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@jason-todd-week

Day 2: Wing AU

This was just an excuse to draw something based off Le génie du mal

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I know that TFZ is no one’s favorite book and it usually ranks in the inoffensive but mid category for most stans but tbh out of all the rebirth/new 52 writers I actually like Rosenbergs Jason, like obviously he’s written mostly in accordance with the trajectory editorial was mapping for him at the time so its hard to separate sometimes but at the very least he seemed to like his character

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Lily Greenberg, "Sister God"

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To me the thing about cheer and the hill is that you can immediately tell these are Batman stories with a Jason look alike shoved in there so everything they try comes off as half hearted and insincere because they’re not really in conversation with anything from Jason’s actual history

Oh my god The Hill especially. I don’t know who that is but it’s not my guy

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I started writing the prime hood fic but then i got distracted writing a dysfunctional late n52 Wayne family dinner night so now Idk how long this work will be or when I’ll finish it

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Just a reminder that

Until the early 2000s, nearly all Jason victim blaming was done by Tim and Dick

Bruce didn't say or think anything overtly negative about Jason until 2002. He had a couple debatable moments in the late 90s, but all of those put the blame on himself for allowing Jason to get involved in the vigilante life rather than on Jason

Tim was the first person to indicate that Jason's death was his own fault, and it was within five years of ADitF (irl years)

Taking into account their pre-death interactions with each other & Marv Wolfman/Chuck Dixon's dislike of Jason as a character, it is easy to make an argument that a lot of Dick's negative statements about Jason are OOC; however he once again is one of the leaders in Jason bashing until Bruce starts in the 2000s, and Dick's interactions with Jason after his return are all very much negative. In a lot of them, Dick is arguably more in the wrong (pre-N52 at least)

Tim idolized Dick as Robin, not Jason, and repeatedly shows a lack of respect towards Jason's memory & Bruce's grief for him

That's all, have a lovely day

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If Jason’s H2sh crash out ends with him killing the Joker I will forgive Jeph Loeb for everything. I’m not even asking for real permadeath here I am totally willing to accept a situation where it looks like the Joker is dead but he actually isn’t. All I’m saying is that if whatever is going to happen at the end of the h2sh arc is going to result in Jason seemingly being exiled from Gotham again and estranged from the bats then let’s make it count let’s go out with a bang let’s shake things up!!

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i am always cognizant of the fact that sheila never actually provided any proof that she was jason's mother, and was characteristically opportunistic. a bit of a grifter, if you will. and i am torn between wanting to explore another avenue of family for jason (different bio mom) and not knowing how a dc writer could do that in canon without just revisiting tired paths and finished storylines in a trite way. one of those things that would be really good, if it was done well, but it's hard to do well and i don't trust dc like that

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What would you consider to be the top 5-ish most important Bruce Wayne comics to read?

Hi there! ^_^ this is such a difficult question T_T BUT I’ll do my best to answer it:

Okay, so it depends a lot on what is meant by ‘most important’. In terms of paradigm shifting comics, I’d first have to say Detective Comics v1 #27 for creating him / Batman v1 #1 for introducing the Joker, Catwoman, + being the only Golden Age issue you’d really need to read to instantly understand his dynamics with both Joker + Catwoman + also Robin.

After that you have to put at least one Bronze Age issue —> preferably Steve Englehart’s Detective Comics v1 run #469-476 (1977-8). It’s a classic for a reason, even if I’d like to point out the dependence of Englehart’s Joker’s on Denny O’Neil’s reinvention of the character in Batman v1 #251. This really introduced a complex “single issue stories layered into multi-issue storytelling communicating a wider idea” style that IMO pioneers the form of Batman runs as we know them today.

Frank Miller’s mid-80s work on Batman. Paradoxically enough, first comes The Dark Knight Returns (1986) as a libertarian’s bewilderment at the state of Reaganite America, articulated via an aged Batman. Although DC have since injected this subversion version of Batman into the mainline canon + flogged the stories’ superficial elements to death, it’s still a masterpiece IMO, + it’s definitely an Implicit Guiding Influence for Every Batman Written Since. I would always recommend however, tempering this with Batman: Year One (1987), as a reminder that Miller knew how to distinguish between the Elseworld as an opportunity for deconstructive subversion + the mainline canon as a site for reinvention honouring the fabric’s themes.

