Creeptastic Moments in Superheroism: When Steph Became Robin

[espanolbot]

The 2000s weren't a great time for Batman. True, there were a lot of good stories and creators with a lot of good work at the time, some of which is still influencing work to this day (such as Gotham Central and the Brubaker/Stewart/Cooke Catwoman run), but as for the character himself? ...Well you know how a lot of the bullying behaviour from Silver Age Superman stories can apparently be traced back to one particularly unpleasant editor or something? Same goes for Batman's behaviour in a lot of these stories.

For example, let us use the era's favourite punching bag: Stephanie Brown. Now, due to some prior circumstances (Tim Drake's dad found out that he was Robin, and blackmailed him and Bruce into making Tim quit), the Robin position had become vacant. So, Stephanie decided to step up to the plate, she having been trained by Cassandra Cain, Black Canary, Oracle, Bruce himself etc. in the past, so it wasn't as if she had just wandered in off the street.

It seems for a moment that Bruce is undergoing a (at the time) uncharacteristic change of heart, and actually allowing her to prove herself as the newest Robin... but then Alfred inserts himself into the conversation and muddies the waters substantially.




Wow, ambiguously implying that rather than getting the job on her own merits, Steph got the job in order to make Tim Drake come back due to his ego being bruised by his girlfriend getting his old job.

Way to respect both Tim's choice and Stephanie herself as a person there, Bruce.

Thing is, because Bruce only intended her to be a “Placeholder”, he deliberately didn’t give her as thorough a training regime that she could have had if he were serious about it.



“Hit like a girl“ …Yeah, Bill Willingham wrote this alright. Urgh. Complete with negative contrasts to her boyfriend, nice. Even if that wasn't the kind of comment Batman would make normally, bare in mind that this was the era of Batman comics that only had Cassandra Cain as Batgirl, but also the Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn, and Brubaker's Catwoman knocking around. "Hit like a girl" ain't exactly as derisive a statement as Bruce is making it out to be.

But, if Bruce had bothered to actually share the full wad of secrets with her, Steph probably wouldn’t have ended up using the War Games plans which resulted in her “death“. So yeah, good going, slick.


But that’s the thing, though. Both in universe and in reality, Steph being made Robin was done purely as a kind of send-off gift by DC for her fans as the decision had already been made that she was going to die in Willingham’s crossover event War Games. For years afterwards, Dan Didio and co refused to, for example, have a memorial to her in the Bat Cave, even though Jason Todd had one even after he came back from the dead. The reasoning being that "Stephanie Brown wasn't really a Robin" So the mastermind of the event taking this and heavily indicating that Steph didn’t really count in the same manner as Dick, Jason or Tim was, really, really kind of… well…

It brings to mind that joke exchange in Futurama, where the Harlem Globetrotters come to Earth to challenge them to a basketball game (the HG having moved to another planet some time previously). Someone asks them what the stakes are, only for the Globetrotters' leader to declare "Nothing! There is nothing at stake and no threat, beyond the shame of defeat!". That example was from a comedy, but if the creators are openly suggesting the audience shouldn't care about something happening, why should we?

Not that this prevented some of the writers who actually liked Steph from writing some good stories with her as Robin, such as her appearance in Cassandra Cain’s Batgirl series, but still it was just so… mean-spirited.


And that's not even going into HOW they decided to kill Steph off (sexualised torture coupled with throwing ANOTHER member of the female Bat Family (Leslie Thompson) under the bus. Yaaay.). Thing is, the writer of Robin at the time, Bill Willingham, has made very clear that he didn't like Stephanie Brown much in the years that followed this storyline, very much making the "Not A Real Robin" thing come across like his personal view of the character, much how his political views later resulted in a Captain America Expy turning up to lecture Tim Drake on the virtues of paramilitarism.

The personal tastes of the creators being reflected in a work isn't necessarily a bad thing, but not when it comes to the detriment of not just your own characters, but other people's... yeah. This ends up taking a moment that could have been a good moment for the fans, and then cheapening it by making Batman's decision to hire her ring hollow as he was only using her to get Tim back.

Comments

Writers like Willingham are...

[7dialsmystery]

...the reason I stopped reading comics in the 90's.

[redmagpie]

You know what's weird? With DC's History of Robin stuff going on this year, they've actually included her! And not Helena Wayne, who actually was a Robin in the nu52. I guess they're trying to make up for it in the shoddiest way possible?

[lucean]

I have a lot of issues with the argument here, not even touching the argument about the 2000s being not a great time for Batman as the period of time you are discussing is the afterwork of NML with a renewed creative push for Batman and many different approaches for it. So claiming that Brubaker's Catwoman run is superior to the Rucka/Brubaker/Grayson era is so insanely subjective that it is a difficult statement to make as fact.

