Bart drives the Batmobile in Teen Titans #9

[sun_soraya]

jelly_ace asked for "more Tim or more Kon or more of them both together", and if possible more funny than wangsty. I looked through the tags and noticed that Teen Titans #9 hasn't been posted yet, so I bring you:

- Bart driving the batmobile (TT #9)
- its equivalent, Bart flying the batplane (TT #50)
- one "Young Justice page" written by Todd Dezago (TT #50)





Teen Titans #9:







I love the batarang budget.






Teen Titans #50:














A~and this one:

Comments

[hatman]

lol! This is great! Thanks for sharing! :)

The "batarang budget" came up during War Games (*shudder*), too. Bruce tells Tim that batarangs are actually their number one operating expense, so he started making them with integrated circuitry that acted as a homing beacon. (Though there's no explanation of how that beacon is powered - range is far too great for a passive RF tag. And I don't think that capability has been used before or since. A shame, since you'd think it'd be almost as handy as Spider-tracers. Also no explanation of why bits of cast metal, even in quantity are more expensive than, say, Batmobile fuel or grapple gun charges or costume/armor repairs or all those electronics or...)

Anyway... They spent the day collecting old batarangs, with Bruce remembering the precise circumstances of each one (how and why it ended up in that car, whose car it was, etc).

... All of which turned out to be an excuse to get them to meet up with Huntress (who had one batarang as a souvenir of their last team-up) just in the nick of time to save her life and get a plot point as a reward.

Curious to know why Starfire and Cyborg are still listed among the Titans roster when Tim is Robin (which means Dick long since "graduated"). Is it just because they're founding members? Were they still playing an active role? And were they somehow still considered "teens" even though they should be comfortably into their twenties?

[sun_soraya]

Starfire and Cyborg were active members around that time and wanted to help/train the newer kids and act like kinda mentors. The starting roster from Geoff John's run was: Tim, Kon, Bart and Cass + Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy. After a few issues Raven was also added.

I've been avoiding War Games so far...

[hatman]

Ah, thanks. Makes sense, I guess.

Good call. Seriously.

[icon_uk]

The cost of a batarang (along with a lot of other equipment) is mentioned in Robin #100 when Tim ponders the costs of a vigilante life. I imagine the cost is so high because A) They go through them like a scythe through a field of wheat, B) The secrecy required in having them made and C) They have to be absolutely precisely balanced, shaped and finished, a duff batch of batarangs would most likely lead to either dead or incapacitated batclan members, so the tolerance testing is probably exorbitant.

[hatman]

The War Games ish showed Bruce making them himself in the cave. He had a machine that poured molten metal into a mold. Die casting, essentially. Except that he'd somehow rigged the machine to embed the homing circuitry at the same time. Of course, you have a point that there'd be further work to be done after that - the edges would have to be smoothed and sharpened, and yeah, possibly some testing. I wonder if that's part of Alfred's duties.

In any case, if they're made in-house (or in-cave), you don't have to worry about secrecy and paying for the testing. Cost to make would be the raw metal (probably not that much), energy to melt it (expensive, but they've also got a lot of other power-sucking equipment down there), maintenance on the equipment, and, of course, the time invested (which is time not spent actively fighting crime, living a non-costumed life, sleeping, or working on anything else).

It does add up, no question. I'm just not sure that I see it as being more expensive than, say, the Batmobile. It probably takes some kind of jet fuel or something more expensive than what you'd find at the gas station down the street, for one thing. Then there's maintenance. Custom parts, also built to tight tolerance. High wear and tear just from the way it's driven, never mind the damage it takes on a regular basis.

Then there are the various jets - the Batplane/Batwing, the cargo jets, etc. Also not cheap, though not used as frequently. And let's not forget the satellites. Though I guess the one-time expense of putting them up there doesn't count as an "operating cost." And, like I mentioned, the other equipment (custom body armor, made in absolute secrecy with all sorts of built-in gizmos) which also have a high rate of replacement. I dunno. Still doesn't seem like batarangs should top the list.

[arilou_skiff]

Might also be a fiscal definition: It's quite possible electronics et. al. simply aren't a part of the same budget.