As an extension of this, I’d tuck the double-deconstruction whammy of The Killing Joke + A Death in the Family in 1988. Neither of these stories are particularly quality on an aesthetic level. But their influence can’t be overstated as the year when reality intruded so much on Batman that every story since can be seen via the lens of writers either trying to aid in that deconstruction or trying to shore up the audience’s suspension in disbelief again. Appended to this would fall Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) for being the singular reason why Arkham Asylum has the presence it does in the mythos of modern Batman. It was rather irrelevant before this comic. Morrison’s pseudo-psychiatry imparted a pseudo-scientific psychophobia to the franchise that replaced the previously vague ‘people either do bad things for greed/revenge/lust/[insert Latin Christian sin] or b/c they’re irrational/crazy’.

Moving onto item 4 (yes, I’m cheating by counting all the 80s comics together as one seismic deconstruction / reinvention of Batman, hush)… I would like to cheat again + enumerate his three most important 1989-2000 stories.

The first two try to patch over the deconstructed Batman of the 80s. A Lonely Place of Dying (1989) glosses over a child’s murder to restore the status quo for a marketing-oriented audience (young Anglo-American boys with money). Meanwhile Knightfall (1992-5) targets not only the deconstructed 80s Batman but the anti-hero market + for the first time, formalised a ‘no kill’ rule for Batman that will serve as his raison d’être henceforth.

The latter story would have to be No Man’s Land (1998-2000) : New Gotham (2000-2), where the old roster of writers aligned with O’Neil + Kahn start to get cycled out + a new roster of writers aligned with DiDio’s lot muscles in. Beyond this changing of the editorial guard, it’s noteworthy as the source for the unsympathetic, unlikeable, ever more authoritarian Batman of twenty-first century. There are good stories from this period, but it’s evidently a watershed moment for the character that he’s still not shaken off in the modern day.

Finally, + most regrettably, I have to add Grant Morrison’s Batman saga (2006-13). Three volumes of self-congratulatory pretension, doing more to stroke their own ego than ‘rescue’ Batman from his dire modern straits or whatever it is I’ve seen fans of this saga profess. A turgid deconstruction that re-runs with less reward what it was that worked about their AA: ASHOSE originally. (E.G. throwing Bruce into a situation on the membrane between the fictional world + our world; fawning over the Joker for being the only one aware that this is fiction whilst also finding it too funny to give the game away; breaking Batman’s lengthy character history into bits + turning these pieces over to fuse them together into a whole; not really caring about any Batman character that isn’t Bruce or the Joker; finishing with the hero getting lauded + rewarded for knowing everything, a true nerd’s greatest fantasy. If their criticism of Veidt in Watchmen didn’t give that away as one of their heart’s greatest desires, IDK what would.)

Morrison’s impatience to hurl 50 different ideas onto the page, each inspired by extensive reading + thought, + actually, in several areas, VERY interesting, turns this saga into an aesthetic disaster. Unfortunately for me, it is the last Batman story that seems to have had any lasting influence on its successors, which earns it the title of “the Best Batman Run Ever” instead of “This Did Something to the Character that He Still Hasn’t Recovered from.” IDK if that’s b/c Morrison really did kill Batman as a franchise / character by feeding into the ouroboros that the medium already tends towards (e.g. concluding that Batman will never die + will always be reborn, that Batman can never grow up + admit responsibility, that Batman can never be a father, + holy shit, Grant Morrison is such a fucking boomer). It might just be b/c the 2007-8 economic recession forever altered the shape of the American literary market. Now—instead of talented fans rising up + winning the chance to write their favourite super-heroes, characters they either grew up with or came across later in life, we have a series of authors who think reading any earlier stories before construing their own take on these collective myths is beneath them. They know about Batman the super-hero as a symbol (yet another thing pushed by Morrison) + with the help of the movies, they think they know everything there is to know about Batman. This is lazy. Some of them have the decency to admit to this upfront (GFM) whilst others (Sean Murphy) give the game away when they show midway through their second book that they don’t even know the order of the first two Robins.