However, you are seeming to ignore a lot of the actual background details in the event it self, for example the initial plan was never for Thompkins to be responsible for Steph's death, that character assassination was done after War Games with the new editorial taking over an completely undoing the new status quo set by the old team. Or the fact that Steph was never planned to be Robin leading in to the actual event, but it was forced on the creative when the build-up for War Games was already on. Thus they suddenly had to incorporate her in that role for four months, utterly derailing their actual finalized plans at that point when actual issues of that plan had been published.

But my biggest problem in this post is that as far as I understand the argument, Steph isn't responsible for anything. Apparently it's really Batman's fault for Steph intentionally setting a gang war in to motion because he didn't tell every secret he had, just as everything is really Batman's fault when it comes to her for that time period.

[espanolbot]

My arguement was that if he wasn't serious about training her, he shouldn't have bothered. Only half-training her because he didn't intend for her to keep the job puts her at risk as much as the people they'd potentially help.

And, yes, there were a lot of great Batman stories from this era, but also a lot of stories with Batman being, well, kind of a dick or making bad choices because the plot says so (like the Brother Eye fiasco).

[lucean]

For the part, I agree completely, but that was connected the editorial I mentioned and why I feel they are important to bring up here. The initial rift between the two was when Batman decided to stop training before she became Robin which was beautifully told in two issues, one where Bruce shuts Steph down coming across as a jerk and another telling having Bruce reflect on the choices in their lives and confiding in Cass how it far too late for two of them to have a normal life, but Steph still has that chance and he didn't want her to share Jason's fate. That was supposed to be the lead-in to the War Games until Didio personally pushed Bat-editorial to make Steph Robin which caused the mass derailing. Yeah, Batman comes across as a huge jerk during her Robin era, but it was more due to a freakishly insane editorial shift at the last minute than a true character moment.

As for the second part, that is basically true for every period of time. I mean, let us not even start on the Daniels run. Actually, now that I think of it, in the current Snyder era the quality of the main Bat-books has been freakishly consistent.

[redmagpie]

She didn't purposefully start a gang war, she tried to use one of Batman's plans to target the crime families- and again, why did he even give her access to them if he was going to leave out crucial information? You make it sound like she was throwing a tantrum.

[espanolbot]

I know, right? She already knows that Bruce is Batman, surely more details wouldn't hurt at this point, if only to prevent confusion later.

[icon_uk]

Does she know that Bruce is Batman? I don't think she'd had it confirmed, and there was mild confusion when, as Robin, she refers to Batman as Bruce when they appear in Kevin Smith's "Green Arrow" series because she wasn't supposed to know at that point.

[lucean]

As already commented by icon_uk, I'm fairly certain Steph didn't know Bruce was Batman, I mean wasn't it a emotional reveal at the hospital when Steph was dying?

Besides that, even she knew, this whole argument relies on the assumption that Bruce had some kind of a responsibility to tell Steph all of his secrets, which is not true. Maintaining that is essentially averting responsibility away from Steph who, and this bears repeating, intentionally iniated the plan to create the conflict. Even if her plan was to stamp it out before it got out of hand still doesn't absolve her from what followed.

[icon_uk]

Did he give her access? I thought she found the plans by herself after Bruce had fired her, in an effort to get back into his good books.

Of course, for plot purposes she somehow chose and implemented one that she should absolutely not have implemented without checking where this pivotal person called Matches Malone was beforehand.

[lucean]

The Matches Malone thing wasn't that bad, because the plan essentially had him as a charismatic leader rising to take over the void in the criminal scene. If Steph assumed that Malone was such a criminal, she had little reason to suspect that Malone needed to be aware of the plan.

[lucean]

But she essentially was throwing a tantrum. She stole those plans from Batman, he never gave them to her or even talked to her about them. It takes him ages in the book to even to realize that it was his plan. As for the gang war, and this comes to the tantrum thing, Steph tried to have use the plans to have the gang bosses collect and react so that she could intervene and be the hero, proving Bruce her worth. She failed and the gang war started.

It is similar to someone starting a small fire in order to put it out and come out looking like a hero. That person is still responsible if the fire in question burns down the whole building, no matter what their initial purpose was.

[redmagpie]

She trusted Batman to have trusted her enough to have given her the full picture, and she trusted him enough to believe that his plan would work. It wasn't like this was a random scheme she came up with herself. It was stupid of her, yes, but understandable. We're talking about a teenager who had just been emotionally abused/manipulated as part of Bruce's own tantrum- hiring her to force Tim back.

[lucean]

How could she have trusted Batman to give her enough information for the plan when Batman didn't give the plan? Steph stole the plan and implemented it without consulting the actualy person who created. Yeah, it wasn't a random plan, but I don't really see how that has anything to do with her. She stole the plan, period. That is what happened.

