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silverwhittlingknife · 8 months ago

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hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

#dick grayson #anyone with more info feel free to chime in & we can crowdsource <3 #i do think the toy elephant is awfully cute though <3 #total digression but i was thinking about it as i was writing:#i'm fascinated by the ways that the post-crisis batboys & their stories can intersect with 90s masculinity and all its issues with stoicism #and i'm pro-queering and gender-bending - 90s comics were a total boys' club so i think it's neat that transformative fandom isn't #but i do love 90s masculinity and All Its Issues too & one of the things i find compelling about the dick-tim-bruce trio #& especially dick's place in it - is the unspoken hierarchy whereby bruce is manlier than dick & dick is manlier than tim #and so dick's in the middle as this somewhat softer-character who aspires to be a harsher & more stoic & ultimate manly-man character #caught in the middle between robin & batman & what each role represents #and like. batman is both manhood & the only desirable thing to be AND ALSO it represents this immense narrowing of possibility #because so much of stereotypical masculinity is about reducing the range of emotions you're allowed to have or express #and dick is both incredibly conflicted about bruce AND wants to be just like him & by extension is conflicted about masculinity writ large #so a lot of dick's interactions with tim veer between trying on a frat-boy-ish 'I'm The Manly Guy' persona vs. giving up on it #or trying on imitations of Bruce's Batman persona but also trying to backtrack out of it bc he doesn't like how it feels etc etc #ANYWAY i think what i am trying to say is that if tim had a stuffed animal dick would be entertained & poke mild fun at him #and call him 'teddy' for the next hour or something while tim got increasingly defensive about how the teddy bear was steph's #and/or about how the teddy bear was OLD and tim doesn't even care about it and also WHATEVEr i'm above this #and to an uninformed observer this might look like bullying BUT ACTUALLY #this ritual would IN FACT be very reassuring to both of them + tim would feel WAY better afterward than if dick had ignored it #because by poking fun at him dick shows he still respects tim enough to tease him thus subtextually exorcising the threat of wimpiness #plus allowing tim to defend himself & demonstrate that he can take a joke so they've both reaffirmed their masculinity to each other #& they don't have to be scared of the teddy bear and all it represents anymore #however also afterward dick would have a brief nostalgic flashback to when he was a kid & had a teddy bear & feel weird about the memory #because he would be unable to articulate to himself that what he misses is a past when he allowed himself to be vulnerable #anyway this wouldn't actually happen in comics but it's what would happen in my soul. you know.#ask tag #zitka

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p1zzaparty · 2 months ago

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i for one would love to hear the remainder of ur thoughts on maggie tozier…

EEEE THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING!!! This means so much coming from you Kat 😭

okay a few things to note before i begin

This is a lot

Its a lot of me redoing her from the ground up, her personality, her looks, her background, her relationships etc, etc.

So just know, im taking like a thousand creative liberties with this

To begin i based her looks on the character Deirdre Barlow from an old brit soap opera called Coronation Street.

I imagine she literally looks like her kids, they get almost 90% of her genes and look like mini versions of her. Though she perms her hair to fit in with the trends, and tv has sold her a bunch of at-home perm styling kits. She's got pronounced jowls like Richie does, he probably has her wide nose too. Her fashion is very on brand for the time with lots of sweaters and jeans and big clunky jewelry.

I always imagined, much like every little homo, Richie got a lot of his fashion from his mama..

and cartoons.

She's average height, and probably is on and off diets but never takes it too seriously. Besides she enjoys baking and is always trying some recipe she saw Julia Childs make. She's kind of a stocky woman, it just runs in the family to be sorta squarish and have this bulldog look to them.

As for personality i personally never cared for Kings description of her as a kind of wishy washy woman who cried at everything Richie did or said.

