#may press that beacon nightwing gave me

[officialbruciewayne]

mr wayne, i’d like to introduce you to what the youth call minion memes :)

apparently, people your age find them funny. what are your thoughts?

I feel threatened, somehow...

[twinhood-2dot0]

Psychology of Superheroes

Good evening Alex , I forgor and now i'm pressed for time and have no idea what to write :(. Luckily, I've been reading the New 52 Batgirl series so that gave me this idea. So, people have this weird thing where they think comics are for kids. Sure, they may have started off as a kids' thing, but the comics nowadays are much, much more mature, and I'm a DC fan, who're called the darker franchise, which I get, but more so because of the Zack Snyder movies (which I love, but WHY THE HELL IS MAN OF STEEL SO DARK??? SUPERMAN IS THE BEACON OF HOPE AND THE CHEERY GUY ON THE JUSTICE LEAGUE although Henry Cavill slays the role, okay, back to the topic) and TDK trilogy, and DC has, like, so many R-rated movies and series, but DC does have it's comedy, like Shazam!, The Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn and such, anyways, on to the psychology of the comic book characters.

Batgirl

As my favourite character, I'm gonna be talking about her first. Barbara Gordon had a relatively mild childhood, uncharacteristic of a Bat, but, she did have a psychopathic brother and her mother left early on because of him. Being the daughter of the commissioner has it's drawbacks as showcased in the highly controversial graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke. One of the issues people have with the comic is the crippling (and much more I really don't want to talk about) of Babs by the Joker just to further Batman's character. She did not let it get the best of here though, and took the role of Oracle, an information broker to the Batfam and the Justice League. She also mentored Cassandra Cain, the new Batgirl, which I also loved, relationships in comics just hit different for me.

Come New 52, DC's reboot of the whole franchise in 2011, controversially, gave Barb the use of her legs back with a neural implant. She was an icon for the differently-abled community, and fans were understandably upset at DC for backpedaling on it. However I think Gail Simone handled it pretty well as she did not just erase her history, she's shown with survivor's guilt for being able to walk again, and doubting herself as Batgirl again, but, that's just my two cents, I'm not the best person to comment on it. The comic was relaunched in 2014 however, which I'm not a big fan of, so far, I've only read 4 issues though, but I don't know, it just didn't feel like a Barbara Gordon storyline to me, here's to hoping it gets better. Also, in the Rebirth relaunch, she's Batgirl for a while, before going back to the role of Oracle and mentor to the new Batgirls, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain (yeah, after New 52, Cassie was never Batgirl, so she's the new Batgirl, again. If you think this is confusing, oh boy, DC's timeline is just plain broken). Funny story, fans of Steph sent waffles to DC HQ to get them to bring her back.

The rest of the Batfam

Everyone and their grandparents know Bruce Wayne's backstory, so I won't be getting into that. Dick Grayson, I've talked about before, but a few events I haven't talked about: Batman's (apparent) death in Final Crisis and the dilemma of the Batman legacy, Damian Wayne's death, who he saw as a brother, Jason Todd's death, also brotherly, Barbara's crippling, his on-again-off-again girlfriend and 2nd best couple in all of comics, his identity being revealed to the world in the Forever Evil storyline which I absolutely loved, one of the first comics I ever read and never understood anything then revisited recently and makes a ton more sense now. Oops, sorry, I'm bad at staying on topic. After Forever Evil he was forced to pretend to be dead and go undercover in Spyral, a, you guessed it, spy agency. Not really undercover, since everyone knew who he was, but he was there to report back to Batman. Also, don't ask me how no one connected the dots and wondered who Batman could be when the identity of Nightwing, frequent collaborator of Batman, and whose adoption lined up with his appearance as Robin, was revealed.

Jason Todd was a juvenile delinquent who was unfortunate enough to stumble upon Batman when he was depressed after Dick left. He also uh, died and was brought back to life, and resented Batman for not killing Joker and avenge him.

Tim Drake's parents were deadbeat and his father and girlfriend ended up dying. I'm really sorry, I've read like 3 comics featuring him lmao, I know very little about him. Even DC seems to forget him sometimes, and his secret identity is a mess. He was Robin, then he became Red Robin when Batman died and Damian became Robin, and, I'm not kidding, Drake. Yep, master detective, shown to be smarter than Batman, chose the secret identity of Drake. Sure, that's a bird name, BUT THAT'S ALSO YOUR LAST NAME YOU DOLT!

Damian Wayne was raised by an assassin to be an assassin and his dad dies very soon after he met him, and he also dies. Strong correlation between Robins and death.

Stephanie Brown's father is Cluemaster, a C-list supervillain who spent most of his life in jail, so, deadbeat and villainous dad.

Cassandra Cain's father was David Cain, master assassin, who raised her to be an assassin, poor girl can't even talk because her speech center is a body language center so she can react to moves before it's made.

Kate Kane was in the army, kicked out for being lesbian, idk anything else about her except she has a complicated relationship with Batman.

The Flash

Barry Allen's mother was murdered by Reverse Flash who swore to ruin Barry's life for being The Flash, and his father was sent to jail for her murder because the police can't arrest a time traveling speedster from the future. Barry grew up to become a CSI to absolve his father when one day he was struck by lightning and doused in chemicals which made him lightning fast. Eobard Thawne was obsessed with The Flash and tried to live up to his legacy when he got superspeed but failed and decided to ruin his life instead. So Eobard caused Barry to become The Flash which caused Eobard to become the Reverse Flash and so on.

Wally West is my favourite flash WHO DC HATES FOR SOME REASON. Wally had abusive parents, got his speed when visiting Barry's lab in the same exact way. After Barry's death in Crisis on Infinite Earths, he had to take up the mantle and deal with his grief and settling into his role. Okay, now for the sad part. In 2011, DC rebooted everything ,as stated before. Wally was one of the casualties of the reboot. He was replaced with another character, whose name was, Wallace/Wally West. Not joking. He's pretty much exactly the same person, but biracial and less fun, for diversity reasons I guess??? I'm all for diversity but come on, don't do it by erasing a much beloved character. He's brought back 5 years later in the Rebirth relaunch, and Wallace's story is retconned. Wally is the only one who returned and his wife and twins are erased, but he still remembers them, and his wife exists, but their history never happened, so Wally has to deal with the loss of his wife and kids. His friends in the Titans also forgot that he existed, but remember him after uh, shock therapy. And then, Heroes In Crises happened. God, how I hate this story. This is the only story I've ever read concurrently and the wait was painful and each issue got more and more controversial. I won't go much into it, but in brief, Wally accidentally kills a bunch of heroes from overload of emotions from the trauma he experienced and he tries to cover it up. First of all, Wally is the last person who'd do something like this, given all that he's experienced, and second goddammit I hate how the story treats him. He's sent off to Iron Heights Penitentiary at the end of the story. He does get his wife and kids back later on, but this is where I'm at now. I have to read the New 52 batfam because Dick dies and I need to know his whole story and also Barbara's story, and then I need to catch up on Rebirth Batfam and Rebirth Flash, I read most of Rebirth Flash, but I'll need to re-read. Okay, that's it from me today, catch you later. - Alia