A Video About the DC Writer's Meeting that Killed off Stephanie Brown

[espanolbot]

This is important. Watch the video (starting around the 34 minute mark), or read the synopsis.

No directly insulting any members of the DC staff either, I want this thread to stay put and not get locked and stuff.

At the Auckland Writers And Readers Fest, one panel saw Adrian Kinnaird, Ant Sang, Chris Slane, Dylan Horrocks and Karen Healey talk about the industry and the artform.

And it got onto sexism in comics. With Karen Healey recounting to the audience the example of Stephanie Brown’s (Spoiler, Robin, Batgirl) death in the DC comics and her lack of memorial case in the Batcave.

Luckily Dylan Horrocks was one of the writers of the crossover event in which this happened, working on Batgirl, and was able to explain the workings of her death from inside the Batwriters meeting held in a New York office over a weekend.

As well as a Dan DiDio impersonation, he told the audience that the writers were told two things about the Batman: War Games crossover event they were writing, that it would “involve some kind of Gang War in Gotham” and that “Spoiler was gonna die”. Thirty-four minutes into the video above, he recounts the experience.

AWRF2011: Graphic Novels, Comics and Cartoons from Auckland Writers & Readers Fest on Vimeo.

What Dylan Horrocks said,
"It was one of the most depressing weeks of my life, because we basically spent the whole week in this horrible office planning how to kill this poor teenage girl who I really liked, I thought she was a great character and she was one of the few friends that my character had, and I tell you the whole thing about her being Robin, was simply a trick.

The whole way through it was planned purely as a trick to play on the readers, that we would fool them into thinking that the big event was that Stephanie Brown would become Robin but we knew all along it was a temporary thing, and she was then going to die at the end of this crossover story.

It was really seedy, and I think about two days into it, I basically said look, I don’t want… because they planned this big long torture scene, I said I don’t want to really have anything to do with that. And there was another scene which was… I was Pilate, I was Pontius Pilate, I don’t want any of that in Batgirl, in effect what I did is I wrote my comic out of the key events in the story, cos I said I didn’t want to have anything to do with the big shoot out at the high school scene, so it was a really strange experience, for me that was the most depressing…

So when there was that big online debate about Stephanie Brown’s death I felt kind of really pleased and vindicated, and the other person who I think was probably happy about that but I don’t think she’s ever said so in interviews was Devin Grayson who was writing Nightwing at the time… she raised several issues during this meeting, she was one of the other writers in the meeting who said how come we’re always killing off the girls, and also how come we’re killing off the ethnic characters,[Karen mentions Orpheus], there was a lot of debate in that meeting, well ultimately it all came down to this is what we’re going to do. The editors I was working with were nice people,…[INTERRUPTION] no they weren’t all white, they weren’t all straight…[Karen asks if they were all men] yes, they were all men, but the writers weren’t all men, but I think the thing is the industry is much more diverse and much more liberal and much more politically liberal than the comics necessarily imply, but there are these kind of commercial expectations on where the stories are going to go and we do get these directives from the head editorial office, the tone of the whole industry has dug itself into a hole, and it means that really decent people who would love to be good stories end up writing these whole…"

Woooooooooooooow. I knew there was a reason I liked Horrocks. And they actually spent a week planning how to torture Steph, the end result involving broken glass, powerdrills and Black Mask basically calling her the Bat Family's whore, while the artist drew her in the positions that best showed off her ass... OW.

You know, I've felt bad about some of the things that I've said about DC falling the Fall of Cass Cain, but MAN!

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/15/%E2%80%9Csome-kind-of-gang-war-in-gotham%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cspoiler-was-gonna-die%E2%80%9D/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BleedingCool+%28Bleeding+Cool+Comic+News+%26+Rumors%29&utm_content=Twitter

For legality, the cover of and a part of a page from Horrock's Steph and Cass team-up issue,

Comments

[turtlefu]

I never for once thought that Steph would stay Robin. Call me a cynic, but I knew it would never last. We could never have a girl take the role of Robin, that was just TOO different for DC's stubborn asses.

Even so, this is horrifying, and I applaud Dylan and Devin, even if I was never a fan of their particular writing, their hearts are in the right place.

