#bc he didn’t think any of them should be with bruce. he was celibate bruce stan numero uno

[roobylavender]

this is a completely random thought but one of the funniest things about comic fans is how they’re utterly incapable of conceptualizing that writers can have preferences and priorities that in turn impact how the narrative moves forward at large but not necessarily in an inherently negative way. like re: whether selina is essential to the core batman mythos or not there’s one camp that seems to believe denny o’neil hated her guts and thereby decided to make her non-essential, and another camp that seems to believe bc he greenlighted her solo it’s obvious he had to care about her but nonetheless took the same decision as above out of some logical reasoning as to her importance or whatever and like.. i think the reality is that he respected her as a character enough to realize there was a lot of potential with greenlightning a solo but he wasn’t necessarily invested in her himself. if you look at the number of batman comics denny has written over the years selina is only in two from the seventies (at least if i have my numbers right. correct me if i’m wrong). and they’re well-written appearances! some of my favorite in fact and that serve to establish she has a potentially very significant meaning to bruce despite that antagonism. but i don’t think denny necessarily had an investment in her to the point that he was actively trying to make her a driver in the major story arcs he oversaw. that on its own isn’t a bad thing, rather i think it speaks to a preference he had with the stories he wanted to tell, which every writer will obv have

having a preference with who you want to write about in comics isn’t inherently bad nor does it act as a barrier to circumstances changing in the future and a writer who maybe does have an investment in that character entering the scene. that’s the novelty of comic writing. so i find it very odd when people use this whole phenomenon to argue as to whether characters are definitively essential to a mythos or not bc ultimately that essential nature is crafted or it isn’t, it can be crafted well or it can’t be, etc. do i think the way selina was written more deeply into the mythos after denny left was well executed? not remotely. but i don’t think that automatically means the way she existed under his tenure was automatically damning in comparison, whether that’s an opinion that comes from the camp who hates her or the camp who loves her. he may not have focused on her heavily in the story arcs he was crafting, but that’s not to say exploring her and her relationship with bruce in any more depth was forbidden, or that it could never have been done meaningfully with respect to her and bruce’s clashing ideologies. the right writer just needed to come around and.. in my opinion they never did after mindy newell left 😶