Steph tried to prove herself using a plan where she didn't all the details, just assumed she did without any reason for such, and initated the original conflict. And when things went out of control, she didn't go to Bruce and confess what had happened, allowing things to escalate even more.

How is Steph not responsible for what happened here? While Bruce's actions were questionable, how does that absolve Steph?

[ablackraptor]

Its hard to really blame Steph when you take into account...

A) Batman was the one who made the plans, and left her with access to them (he didn't hand her them, but he did give her unsupervised access to them; if he didn't trust her with things like 'I sometimes pose as a criminal named Matches' and 'this cat lady is called Selina', why the hell did he let her have access to the computer).

B) the level of training was at a shockingly poorer level than what he gave Tim (Tim's 'probationary time' was spent training with Lady Shiva and such; Steph's amounted to 'follow my lead and don't do anything I don't like).

C) He fired her (in a very brutal manner) for something that was completely unfair (she disobeyed his orders, but did so to save his life, while Dick, Jason, and Tim have all done far worse), despite her actually impressing him in multiple points. That's not just unfair double standards, its just outright bad teaching.

D) He then, immediately after firing her, left her alone with the computer, with the aforementioned plans available to access. He essentially put her in a state where she'd be unstable and emotional (and anyone with any understanding of psychology, something Batman is supposed to have, would know they'd do something stupid in that state), then left her alone with something very dangerous.

Steph pulled the trigger, sure, but she was only in that position, with the means to do so, and the mental state to do it, because of Batman's treatment of her. Batman essentially emotionally abused her and then left her to do this; its just plain wrong to blame her for her actions in this state when you look at the reasons for it.

[lucean]

A) So the argument here is that Batman should have been a bigger dick to her? Physically remove her from the premises the moment of the firing instead of allowing her to leave with some dignity?

Besides, according to this logic, if I invite a friend to my place and we get in to a heated argument, if my friend steals something from me as they leave, they aren't responsible as I did let them in.

B) This has literally nothing to do with the case at hand. The fact that Steph got worse combat training really doesn't bear on the fact that she started a gang war.

C) Yeah, it was a dick moment from Batman, but again this doesn't absolve Steph. Based on this logic if a boss fires someone and it is a dick during it, if the employee sets a fire at the office, they really can't be held responsible.

D) Again, by this logic I get in to an argument with a friend, who steals from me, and the friend is absolved of the responsibility.

This whole chain speaks on a larger issue, in that if Steph is seriously so emotional fragile that she can't be held responsible for stealing something, initiating a huge conflict and not trying to contact people to tell them what she had done just because Batman was a dick to her when firing her, then he was right. She should not have been on the streets as a vigilante because she clearly can't handle it.

This is even insulting to Steph itself as it all rides on this concept that she can't really be held responsible for anything, including stuff she literally did out of her own mind.

[ablackraptor]

No; the argument is that Batman was inconsistent with how much trust he gave her. He let her have access to the computer, let her edit and upload files without supervision, and then told her to do so after he fired her...but at the same time didn't trust her with things like Catwoman's name, his Matches Malone deal, or even to give her a second chance after one mistake.
Comparing this to working in a normal job, during a probationary time, if you're only affording the employee one chance (which isn't exactly fair, but whatever), you don't let them handle financial transactions and have everything they do be supervised, and when they're terminated, you don't then leave them alone on the premises (at most, you can let them gather their things but you do so while watching them).

The point I was making, combined with the other three points (and the point above), was Batman clearly wasn't giving her a fair chance during her time as Robin, but was allowing her to think he was. He basically built her up to think he was treating her with respect when he wasn't, then tore everything away for something that wasn't fair and stamped down her confidence and self worth.
It wasn't just a dick move, it was out-right emotional abuse. Batman's treatment of Steph in this instance wasn't just being mean or harsh, it was manipulative and abusive.

The reason it absolves Steph is because she wouldn't have done what she did had he not done so. If he just left her alone with the Bat computer she wouldn't have touched it, and she certainly wouldn't have tried to execute one of the plans; she only did so because he'd just broke her mental state.
It isn't a weakness on her part; anyone can be broken by emotional abuse (its why police officers and soldiers aren't immune to abusive relationships), and given his treatment of both Tim and Dick at times, Batman in particular has a history of doing it to people.

[lucean]

Okay, just to start with the most problematic argument here: The reason it absolves Steph is because she wouldn't have done what she did if he had not done what he had done. Based on this logic a man walking in on his loving wife cheating on him isn't responsible for killing her because he wouldn't have done it if she hadn't what she had done. That employee wouldn't have burned down that store if the bosses there weren't such dicks to her. There countless examples like that.