For all these years, ever since WiR, we have asked the question, and never, NEVER gotten an answer: "Why are all of the women and people of color being killed?"

This is why DC's plans of DIVERSITY! are so false. They treat their statement of DIVERSITY just like anti-gay Republicans treat their claims of "having gay friends". It's not about their progressive actions (of which there aren't any), it's what they can use as BADGES to show how wonderful they are!

[tsunamiwombat]

It is -pretty damn bad- when the internets conspiracy theories (or what could be considered as such) about them purposefully killing off female and ethnic characters turn out to be true.

I am dissapoint.

[kenn_el]

There was no good reason for Steph to BE Robin in the first place, just as Damian would have no business being Batgirl. It was clearly going to end badly. It is interesting to read the behind-the-scenes stuff, though.
As far as DIVERSITY goes, DC should get a little credit. They are putting out a few books with ethnic-appearing title characters in September (and rolling out caucasian miniseries every week it seems), and it's more than they had originally. Ultimately, the DC Universe consists largely of white, straight males, and the universe revolves around that core group. me with Marvel. Both companies tend to treat their core female characters with far less respect, and that's evidenced by the treatment of Barbara, as well as with relative newcomer Steph.

[salinea]

There was no good reason for Steph to BE Robin in the first place, just as Damian would have no business being Batgirl.
How are those propositions symmetrical? What is it about Robin that makes it must be a boy? "Batgirl" implies femaleness by virtue of the gender being mentioned in the name; and as a role,as Barbara created it, it is someone affiliated with the batfamily, but relatively independant of Batman himself.
Robin's main role is being the Batman's sidekick and partner. Why should Batman's sidekick and partner be necessarily male?

[kenn_el]

Robin the Boy Wonder.

[airawyn]

Becomes Robin the Girl Wonder. What's the problem?

[salinea]

you didn't actually answer me.

[jeyl]

Robin is not a gender binding word. Last I checked, there are indeed female robins in nature.

[kenn_el]

Robin the Boy Wonder generally implied male. YMMV.

[jeyl]

That's a subtitle Kenn, not the full name. Are you going to argue that Renee Montoya shouldn't be called "The Question" because the original question was a guy?

[kenn_el]

Absolutely not.

[brilliantnova]

Carrie Kelly anyone O_o;
Maybe they should shake it up and in regular DCU make the Robin a female.

[kenn_el]

Technically, Carrie is a future, POSSIBLE Robin. Though I will grant you that Frank Miller did give us the awesome doomed Jason Todd, prostitute Selina, Bats Vs. Supes, and All Star Batman And Robin, so his work must be adhered to. (I have no hard evidence of this, but I guess that Mr. Miller never got over Jill St. John in the Robin costume.)

[nezchan]

Perhaps they're not all palatable, but they're possible, now that the subject has been breached. No matter how you may consider having a vagina makes you unqualified as Batman's sidekick, it's been demonstrated it can work.

Failed literary experiments such as a lot of what you mention do not invalidate successful ones such as a female Robin.

[kenn_el]

I'm just saying that if you're going to worship at the Church of Miller, you're going to have to accept all the sacraments. Yes, you CAN have a female Robin, the Boy Wonder, just as you can have a male Batgirl. Just don't assume that DC/Warner are ever going to change their branding and trademarks to include them.

[nezchan]

Well, it's a good thing nobody WAS saying we should worship of the "Church of Miller" (except for you).

Lovely slippery slope, though. Perhaps you might want to argue in good faith, as a change of pace?

Hrrm.

[espanolbot]

Why am I suddenly reminded of the people on the DC Messageboards who said that Steph deserved to be tortured to death because she had a kid outside of marriage as a teenager?

Or the people who said that Cass Cain was a whore because she wore a skintight costume.

It's the 21st century. Saying that "people can't do things because they've got a vagina" rightly belongs in the past with segregation and the idea that lesbians can be "cured" by sleeping with men.

Re: Hrrm.

[kenn_el]

Because that's where YOUR mind goes. I never said nor implied any of those things. They are repugnant, as is your attempt to lower the level of discourse.