For me i liked to think someone like Richie needs a mom who matches his energy and can take on his rambunctiousness. Even if it takes grabbing him by the ear and dragging him back inside to get a verbal slashing. She's not overly dominant or strict, just used to Richie always mucking up mud and knows how to rear him back even if he still embarrasses her in public sometimes with his trashmouth. I mentioned this before but i see Maggie as one of the, if not ONLY, better parental figures in the loser club. She genuinely cares about Richies friends because of how few and far between there is. Any kid in her house is her kid, she feeds and provides a safe place for anyone he brings home. Even if she doesn't understand some of their interests, or lingo, or fashion statements, or music. She's a moms mom, always referring to any kid as 'hon' 'baby' or 'sweetheart.' She can be fun and doesn't take anything toooo seriously, but she still cares about appearances. She's like an average sitcom mom who wants to look like a good mom and have a normal family with a happy life. She's also, a giant dork.

Much like her son, she too is kind of a loser. She's got that Tozier awkwardness, always making jokes where there shouldn't be, laughing too loudly/obnoxiously, always making references to pop culture even if nobody in the room has a clue what they're referring to. She doesnt really have a lot of friends 😭

She definitely tried, oh my god did she try. She would bake goodies and strap baby Richie into one of those backpack carriers and go around the neighborhood trying to introduce herself and her stinky ugly baby. And it was hard, Derrys an old, OLD small town. Backwards, judgmental, harsh, hateful. Unfortunately she just wasn't that privy with the other moms around her. But she desperately wanted to be, being a stay at home mom is lonely work. She dreamt of just being that sitcom housewife that makes the perfect dinner and snaps her fingers to clean the house in an instant and talks, and talks, and talks on the phone. She wants in on the mom gossip. She wants to be apart of a community SO badly.

Sonia is one of her few mom friends and even then that's more of a obligated friendship, their only common interests being their children and television. She kind of finds Sonia annoying and doesn't approve of her parenting methods, always rolling her eyes when the phone rings while Eddies staying the night, knowing its some new task she'll have to force the boy to do. Though she enjoys that Sonia will listen to her blabber, even if shes probably just sitting and watching tv while Maggie drones on about this and that and giving an assuring "uh huh" as a sign of life. Maggie's such a tv head too, i love to think she enjoys watching Cheers the most along with various soap operas and game shows. Her family bonds over tv with tv dinners on tv stands while they parrot tv quotes at each other. She probably has to shoo Richie away whenever Cheers is on, needing time to debrief and mumble to herself about Dianes complicated romances. And shes got a crush on Fraiser, god you and your mom have crushes on wimpy mama boys in suits lordd

I based a lot of her personality on Calvins mom from Calvin and Hobbes

I played around a bit with her background. I know she's depicted as Catholic but i always imagined she grew up Jewish, only quitting the practice when she and Went got married. Her views on religion are mixed, not wanting to really skew her children in any direction, but celebrating Christmas to fit in with everyone else in Derry. Not that it really helped because she never took them to church. Evil bastard child and her half demon brother whos annoying. Her and her parents relationship are a bit if not totally strained, they probably disapproved of Went back when they first met as teens. Their reasons were based mostly on Wents social status, but they were also just very critical of Maggie and every choice she made. She always felt suffocated by her parents and Went just made her feel clear and airy. Though it was mostly puppy love that kept them together at the time, their love would continue to blossom over the years as they got older and older. They truly loved each other.

I had this whole idea that he and Maggie were young lovers at 18, falling in love like it was the movies as they hid it from their parents. But she would end up pregnant with Rachel like REALLY early on, and it would kind of "ruin" any "plans" they had of running off together and going to some local college while Went worked. Which only added more strain to her and her parents relationship as they went off to have a small shot-gun wedding at a courthouse. Only able to afford a dress and flowers at the time, but she still looks back at it fondly and probably passed her dress on to Rachel later in life. She is still in contact with her parents but only rarely do they go visit, Richie hates the smell of his grandpa and always tries to rile them up by doing impressions of Mickey Mouse.