This even actually bypasses the whole point of Batman not giving Steph a fair shake by giving her fair shake in training, giving her that access and actual skill he was giving, but because of this imaginary standard of what was sufficiently trust shown. You have no evidence that the first thing Bats with Tim or Dick was to sit them down and tell them everything, but because the counter is probably true. This whole argument bases on an exception of when Batman should tell things, which is an insane defense to begin with as the only way its relevant is that then Steph would have known more about the stuff she stole. Again, this isn't anything given to Steph, anythign discussed with her, but something she stole. Thus she has no right to expect any relevant details of the stuff she wasn't supposed to have, just like someone stealing your wallet can't complain that you didn't tell them your pin code.

Yeah, he fired her in a dick move, but he trained her like a Robin before that. Yeah he didn't her on a world tour, but he didn't do that with Dick or Jason either. He was tough with her, as he is with everyone. He was dick when he fired her, but it hardly justifies anything.

And let us again focus on something here. The Batclan are the elite of the DCU, people who are expected to handle extreme pressure situation. And your argument is that yeah, when dealing with an emotional situation Steph stole plans and intentionally iniated a meeting which she knew would lead to a gang war if not stopped, and yet this screams that Steph is Batclan material?

[rdfox]

Actually, under US law, a husband who walks in on his wife cheating on him is NOT fully responsible for killing him and/or her lover in a fit of rage--it's called "extreme emotional disturbance" and would get the charges reduced from murder to (in New York State) second-degree manslaughter; still a felony, but a lesser one due to the understandable overreaction to a nasty shock. (Note that if he walked in on her, then took his time planning a way to kill them, it would be murder, but if he just attacked in a rage instantly, it would be manslaughter.)

In addition, I'd say this was less like the case of someone stealing your wallet being pissed that you didn't give them your PIN code, and more a case of you having given your ATM card and PIN code to someone, then deliberately antagonized them without taking either one back--at that point, if they clean out your bank account, it's your own damn fault.

[starwolf_oakley]

Shortpacked did two great jokes about Stephanie.

1. "Why doesn't Stephanie have a memorial case?"
"I apologize on behalf of my gender."

2. "You knew Stephanie was alive, which was why she doesn't have a memorial case."
"Uh, yes. Dodged a bullet there. I'm Batman."

[glprime]

I'll say this, on this past Friday night, when some friends had me over, the question was raised, "wait, how many Robins have there been?" And I immediately said "five," before stating we had to name that out in order to do it right. Stephanie Brown came out right after Tim and before Damian. Because I don't care how short a time it was, she wore the suit, was partnered with Batman and was called such by him. (Somebody then asked, "who's Carrie-?" "-Kellye. Dark Knight Returns. Elseworlds story. Doesn't count. Went on to be Catgirl.")

[lego_joker]

Jesus, digitizations really hasn't done Daimon Scott's art any favors.

(That said, I love how Alfred looks like Spider Jerusalem at the bottom of the first scan.)

[icon_uk]

Why would you think it was digitisation that was the problem with Daimon Scott's art?

[lego_joker]

This is probably damning with faint praise, but Scott's art worked best when there was a layer of shadow/blurry inking over everything that made it hard to see where one detail ended and another began. It made all the little imperfections and irregularities easier to swallow, since, hey - Batman and his cohorts are creatures of the night that rely on distortion and exaggeration to seem fearsome.

(For the record, I also think this is why a lot of Norm Breyfogle's recent art has lost its punch compared to his 80s/90s Batman work - everything's so *clean* that his Batman looks like he's fighting crime in Riverdale, not Gotham.)

Digitization has a tendency to make everything about 500% clearer and brighter, and while that might work for something like the Wolfman/Perez Titans run (up to the Brother Blood saga now), I don't think it's a terribly good fit for Batman stories unless they're, I dunno, Silver Age or '66.

[beeyo]

All I know is, those triangular shadows on Batman's costume are seriously messing with me. I keep thinking they redesigned his costume to include a bunch of useless triangles, like how nu52 gave everyone's costumes useless lines and piping.

[junipepper]

Really? I thought it was ugly as shit in print, too.

[informationgeek]

Even without the digitization, that artwork is ugly. Look at the first page. Steph has thighs and hips bigger than Chun-li! Heck, I think they're bigger than her head!

[ablackraptor]

Not to mention how cartoonishly big her bust is. Given Steph was generally depicted as rather, well, flat previously (hell, Tim didn't even realize her gender until he took her mask off when he first met her), its rather bafflingly bad.

Edit: And her costume too. Given Steph's Spoiler costume maximized practicality over appearance, why would she make a Robin costume that included a belly shirt and a mini-skirt? I mean, I don't actually mind superheroes with belly shirts or mini-skirts, but it just didn't fit with Steph's previous costume choices.