I don’t expect every writer DC hires to have read as many Batman comics as either myself or Morrison. For starters, that’s ridiculous. But also (as my feelings toward Morrison show), simply reading a lot is not a guarantee that what you’re writing will 1. Be enjoyable for readers or 2. Benefit the character in the long run. All I’ll say is that you don’t stand a chance of saying anything truly interesting if you haven’t at least engaged with what was actually written before (whether that’s officially published material or completely unofficial fan work!). If you don’t, you’re working off of the shadows in Plato’s cave. Like, at least Morrison had ideas that spoke to Batman-from-the-comics-as-a-cultural-continuum, rather than nowadays when it seems like most everyone DC hires for Batman is grasping at the superficial symbol of Batman that exists outside of that continuum. Apparently unaware that they’re even doing so. AT LEAST IF THEY KNEW, IT COULD MAKE FOR AN INTERESTING STORY. BUT THEY DON’T. 😭

Anyway. Those are, to my mind, the 5 (14) most important Batman stories when thinking about his entire comic book existence. 👍 And my digression into the state of 21st century Batman.

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Just a reminder that

Until the early 2000s, nearly all Jason victim blaming was done by Tim and Dick

Bruce didn't say or think anything overtly negative about Jason until 2002. He had a couple debatable moments in the late 90s, but all of those put the blame on himself for allowing Jason to get involved in the vigilante life rather than on Jason

Tim was the first person to indicate that Jason's death was his own fault, and it was within five years of ADitF (irl years)

Taking into account their pre-death interactions with each other & Marv Wolfman/Chuck Dixon's dislike of Jason as a character, it is easy to make an argument that a lot of Dick's negative statements about Jason are OOC; however he once again is one of the leaders in Jason bashing until Bruce starts in the 2000s, and Dick's interactions with Jason after his return are all very much negative. In a lot of them, Dick is arguably more in the wrong (pre-N52 at least)

Tim idolized Dick as Robin, not Jason, and repeatedly shows a lack of respect towards Jason's memory & Bruce's grief for him

That's all, have a lovely day

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Anne Carson: An Oresteia - Sophokles: Elektra

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when people mistake Jason's "I can do this crime, but you must die" ethos as him wanting to kill all criminals + not an evolution of Post-Crisis Jaybin's belief that what mattered was not legality but harm + victimisation. Oughg. he's not Helena Bertinelli, he doesn't think criminals are all scum who deserve to die b/c unlike Helena, he wasn't victimised by criminals. He was victimised by structural inequalities + the institution (+ institutional ethos) of heroism.

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gotta be another kind of evil to blame a child for their death when you brought them into a dangerous line of work in the first place

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The Stephanie Brown Wars

It has come to my attention that not enough people know everything DC put Stephanie Brown and her fans through in the 2000s and 2010s, so here, as threatened, is the Saga. There have definitely been female characters who have been put through more horrific storylines, but what I think is really remarkable about Steph's story is how clearly it highlights the misogyny against real women, i.e. readers, that was completely mask-off in the comics industry at the time.

Please note that I am only going to be focusing on Steph's death in War Games, her erasure from continuity with the New 52, and the fallout from both of those events. If I dug into the sexist treatment she got from Batman and Tim prior to her tenure as Robin, we'd be here all day.

ANYWAY. It begins in 2004. In Robin #125, Tim's dad discovers that he is Robin, and threatens to out Batman unless his underage son quits this highly dangerous and illegal activity (fair).

In Robin #126, Steph sees Tim being kissed by his ex-girlfriend, Darla Aquista. Now in Tim's defense, Darla initiated the kiss and Tim tells her afterwards that he's seeing someone. On the other hand, the kiss lasts for four whole panels and five lines of dialogue from observers. Also, considering Tim originally ended his relationship with Darla by cheating on her with Steph, you can see why Steph might not be feeling super trusting here.

Upset, Steph makes herself a costume, breaks into the Batcave, and declares herself the new Robin:

Bruce is like "...You know what, yeah, okay." Alfred pulls him aside and immediately calls out what's going on here:

Bruce very pointedly does not answer Alfred's question, which is as good as a yes. And look: you can question Steph's decision to volunteer as Robin out of spite because she assumed her boyfriend was cheating on her without talking to him. And you can question her later actions that kick off War Games. But she's sixteen years old. Meanwhile Bruce, a grown-ass man who is also Batman, is playing mind games with a couple of high schoolers in order to...what? Destroy Tim's relationship with his only living parent and totally discard Steph when she's no longer useful, presumably.

