mysteryfan (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mysteryfan) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} scans_daily, |
As far as Wertham, here's a good site that shows the kinds of books he went on about most. The public tends to think he went on most about Batman, but in reality it was about crime and horror comics more than anything. It's a really interesting site. I'll link to a list of covers of comics that are sited in Seduction of the Innocent. There's also, if you dig around, an incredibly creepy essay from a later parents' magazine about molestation. http://www.seductionoftheinnocent.org/S
Even more fascinating to me at the moment is this essay: http://www.toonzone.net/anbat/essays/wg
Excerpt: Remember perversion staining backwards? If Old Man Wayne is accused of having a same-sex affair with one boy, public perception would assume that that’s what he’s always done. Suddenly the father of orphans becomes the son of perdition. He didn’t give poor Dick and Tim a home out of compassion or to set an example for other prospective foster parents. He did it to molest them. Furthermore, Dick and Tim do more to promote this charge than Terry McGinnis ever could. Supposedly Dick moved into Wayne Manor at age nine (comics version) to eleven (B:TAS) and Tim at age thirteen (TNBA). Both left in a state of extreme mental anguish. Tim went insane. He moved out but still needs therapy forty years later. As for Dick, he fled the country! (Went to South America, according to the comics.) Despite their ages these characters didn’t move out so much as run away from home.
Dick and Tim call Bruce a freak and a manipulator. They blame him for stealing their childhood. Metaphorically speaking, they spit on the ground when his name is mentioned. They left decades ago and nothing can induce them to make the first move toward him. They aren’t there for him. Some villain or other is always trying to assassinate him (Shriek, Blight, Payback, the Royal Flush Gang, the ROTJ Jokerz, their Joker master), but no one ever checks to see if the old man is dead or alive. Maybe they missed the first newscast – but after the fifth attempt, you have to conclude they’re not coming.
That is what the public will see. It needn’t be true. It need only be believed.
But if Wayne does adopt Terry, public perception would conclude that this is what Wayne has always done or tried to do. Bruce Wayne remains the protector of widows and orphans, and if his troubled sons ran away from home, well, it was because they were troubled. That’s why they were in foster care in the first place.
So the writer of that essay takes a different point of view, that Batman's fatherhood should be directly confronted, thus dispelling things.
(This essay deals with Animated Batman, and on a completely unrelated sidenote, except that trying to dispell Wertham led to misogyny, and Batverse women being sexualized inappropriately in order to prop up Batman (thus cheapening both characters) versus the women being motivated by altruism, ew! that Babs slept with a father and son in BB. Ew.)
Also, I need to correct something I said earlier. I said Bruce had a maximum of six kids, and was thinking about whether or not one counted Terry, since in DC Comics U he doesn't exist. Or something. But I forgot about Selina's daughter, and whether Bruce is genetically the father or isn't, I'd be willing to bet that eventually he will be bringing the child up as a father figure. It's his comicsverse nature and too good of a storyline to not get developed at some point on down the line.
So that makes Dick, Jason, Tim, Cass, Terry, Selina's daughter, Damian as children, either adopted or sired, and two more Robins: Steph and Carrie Kelly.
You can hate them, I guess, but they're definitely a part of the comicsverse and a big part of what people like to talk about in this community. Just a thought, and again, thank you for your apology.