[turtlefu]

No.
I give DC absolutely NO credit, because they pull shit like this, which, might I remind you, they LIED about for YEARS. And they CONTINUE to pull shit like this, pretend it never happens, and then go and on about how progressive they are while their only major Asian character gets gruesomely murdered, or they rape and murder women for shock value, etc.
Yes, they added a couple of PoC and a lesbian. But, they don't care about making them characters in their own right, they only care about tokenism.
"Oh, look how DIVERSE we are! We have one of those Mexicans!"

They're characters of color are nothing but tokens for them to show how supposedly diverse they are. It's only up to the writers, not editorial or the company, to make those characters actually mean something.

They have done this again and again, they say they are going to change their privileged, prejudiced ways, but they haven't changed yet.

I'm sorry, I just really needed to get this out of my system /rant off

[newnumber6]

There was no good reason for Steph to BE Robin in the first place, just as Damian would have no business being Batgirl.

Sure there was. She was an established vigilante working in Gotham who showed determination and willingness to keep doing it despite Batman's disapproval and any threats he might make on her, and who only required a little bit of training to make up for her then lack of skill in some areas, at a point when there was no Robin taking the role. She was a cheerful, energetic character, befitting the Robin persona.

That's more of a good reason than "Hey, this kid lost his parents, I'm going to train him to be a vigilante of the night, and dress him up in brightly colored clothes!" or "Aww, look at this little orphan boy, stealing the Batmobile's hubcaps, I like his moxie, and, well, he's got a lot of rage, I'm sure that would make him a good sidekick." Or "Hmmm, he's my vat-grown-son, trained as an assassin and contemptuous of everybody, and put with me specifically because an old nemesis wanted to mess with me, but I think I can make him work." (well, okay, the last isn't quite how it happened, but I'm being lazy).

As for Damian as Batgirl, well, hey, if that's the way the kid's personal gender identity wants to swing, I'm not going to dispute it. I mean, the kid's a trained assassin! And it would be a choice in the direction of diversity!

[kenn_el]

I meant in the context of the Bat titles. DC has and always will use a Dick Grayson-appearing Robin in their branding. Steph filling the role was so obviously temporary that they might as well as put a target insignia on her costume. I think that Steph's motivations are, in fact, much better than Jason's or even Damian's, but I'd dispute you on Dick.

[newnumber6]

Oh, so when you said there were no good reasons for Stephanie to become Robin, you meant that there were plenty of STUPID reasons for her not to be. Gotcha.

Branding is a stupid reason to never try to change anything in a creative work. Not just artistically, but sticking rigidly to the "brand" when 90% of your saleable characters are straight white males is just dumb long term thinking. The world's not getting any less diverse, and comics are dying as it is. They should be thinking of ways to expand their brand and make it more relevant to more people. And one of the more painless ways to do that is to start doing it in the comic and then gradually start working it in to other media, retaining the option to undo it if it doesn't work out, but at least giving it a good-faith effort. Another is to make a movie or something and suddenly have a big change (Beyonce as WW, to use an example that was once rumored) that might either flop or succeed in redefining the character for the public mind, which might be faster but is riskier.

Conversely, the easiest way to NOT do it is to point to the past and say it's always been like this so it always will be like this, which seems to be a popular tact, but I don't think it's a very wise one.

[kenn_el]

The most obvious stupid reason was that it was done to ensure her demise. Change is fine. I like change. I'm not a corporate entity. No one relies on me to turn some sort of profit. Nolan aside, most Batman marketing features a Robin. They even changed Jason to look like the trademarked character. And Batman and Robin (and Batgirl) are highly successful figures for the company. I agree, though, that every underselling white male SHOULD be replaced with a more desirable ethnicity and/or gender.

[khamelea]

"I agree, though, that every underselling white male SHOULD be replaced with a more desirable ethnicity and/or gender."

And when they "undersell" too in the exact same niche, declare that it's because of their ethnicity and/or gender (because white, male readers can't relate to them) and use that as argument to scale back on this whole silly diversity business.

[kenn_el]

Don't be silly. There ARE no white, male readers.