Also please note Bruce accurately describing Steph's best qualities, which are also her fatal flaw. And remember that the quality he claims he's hiring for is also what he'll blame her firing on.

Time goes by. Bruce trains Steph, but he tells her she's on "probation" and that means 1) she doesn't learn any of the big secrets and 2) if she disobeys any order, no matter how small, she's fired, no second chances. For the record, none of the boys were ever on probation (Jason and Tim had long training periods but that's the opposite; they were protected until they were ready, not thrown into the field without full support), they all knew Bruce's identity, and they disobeyed his orders all the time. Tim did it on his very first mission.

Just...putting this here.

In Robin #128, Batman is fighting a villain while Steph waits in the Batplane. Fearing for Bruce's life, Steph disobeys his orders to stay in the plane and tries to rescue him, only to be taken hostage by the villain, who escapes. Bruce fires her, and tells her she's not allowed to be Spoiler anymore, either. In a particularly cruel move, he specifies that all the codes will be changed in the Batcave to keep her out, even though in the previous issue, Tim noted to Steph that Bruce didn't change anything to keep him out.

Just to make the point again: yes, Steph broke the rules. However, none of the boys before her, nor Damian after her, were ever penalized the way she was and for such a minor infraction. Disobeying orders and getting taken hostage are like the second and third most important Robin responsibilities, after puns.

Steph is devastated, and this is what leads to War Games, which was a crossover event across the entire Batman line that ran from October 2004 to January 2005. It began with Batman: The 12 Cent Adventure, in which a bunch of crime bosses all show up for a meeting that none of them called, get antsy, and start shooting. The ensuing deaths cause a gang war across Gotham. Eventually Steph confesses to Catwoman that she called the meeting. She was trying to play out a war game she'd found on the Batcomputer to show Batman he was wrong to fire her, but the meet went wrong. A guy named Matches Malone was to show up and become the new crime boss of Gotham, but he never turned up.

Of course, the reader and Selina know what Steph doesn't: Matches Malone is Batman. If Batman doesn't know about this meeting, he can't control the situation. But if Batman had treated Steph like a true Robin instead of putting her on "probation," Steph would have known he was Matches Malone, and none of this would have happened.

I'll say it a third time: Steph fucked up, yes. But Steph was sixteen. What was Bruce's excuse?

Anyway. While running around Gotham desperately trying to fix her mistake, Steph encounters Black Mask, who manages to knock her out. He then chains her up and tortures her with a power drill in order to get her to spill Batman's plans (which she does not do). Here's how this sixteen-year-old is drawn when she's being tortured (in Robin #131):

Thank god we can see her tits and her ass at the same time, that was really important to the narrative.

Here's how she's drawn the next time we see her, in Catwoman #35:

Gotta make this dying teenager look hot or what's the point, amirite?

Steph manages to fight her way free, but Black Mask gets the upper hand again after she refuses to kill him. He shoots her, then lets her go to send Batman a message. She makes it to Bruce, who takes her to Leslie Thompkins's clinic, where she dies:

THESE PANELS ARE IMPORTANT. (Batman #633.)

Side note: Bruce is with Tim when Leslie calls him to tell him Steph is actively dying, and consciously decides not to tell Tim and let him and Steph say goodbye.

Side note #2: Steph's death was always planned as part of War Games. Dylan Horrocks, who was writing Batgirl at the time, and Devin Grayson, who was writing Nightwing, both vocally opposed this but were overruled, which is why this aspect of the plot barely plays out in their books.

Anyway. What I want to talk about is the aftermath of Steph's death. Characters dying was commonplace back then (way more common than it is now, actually), and female characters was extremely commonplace - this was a time when the term "fridging" was becoming more commonplace but wasn't yet seen as something to avoid. But readers noted a couple of things about Steph's death in particular:

The art was really inappropriately sexual. Why was Steph's tortured body being drawn to titillate?

Steph didn't have a memorial case in the Batcave. Why was that? Jason Todd, the only other dead Robin, had a case. In fact, Jason retained his case even after he came back to life (his first appearance as Red Hood is in Batman #635, two months after Steph's death). Why didn't Steph get a case?

