Does a Badass Really Wear Short Pants and Pointy Green Shoes?

So, I'm reading through the Jason Todd era of Batman.  For several issues, the approach seemed to be minimizing Robin's involvement.  For example, during the mulit-issue "Ten Nights of the Beast" storyline, Robin did naught but take down one suicidal bomber lackey.  And those issues, written by Jim Starlin, were actually pretty decent.

But you know how sometimes you find yourself doing something you know you shouldn't because you get away from the situation just long enough to convince yourself it wasn't as bad as you thought?  That's what happens here.  A little Jason Todd was an okay thing, but as human beings go, we just can't help but test the waters and see if we can't make things work if we just give it another go.

And there's nothing wrong with that kind of determination.  It's how we landed on the moon and perfected the seedless watermelon.  But there comes a time where we should let go of this notion of "never give up."  If I never gave up on some of my less-viable options, my life would not be nearly what is now.  I'd still be pursuing my high school crush and trying to make it as a rock musician.  But I let go of both of those things and I'm much better off for it.

But hubris is what it is, so they try and bring Jason Todd back to the forefront in Batman 422.  How?  Thusly:

  

Yes.  Jason Todd beats up an abusive pimp.  And if you complain about it, you must be an abusive pimp sympathizer.

Okay, that was totally Fun with Out-of-Context Dialogue (tm!), but that's not the point.  Unable to simply give us a tolerable Jason Todd, they have to give us a tormented, ticked-off, extreme Jason Todd.  Because everything back then had to be EXTREME!  Or if was really extreme, it was XTREME!

I'm not the World's Greatest Detective, but I think it's pretty obvious that Jason Todd has gone back to being all grumpy.

And then it gets dumber.  In Batman #424, we have the ultimate frustration plot device: A sadistic killer who is untouchable because of diplomatic immunity:

So what does Jason Todd do about it?

I'm not sure what they were thinking, but this is the problem: Robin is meant to bring a little light into Batman, not vice versa.  We have Batman, who is a combination of Zorro and Dracula, with a partner wearing a festive red vest and bright yellow cape.  Robin is supposed to reflect the wonder and optimism of youth.  But as such, readers were totally turned off by him.

And if he did murder Felipe, that's a line from which you don't return.  In the pages of X-Men, the character of Phoenix was killed off because the Powers that Be rightly decided that heroes don't murder folks.  So, even though Jason doesn't admit it and you certainly couldn't convict him on this evidence, did anyone think the readers wanted a Robin who we would even suspect might cross that line?  But at the time, Jason Todd was thought to be the permanent Robin so no one thought they were burning any bridges.

But, as we'll see in the days to come, them bridges be burned.

See you tomorrow!

Batman and Nightwing Have a Moment While Jason Todd Trains in the Use of High Caliber Firearms

Let's take things a little out of order and jump ahead to Batman #416.  There was some shifting in the creative team, and after a couple of issues that were clearly "fill-ins," the title seemed ready to try and salvage something out of all this.

The first order of business was to explain why Dick Grayson was fired as Robin:

I KNOW, RIGHT?  I said the same thing.

Yeah.  He's not getting away with that one.  And that doesn't even make sense.  So, you have someone that is a fully trained partner and you give him unemployment for a graduation gift?  Where I work, we tend to try and hang on to people after we've shown them the ropes.  Shenanigans.

After some hemming and hawing... because you rarely get a straight answer out of Batman, we get this:

Hmmmmph.  I guess I'll accept that answer if I have to.  I mean, it's still nonsense because I think Dick would have worked with Bruce to the bitter end so he was really only a phone call away.  But that would have required Bruce to actually admit he made a mistake, and we sure aren't going to see that happen.  And, of course, it explains why Bruce took on Jason but it still gives no satisfactory answer as to why he severed ties with Dick and kept them severed.

But we had to clean things up, so here's Dick giving Jason Todd his costume yet again:

To be fair, this is the start of an upswing in overall quality for the book.  But as we'll see, you just can't have a Jason Todd Robin and not have it self-destruct on you sooner or later.  And what was the deal with Nightwing's collar?

For instance, one issue earlier:

Remember that whole no guns rule for Batman?  It doesn't seem to apply these days.

And just in case you think this is something Jason Todd came up with on his own:

Yup.  Batman is teaching children to use shotguns.  It was an interesting time.  Not a particularly good time.  Just an interesting time.

See you tomorrow!

The Day it Took Batman and Robin Both to Take Down a One Percenter Trust Fund Baby who Dressed Up as a Mime

I've taken a looksee at the Black Friday sales, and I always said that three hundred bucks was the sweet spot, price-wise.  But there are many PS3 games I wish to play, so I just don't think I'm ready to pull the figurative trigger.  Probably next year.

