InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "mr blobby loves you"

Doop (xdoop) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-20 16:01:00

Entry tags:

char: batman/bruce wayne, char: robin/nightwing/dick grayson, char: robin/red hood/jason todd, creator: tony daniel, event: battle for the cowl, publisher: dc comics

Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3

So, why did Jason go crazy?

Later...

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	besamim 2009-05-20 08:30 pm UTC (link)
	Leaving aside the fact that Bruce isn't actually dead, just chronologically challenged (stuck in prehistory), why do you think DC needs to retire him? I'm not saying you're wrong or right; I'm just curious for discussion's sake. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

taggerung301
2009-05-21 03:17 pm UTC (link)

that is a good question

I love Bruce Wayne as batman, and I wish that they hadn't gotten to the point of "killing" him yet, but I'm really tired of characters dying very significant deaths that have an impact on the reader and then they magically popping back to life. For instance: Jason's first death as Robin was a horrible experience for Bruce. It definitely changed Batman and how he treated his later sidekicks. Granted, this influence wasn't erased when Jason came back to life, and Jason coming back to life WAS interesting, but death in general has become absolutely meaningless in DC.

I mean, I don't want them to retire Bruce as batman, but seriously, if they're going to make such a huge deal out of him dying, I would kind of like it to be for real.

I mean, I'm not super passionate about this, and I'm not going to boycott the Batman comics or anything, it just kinda bugs me that this "big event" of Batman's death is pretty much just a brief plot device that will probably have no influence on continuity

but whatever, my opinion is just one among billions, and I honestly can't claim that his death would be a good thing - it's just something that I feel would be best

what are your thoughts on his "death"?

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besamim
2009-05-21 10:32 pm UTC (link)

What are my thoughts? I think it's odd that this has been hyped as Bruce's "death," but not for the usual reason people are now jaded about comic book deaths. Rather, it's that while the Bat-Family and everyone in Gotham think he's dead, we the readers already know he isn't. This is more analagous to Rick Veitch's run on Swamp Thing when, as part of the "Invasion" crossover, aliens sent Swamp Thing back in time. (As opposed to a couple of years earlier, during Alan Moore's run, when it looked for a few issues that Swampy really had been killed, his body incinerated and him seemingly unable to transfer his mind elsewhere.) Or, to return to Batman's world, it's comparable to Bruce being crippled in Knightfall.

I suppose it's semantics, really, but it made more sense to me to market the outcome of Superman's fight with Doomsday as his "death" (even though we all knew he'd be back) because it really looked, not just from the characters' standpoint but from the reader's, that he was.

What it boils down to is that DC writers and title editors (like their Marvel counterparts) know they can't permanently retire a character that has made them millions of dollars over the decades, more if you include the movie and merchandise licensing. Given that, maybe publishers shouldn't bother doing these faux-death storylines in the first place, and instead should come up with more creative ideas to maintain reader interest.

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