I used the word "readers" specifically up there because it wasn't just Steph fans. I remember hearing from a number of people at the time who were like "Yeah I didn't actually like Steph, I thought she was annoying. But what happened to her was fucked up."

And these readers started asking DC where Steph's case was. Social media wasn't really a thing yet, but they asked in fan letters, at conventions, on LiveJournal and blogs, on forums.

"She wasn't really Robin," DC said, over and over again (like when Dan DiDio said it at Wizard World LA in 2007).

"But Batman said she was Robin. Right there on the page."

"Well, she wasn't."

"Why not? What makes her different from the other Robins? What makes her different from Jason?"

"...no comment."

(Hint: IT WAS THE GIRL COOTIES.)

At another con, Bill Willingham, who was writing at the time, said he wanted to "take a gun to all those girls who kept asking about a memorial case for Spoiler." I'm paraphrasing because the source is some LiveJournal page buried deep in the bowels of the internet, but I'm confident in the "take a gun to those girls"* part of the phrase because it burned itself onto my brain at the time.

*It was of course not only girls and women, not that he cared.

To be very clear: this man thought it was appropriate to respond to a group of mostly female readers pushing back against the comic book industry's relentless depictions of violence against women by...describing his fantasies of enacting violence against women. Out loud. With his mouth. To an audience. While acting in a professional capacity.

I also want to note something that never occurred to me at the time, but we (yes, I was there, Gandalf; this is in fact my origin story) weren't even asking for them to bring Steph back. Like, the thought never crossed my mind. Compare to HEAT (Hal's Emerald Attack Team), a group of fans who waged a harassment campaign after Emerald Twilight demanding Hal's reinstatement to the Corps and the firing of the writer who wrote the comic. We were only asking for DC to acknowledge that Steph had been Robin, and it infuriated them.

As a last point on Steph's death: I mentioned this in another post, but when Steph died in 2004, she had zero official action figures despite having been a recurring character in comics for 12 years. She wouldn't get her first action figure until 2010. But in 2005, DC started selling this:

Yes, he is holding the power drill.

Anyway. Fans kept the pressure up for four years, and eventually DC got so fed up that they just...fucking brought Steph back. I don't know how much of the reason was so that they wouldn't have to give her a memorial case and thus "let the girls win," but I bet it was more than 50%.

This is so fucking funny to me. What a bitchy little line to give Bruce. (Robin #174.)

See, immediately after Steph's death, Leslie Thompkins told Bruce she could have saved Steph but deliberately let her die to teach Bruce a lesson about letting kids fight in his war, which was a shocking bit of character assassination for Leslie and also...lol. As if Bruce cares about Steph enough to change his behavior.

Now in 2008 the official retcon was that while Steph was out of it and barely clinging to life, Leslie snuck her out of the country to Africa (where in Africa? don't worry about it, it's all the same, right?) to recover, and just told Bruce she was dead for the same ineffective lesson-teaching from before.

So Steph was never really dead! And Bruce knew that despite being by her side when she flatlined! And then he lied to Tim and said she was dead for...enrichment? Tim needs a little unnecessary grief in his enclosure sometimes. (Lol j/k Tim was nothing but grief and several nervous breakdowns in a trenchcoat at the time.) And Tim's just...basically fine with it???

DC sort of didn't really know what to do with Steph for a couple of years, so they put her through some really bad writing, and then since they had conveniently also put Cassandra Cain through several years of really bad writing, they had Cass quit being Batgirl and vanish out of comics for a bit, and Steph took over. What was done to Cass could be a post in its own right and the way she vacated the Batgirl role is awful, but it did give us the beautiful, golden, shining joy that is Batgirl (2009):

STEPHBATS YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE MY WHOLE HEART.

This comic was beloved. It wasn't a huge seller (though comfortably above the usual cancellation threshold), but everyone I know who has read it loved it, even people who had never liked Steph before. This is the book that changed her from "cautionary tale about comic book sexism" to "fan favorite funny Batgirl."

And then the New 52 happened. And the second battle of the Steph Wars began.

If you weren't reading comics in 2011, you may not know that aside from all the controversy any major reboot engenders, the New 52 was very specifically controversial because of how women were treated by the reboot. Prior to the reboot, 12% of the creators working on DC's comics were women, which is just...an incredibly embarrassing number to begin with.