I realize I digressed, but I've been holding off as long as possible to spare you this:

Now everyone knows that I loves me some Dave Cockrum.

Most of the time.  This is not one of those times.  As you might have guessed by the fact that this comic introduces... the Mime.

But first...

Indeed.  Shut up, Jason Todd. (tm!)

Seriously, SHUT UP, JASON TODD! (tm!)

Anyway, this is the Mime:

Okay, she just shot at someone.  Batman is aware of this.  What does he do?

See?  It's not just that Jason Todd is so annoying, it's how ineffectual his presence in the comic seems to have made Batman.  He failed to apprehend The Mime.

Yes.  It happened.  We can all wish it didn't, but it did.

What was her origin?  Oh, get ready for this:

Yes... fireworks are noisy and she had daddy issues, so... well, the story pretty much wrote itself, didn't it?

Shut up, Ja... oh, wait.  No, he's right this time.

As you might imagine, she hated noisy things... like hair metal:

So, the electricity is pretty much her thing.  I'm not sure what that has to do with being a mime, and it was never really explained.  Or it was explained, and I had just lost interest by then.  Anyway, that made her pretty easy to take down.  Thusly:

Okay, she had a gun, and Batman quickly disarmed her.  Check.

At least he hadn't forgotten how to disarm someone.  I was starting to get worried that he had abandoned his training altogether.

Anyway, with that in mind:

Okay, to review:  You just took a firearm away from her.  She is now threatening you with a big, clunky guitar.  You could just disarm her again, but...

Yeah, we had to give Robin something to do, otherwise there's no point to him.  Which means that, since he was doing something completely unnecessary, there was no point to him.

And then Batman gets all critical of the kids and their loud music:

Shut up, Batman. (tm!)

I just had to tell the freakin' Batman to shut up.  Do you see what this run of Batman comics is doing to all of us?

I read an interview with writer Max Collins and he said (after he mysteriously confessed to having created the Mime) that this was the issue that caused him to quit because his scripts weren't being followed and that was what made the title so terrible at the time. I can understand that frustration, but dude... you created the Mime. On purpose.  And as we shall see, it didn't matter what talent you brought into the mix, there was no salvaging Jason Todd as Robin.  So... yeah, there's probably a legitimate gripe to be griped, but still... YOU CREATED THE MIME!

See you tomorrow!

Robin vs. a Giant Ball... Because It's Batman in the Jason Todd Years, THAT'S Why!

I didn't realize it until I read the letters pages in subsequent issues, but a lot of people hated Batman: Year One when it came out.  I think I read it once in the early 1990's.  The library had it and I didn't not like it but I don't recall loving it so much that I wanted my own copy.  It's just funny because you'd think that in the era it was first published, Batman: Year One would have stood out.

You know who stands out with me?  People who work counters in Gotham.  Check out this guy:

That bank teller has ice water in his veins.  Did you see how unaffected he was by having Two-Face waltz up to his window?  It wasn't until the guy had a gun pointed at him that he gave him a (dare I say it?) second look.

Anyway, Jason Todd is still stinking up Batman.  This is from issue #411.  It's not like Batman had been going through a Golden Age of Storytelling over the past several years, but this is the direction we're taking now:

Yes... we're devoting time to concerns over Jason's mood.

I'd better see another Gotham City counter worker:

I'm starting to wonder if the Gotham City workers are an exceptionally brave bunch, or whether Two-Face has just lost a lot of street cred over the years.  Check it out:

See?  I notice that people don't seem to trust Batman to handle the situation, either.  Maybe they're just fed up with all the nonsense and property damage.

Anyway, this is what we're reduced to:

Yeah.  That happened.

And, lest we forget, Jason's Mood! (tm!)

Yeah.  We have a broadly smiling Batman.  If Denny O'Neil had known that Jason was going to get killed, then this would be a great set-up for Batman's dark turn.  After all, he was sooooo happy with Jason around so losing him would have brought about all that dark moodiness that he had through the 90's and early aughts.  But no one had any idea.  There was a certain brilliance and credibility to having the character get all gloomy if he was this giddy, but this was after the fact.  At the time, this was how things were expected to go for the foreseeable future.

And just in case they weren't borrowing enough from the Silver Age, it's time for the return of the Oversized Gotham City Prop:

And since Robin was given a talking-to, he has now completely changed his attitude and goes out of his way to save Two-Face's life.  Because that's how teenagers operate:

Ha ha!  Two-Face murdered my father, but he's all nauseated so I'm going to stand here and just laugh because I'm all over that now!

Shut up, Jason Todd (tm!)

See you Monday!