, I’m just gonna tell you that Joker has done some MK Ultra shit to a child before in order to mold it into a mini version of himself, and he’d absolutely do it again.
One of them would absolutely end up dead, and considering their track records, I’m not so sure it would be Joker.
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