After the reboot, 1% of their creators were women. There were two (2) women in the initial New 52 lineup: Gail Simone and Amy Reeder. They were both fired the following year.

I am really struggling to communicate how badly women were treated around the New 52: creators, fans, characters. It was so bad that the Wikipedia page for the New 52 has multiple subsections about it. But I want to call out one part in particular:

This led to a tense interaction between fans and DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, where DiDio was asked by a fan about the drop in female creators from 12% to 1%. DiDio responded by saying, "What do those numbers mean to you? What do they mean to you? Who should we be hiring? Tell me right now. Who should we be hiring right now? Tell me."

What Wikipedia doesn't mention, but was widely reported all over the internet in 2011, was that the fan who held DC's feet to the fire at multiple panels over their obvious misogyny was dressed as Stephanie Brown.

Just like she had in 2004/2005, Steph became a symbol of the comic book industry's mistreatment of women - and a symbol that "all those girls" Bill Willingham had fantasized about shooting would not go away.

But what about Steph herself? Well, the New 52 reboot was meant to be starting over from scratch. Batman had only been around for five years, so obviously he couldn't have gone through five Robins in all that time!

...No, he'd gone through four. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian were all still around. But Cass and Steph were gone and Babs was still Batgirl, erasing both her status as DC's most iconic disabled character and her legacy as the first of and mentor to all the other Batgirls. Legacy only matters when it's boys, you see. And following the rules only matters when it's for the purposes of keeping girls out.

And the erasure of Steph in particular was very clearly targeted. In 2012, Bryan Q. Miller (who had written Steph's Batgirl series) tried to include Steph as a future Nightwing in his Smallville Season 11 comic, set in the Smallville universe and not the main DCU. He was told to replace her. Not with anyone in particular, just get her out of there.

Later that year, DC launched the adorable digital first Li'l Gotham series by Dustin Nguyen (who had also worked on Steph's Batgirl series) and Derek Fridolfs. The Halloween issue included a little blonde girl trick or treating while wearing what was clearly Steph's Batgirl costume, a cute little Easter egg for fans. That is, until later editions, when the girl's hair was recolored to black. Again, this is a comic that was not set in the main DC universe, and the little girl wasn't even Steph, just a random kid. (Dustin managed to sneak a reference into a later issue in 2013, and by 2014 things had chilled out enough that Steph got a proper cameo.)

Scott Snyder asked to use Steph and Cass and was told no. Same with Gail Simone. Word on the street was that DC had declared them both "toxic."

Was it DiDio who hated Steph? I have no idea. But it was certainly DiDio who publicly berated a cosplayer in a Steph costume when she asked why there were so few women in the reboot that would become his ultimate legacy. (Well, his other ultimate legacy besides shielding and repeatedly promoting noted sexual harasser Eddie Berganza for 15 years.)

Steph finally, finally returned in 2014, not just to Li'l Gotham but to the main DCU with Batman #28. It makes me very happy that Dustin Nguyen got to be the one to draw her:

(Cass would have to wait nearly two more years, until Batman & Robin Eternal in late 2015 - further proof, as if any was needed, that however bad white women have it, women of color get treated even worse.)

As the comic above would indicate, Steph was reintroduced as being Spoiler and only Spoiler - still no girl Robins allowed. The 2016 Rebirth reboot introduced the idea that she had been both Robin and Batgirl...but in a different timeline. Finally, 2021's Infinite Frontier (after DiDio's departure from DC) restored both Steph and Cass's full history with all of their previous roles to continuity, further reinforced in 2022 by both the Robins miniseries and the Batgirls ongoing, both of which co-starred Steph.

Is the comic book industry still sexist? Yes, obviously. Do I wish DC had a better idea for what to do with Steph these days than occasionally pop up in the background of a Bat comic to make a joke? Yes, obviously. But when I look back at how openly misogynistic the industry was in the 2000s and early 2010s, how naked the vitriol against female characters and readers was, I'm always shocked anew by how much has changed, and how much we used to put up with.

We've come a long way, and some of that is thanks to Stephanie Brown becoming a symbol for women who would not lay down and die, would not be erased, would not shut the fuck up. As Bruce himself put it waaaay up at the top of this post:

"I did everything I could to make her quit. She wouldn't. She stood up to me, right down the line--defied me."