She's one of the youngest mothers in Derry, only making her more of an outcast in the judging eyes of others, but she loves her kids more than she ever felt she was loved as a child. She always wanted a girl, just enjoyed shopping for one and bonding with one and brushing their hair and decorating their room and doing their nails and makeup together. She adored Rachel, she was exactly what she dreamed of when she thought of raising a little girl. Their relationship is really close even if Rachel began to pull away towards her teen years. (I have SO many ideas for her as well 😭)

Much like her, Richie was a surprise/accident. She never really imagined herself caring for a boy and found it a bit more difficult, especially since their age gap is a bit wide. But even through her rolling eyes and yelling Richies full government name when she finds her nightgown cut with eyeholes in it for his ghost costume, she loves her son.

Their relationship is VERY much like Linda and Gene. While she doesnt care much for Richies crude humor and snappy quips, she cant help but hide a smile sometimes when she hears him and Rachel bickering back and forth. She genuinely thinks her son is really funny, just needs to tone it down a notch sometimes and not be the loudest voice in the room. God, shes probably taken him to talent shows at school. Tying Wents best looking polkadot tie around his neck while he nervously flips through his note cards, getting his glasses all sweaty as he quietly asks if maybe they, um, can just go home instead. And she'd sigh and clean his stupid thick glasses for him and tell him hes going to do wonderful. "You're funny Richie, real funny." And when she see's him waddle up onto the stage, nervous, scared, and tiny. Her smile would be bigger than her heart, having to flash him a healthy thumbs up to boost his little confidence. But of course he would fumble, sputtering every joke, never getting to the punchline, or getting their too early, and he'd be too quiet for the people in the back to even hear him. And Maggie would be the only one clapping, the loudest she can too. That's her funny guy. She lets him cry to her and wipes his tears with her sleeve. She never bought into the way most moms treat their sons, she wanted Richie to grow up loving someone with his full heart. Even if it means she coddles him sometimes.

And her and Went have a very loving relationship, very average and kind of mundane in a sweet way. They're very genuine, Wents sort of a passive guy who listens to his wife nightly rants about her day and enjoys it. He loves her more than his vocabulary allows him. Simple guy, loves his wife, laughs when his kids curse at each other, works wayyyy too much.

God this family

I think that's the brunt of my thoughts, most of my ideas are just small little things that add to her greater personality. I also loooove parental parallels so there's always tiny shit between her, Richie, and Rachel even.

In chapter 2 i think she's still alive, Went died from liver cancer a bit into Richies 30s (Toziers are kind of functional alcoholics.) So now she resides in Florida, where Richie bought her a nice home near the beach. He doesn't visit, or call that often which depresses her a little. But she understands, plus Rachel still often comes by with her children to visit and catch up.

I have list long notes on all the Toziers, they're genuinely one of my favorite fictional families and i literally highjacked them and made them my own 😭

OH! and i imagine she's got a collection of antique clown decorations. Vases, paintings, statues, gnomes, you name it. It's why Richies not very fond of them. Or going into her room much.

Tldr; Your mamas a loser like you

#She genuinely means the world to me #I try to give her a lot of micro complexities that makes her more dynamic and yknow #an actual character #Like of course she loves and cares for her son #but if he told her that some killer clown monster that shape shifts and called him a queer tried to eat his face off #i mean would you believe him #She would be worried for sure but more worried that maybee letting him see The Thing wasnt such a good idea #Or The Rocky Horror Picture show #oh and of course she knows his little secret #duh every mom knows that #maybe not fully but shes got an idea about him #a mother always knows #and she will always support her children know matter who they choose to be #maybe not assholes though she taught them better than that #She probably doesnt wish for him to BE gay though #not because of any of her own prejudices or bigotry against it #but because shes not stupid #shes known Richie has already had a hard life #hes not exactly a beloved football star quarterback that all the cheerleaders follow around #shes aware of how hard it is for him out there in this ugly town #she just doesnt want one more thing weighing him down #maggie tozier #it #it stephen king #it 2017 #richie tozier #ask box

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