NS: New York Times Article Spoils Batman #50

[history79]

"The answers to the questions are found in letters the couple have written to each other before their wedding day. Mr. Wayne’s correspondence reveals an acceptance of Ms. Kyle, who in her time has been a jewel thief, a villain, an antihero and a mob boss. “You’re not someone who can be figured out. Or solved. And never will be,” he declares. He also writes that he can be “more than a boy whose parents are dead,” that he can be “the man who loves you. Who will always try to love you better.”

Ms. Kyle’s letter lays out the truth as she sees it: “You’re still a child, Bruce. A hurt child.” Their happiness, she speculates, would kill Batman, who rescues everyone and turns pain into hope. “How can I do that,” she writes. “To save the world, heroes make sacrifices.”

In order to keep countless innocents safe, she concludes that she cannot marry Mr. Wayne. “My sacrifice is my life. It’s you.”

In the final moments of their story, the bride and groom end up at different locations in the early morning hours. In a silent page, Ms. Kyle sits on a rooftop, contemplating. She discards her veil and leaps toward the street. At the Finger Tower skyscraper, after an hour of waiting for his bride, Mr. Wayne realizes she is not coming. He throws off his tie and takes a similar leap, but in the opposite direction. Theirs is a story that is forever to be continued."

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/fashion/weddings/it-just-wasnt-meant-to-be-batman.html

Comments

[goattoucher]

A lot of people.

With the current trend toward -ending- marriages, who seriously thought that Bruce and Selena (or Kitty and Piotr) would actually -get- married?

To the man-child that is the average comic reader, marriage is not an beginning, but an ending. The end of their pet character getting down with a variety of sexy ladies. The end of their Waifu seeming available.

The end of freedom.

For the writers, it is the end of romantic tension. It is a permanent character change that limits what they can and cannot write. They hate this, so no element of continuity outlasts the current writer any more.

This refusal to let characters grow (on the part of the writers and readers, and the editors whose imperative, above all, is to sell comics) is why the quality of these comics is going down, in my opinion.

We saw some growth in the late 90's and 2000's, but the boss guys of the Big Two (Quesada and Johns) actively reversed character development in favor of older continuity, and our choice has been to get on the trolley or get lost.

Which is why my primary source of comics is SD.

[cygnia]

http://www.superstupor.com/sust02132009.shtml

[goattoucher]

If only...

I've been saying for a while: the number one enemy of nerds is other nerds.

We need words to distinguish between fans of different hobbies and the toxic people who shit on everything that varies from their expectations.