So in honor of Steph, the get-back-up-again-est girl in comics, please take two things away from this post:

Remember what they did.

Never, ever shut up.

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In terms of my most definitive Bruce Wayne comics. Oughg this is tough, but I like to balance out the humanising Bruce Wayne who's a vital sinew of Gotham's ecosystem (Gotham Knights v1 (2000) #32 + Batman v1 (1940) #383, #561 + Detective Comics v1 (1937) #597, #614, #783 + Batman v1 (1940) Annual #10 are particularly well-told issues I cherish) with the dad who really, really loves his kids (Detective Comics v1 (1937) #378-9, #473, #533, #571, #574, Gotham Knights v1 (2000) #16-17, Batman v1 (1940) #217, Batgirl v1 (2000) #33, I could go on) with the troubled man who principally articulates himself through violence + has relatable paranoid spirals + who can never totally rid himself of the idea of his kids as extensions of himself (Batman v1 (1940) #496, #600, 604-5, #629, Detective Comics v1 (1937) #439, Puckett + Horrocks' Batman in Batgirl (2000), New Teen Titans v1 (1980) #37 + Batman And The Outsiders v1 (1983) #5, Nightwing v2 (1996) #13-15, #35, Robin v2 (1993) #13) and is at once burdened + graced with the eternal duty of being Gotham's guardian. A man granted transcendental purpose beyond that of any other mortal, + a man who serves as the pallbearer to the deaths of everything around him he loves (Batman: The Cult, Batman: Year One, Batman: Black & White - Perpetual Mourning #1 (2010), Detective Comics v1 (1937) #408, #457, #567, #598-600: "Blind Justice", #617, #629, #776, Batman v1 (1940) #452-4: "Dark Knight, Dark City"). The list goes on. I love Bruce Wayne <3.

What would you consider to be the top 5-ish most important Bruce Wayne comics to read?

Hi there! ^_^ this is such a difficult question T_T BUT I’ll do my best to answer it:

Okay, so it depends a lot on what is meant by ‘most important’. In terms of paradigm shifting comics, I’d first have to say Detective Comics v1 #27 for creating him / Batman v1 #1 for introducing the Joker, Catwoman, + being the only Golden Age issue you’d really need to read to instantly understand his dynamics with both Joker + Catwoman + also Robin.

After that you have to put at least one Bronze Age issue —> preferably Steve Englehart’s Detective Comics v1 run #469-476 (1977-8). It’s a classic for a reason, even if I’d like to point out the dependence of Englehart’s Joker’s on Denny O’Neil’s reinvention of the character in Batman v1 #251. This really introduced a complex “single issue stories layered into multi-issue storytelling communicating a wider idea” style that IMO pioneers the form of Batman runs as we know them today.

Frank Miller’s mid-80s work on Batman. Paradoxically enough, first comes The Dark Knight Returns (1986) as a libertarian’s bewilderment at the state of Reaganite America, articulated via an aged Batman. Although DC have since injected this subversion version of Batman into the mainline canon + flogged the stories’ superficial elements to death, it’s still a masterpiece IMO, + it’s definitely an Implicit Guiding Influence for Every Batman Written Since. I would always recommend however, tempering this with Batman: Year One (1987), as a reminder that Miller knew how to distinguish between the Elseworld as an opportunity for deconstructive subversion + the mainline canon as a site for reinvention honouring the fabric’s themes.

As an extension of this, I’d tuck the double-deconstruction whammy of The Killing Joke + A Death in the Family in 1988. Neither of these stories are particularly quality on an aesthetic level. But their influence can’t be overstated as the year when reality intruded so much on Batman that every story since can be seen via the lens of writers either trying to aid in that deconstruction or trying to shore up the audience’s suspension in disbelief again. Appended to this would fall Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (1989) for being the singular reason why Arkham Asylum has the presence it does in the mythos of modern Batman. It was rather irrelevant before this comic. Morrison’s pseudo-psychiatry imparted a pseudo-scientific psychophobia to the franchise that replaced the previously vague ‘people either do bad things for greed/revenge/lust/[insert Latin Christian sin] or b/c they’re irrational/crazy’.

Moving onto item 4 (yes, I’m cheating by counting all the 80s comics together as one seismic deconstruction / reinvention of Batman, hush)… I would like to cheat again + enumerate his three most important 1989-2000 stories.

The first two try to patch over the deconstructed Batman of the 80s. A Lonely Place of Dying (1989) glosses over a child’s murder to restore the status quo for a marketing-oriented audience (young Anglo-American boys with money). Meanwhile Knightfall (1992-5) targets not only the deconstructed 80s Batman but the anti-hero market + for the first time, formalised a ‘no kill’ rule for Batman that will serve as his raison d’être henceforth.

The latter story would have to be No Man’s Land (1998-2000) : New Gotham (2000-2), where the old roster of writers aligned with O’Neil + Kahn start to get cycled out + a new roster of writers aligned with DiDio’s lot muscles in. Beyond this changing of the editorial guard, it’s noteworthy as the source for the unsympathetic, unlikeable, ever more authoritarian Batman of twenty-first century. There are good stories from this period, but it’s evidently a watershed moment for the character that he’s still not shaken off in the modern day.

Finally, + most regrettably, I have to add Grant Morrison’s Batman saga (2006-13). Three volumes of self-congratulatory pretension, doing more to stroke their own ego than ‘rescue’ Batman from his dire modern straits or whatever it is I’ve seen fans of this saga profess. A turgid deconstruction that re-runs with less reward what it was that worked about their AA: ASHOSE originally. (E.G. throwing Bruce into a situation on the membrane between the fictional world + our world; fawning over the Joker for being the only one aware that this is fiction whilst also finding it too funny to give the game away; breaking Batman’s lengthy character history into bits + turning these pieces over to fuse them together into a whole; not really caring about any Batman character that isn’t Bruce or the Joker; finishing with the hero getting lauded + rewarded for knowing everything, a true nerd’s greatest fantasy. If their criticism of Veidt in Watchmen didn’t give that away as one of their heart’s greatest desires, IDK what would.)

Morrison’s impatience to hurl 50 different ideas onto the page, each inspired by extensive reading + thought, + actually, in several areas, VERY interesting, turns this saga into an aesthetic disaster. Unfortunately for me, it is the last Batman story that seems to have had any lasting influence on its successors, which earns it the title of “the Best Batman Run Ever” instead of “This Did Something to the Character that He Still Hasn’t Recovered from.” IDK if that’s b/c Morrison really did kill Batman as a franchise / character by feeding into the ouroboros that the medium already tends towards (e.g. concluding that Batman will never die + will always be reborn, that Batman can never grow up + admit responsibility, that Batman can never be a father, + holy shit, Grant Morrison is such a fucking boomer). It might just be b/c the 2007-8 economic recession forever altered the shape of the American literary market. Now—instead of talented fans rising up + winning the chance to write their favourite super-heroes, characters they either grew up with or came across later in life, we have a series of authors who think reading any earlier stories before construing their own take on these collective myths is beneath them. They know about Batman the super-hero as a symbol (yet another thing pushed by Morrison) + with the help of the movies, they think they know everything there is to know about Batman. This is lazy. Some of them have the decency to admit to this upfront (GFM) whilst others (Sean Murphy) give the game away when they show midway through their second book that they don’t even know the order of the first two Robins.

I don’t expect every writer DC hires to have read as many Batman comics as either myself or Morrison. For starters, that’s ridiculous. But also (as my feelings toward Morrison show), simply reading a lot is not a guarantee that what you’re writing will 1. Be enjoyable for readers or 2. Benefit the character in the long run. All I’ll say is that you don’t stand a chance of saying anything truly interesting if you haven’t at least engaged with what was actually written before (whether that’s officially published material or completely unofficial fan work!). If you don’t, you’re working off of the shadows in Plato’s cave. Like, at least Morrison had ideas that spoke to Batman-from-the-comics-as-a-cultural-continuum, rather than nowadays when it seems like most everyone DC hires for Batman is grasping at the superficial symbol of Batman that exists outside of that continuum. Apparently unaware that they’re even doing so. AT LEAST IF THEY KNEW, IT COULD MAKE FOR AN INTERESTING STORY. BUT THEY DON’T. 😭

Anyway. Those are, to my mind, the 5 (14) most important Batman stories when thinking about his entire comic book existence. 👍 And my digression into the state of 21st century Batman.

[vfx-batman]

I miss ted mckeever's bruce. come back to me ted mckeever's bruce <3