#she has not actually read the barr detective comics run

[roseworth]

Hi it's the previous anon, thank you so much for your answer!!

Im trying to read Jason and Damian run first when it comes to Robin because i hear bad things about them and i want to see how they gain such a reputation. Reading your answer honestly pretty sad. Those two don't deserve that :( I'm reading Jason's Robin run atm and i honestly i don't see him being the "angry robin". He's a pretty sweet boy so seeing how he's treated right now is yeah...

People that can't accept Damian as Robin seems to forget that Robin supposed to be a legacy, a mantle that's passed down. Treating him shit for that is really stupid. The fact they don't put into account how he's raised and how it'll affect his personality or current action is also quite inconsiderate of them. Dc really need to hire a better writer for them.

Beside that, i came across an article a couple of days ago and it looks like Tim is Robin again? That's hmmm...

SO real i love them so much and the fact that both of them and steph are thought of as the bad robins is literally so sad

the thing about jason being the "angry robin" is that he wasnt really until starlin came along. like he had his moments for sure, like when he found out that two face killed his dad he was Not Happy and kinda beat his ass about it lol, but besides that!! he was just a friend. but starlin really didnt want to write robin SO he basically tried to make him a lot worse then killed him. honestly kind of funny but so sad because he is just a little guy :( then now all the comics that look back at jasons robin time theyre like "ohhhh he was so angry and loved to kill!!!" and. ugh. let him be a nice robin.

side tangent but i would actually have no problem with jason being angry sometimes as robin if people would actually add ANY nuance to it. like yeah he was mad and beat two face a little! and he was okay with rapists dying! but now people are like "that makes him the Angry Bad Robin!!!" like shut the fuck up

but yeah! damian is literally just a different take on robin than tim and everyone that doesnt like that is boring. he has an interesting backstory and it actually affects his personality and people do not like that :( plus the fact that hes still being written like hes gotten no character development is so annoying because we keep going in circles with his character and i. just want an interesting story please let this kid grow dc

and about tim being robin. lol. lmao. yeah. basically since people liked him as robin So Much they gave him robin again. he was red robin for a while, then he was red robin but in a robin suit, then they just took away the "red" and let him be robin again (he was also called "drake" for a little bit in there but im not even gonna get into that). so now he is robin again while damian is still being written as "bad robin" and is separated from batman and all :( and he has his own robin book right now. right after damians robin book ended. and in the description of the first issue of tims book it literally said "Step aside Damian 😜 The world's favorite Robin is back! 😍" which is just so embarrassing for dc and so annoying for everyone that likes damian :/ please just let tim move on from robin i dont want to hear about him anymore

[nothingofnotereally]

Talia Mythbuster #1: Denny O’Neil Edition

This is recycled Twitter content.  To see me theorize and meta in real time, catch me at ennuiofaribee@twitter!

ALSO, I’m not tagging this with Catwoman or BatCat because I’m not trying to start a fight, but feel free to link it to whoever when relevant.  

Talia Myth:  Talia only stuck as a love interest because Denny O'Neil took over and forced people to write her. Mike Barr served his agenda with the "of the Demon" series.  Also Denny wouldn't let BatCat date because he hates Selina.

OH BOY.  I understand where this comes from, but no.  First things first: A lot of Talia's most Bruce/Talia-favorable appearances had absolutely nothing at all to do with Denny.

For example, I would say Wolfman's "The Lazarus Affair" arc is the most overtly romantic appearance she has outside of the "of the Demon" GNs (arguably even including those), but Denny appears nowhere on the credits.  He wasn't even the editor.

In Batman Annual #8, we have Mike Barr, but again no Denny - by this time he had left the book some time previous.  

Barr still presented Talia as someone Bruce had feelings for.  Enough so that when she left him, Robin knew he'd be hurt by it. And he clearly is since he “needs a moment.”

This isn't the only example, even Gerry Conway and famously BatCat friendly Doug Moench used her a few times.  Not the most romantic stories to be sure, but she was there, and presented fairly. (Moench also wrote an Elseworlds where Talia and Bruce were married years later, but I left that out of the Twitter post because blah blah Denny was on Batoffice by then.  Anyway.)

And then comes the big one... 

Son of the Demon.  I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH that Denny had nothing to do with this book.  I'm linking an interview with Mike Barr where he explains the whole long story, but I've screencapped some relevant bits below as well.

Mike Barr @ Comics Alliance

Barr originally intended the child to come back into play, and yes it WAS originally in continuity.  But as far as Barr following Denny O'Neil's agenda, nope.  Denny is actually the one who REMOVED Son of the Demon from continuity. I can't find sources on why anymore, but as Barr says above, Denny didn't want them to have married or Batman to have a son.  

Also, as someone old enough to remember  Zero Hour and be reading newsgroups (RP usenet) at the time, I'll lay down some tea:

After Zero Hour, DC's head editors were permitted to retcon one major continuity element of their properties.  This is one of the reasons I've said how often DC retcons depends on what characters you follow, like Wonder Woman got an ENTIRELY new origin, like.  Entirely. 

Denny's ONE editorial fiat was used removing Son of the Demon from continuity and, if I recall correctly, his reasoning was twofold:  He didn't think progressingtheir relationship served the Bruce/Talia dynamic and he didn't think it made sense for Bruce to never notice he had a child, because he's the world's greatest detective and he would have figured it out eventually.  As a sidenote, Warner was also pissed about it after Batman became a bigger name post-Miller and Batman '89, whereas when it was approved Batman was still a midlister in danger of losing his second title.  

ANYWAY, Denny also went out of his way to establish that Bruce and Talia still can't be together the year after in Detective Annual #1, where he tells Talia he would have to give up who he is to be with her.  Which brings me to the next major point....

Denny didn't hate Selina.  He was one of the first writers to use her after the Comics Code's 14ish year ban of her use.  He even used her in his Wonder Woman run.  Also it was under his watch that she got her first post-crisis solo stories in Action Comics Weekly, and her first post-Crisis miniseries, Her Sister's Keeper, not to mention her first big solo ongoing, which featured her classic purple catsuit.  

He didn't hate Selina.  He never tried to sabotage her. 

Maybe he didn't care for BatCat (that’s a literal maybe, I have no idea how he felt about BatCat), but he kept Talia from being with Bruce, too. 

What I am saying is, people are mistaking the lack of BatCat in his tenure with his targeting BatCat, but actually, Denny just didn't want Bruce to have a sex life. 

Greg Rucka mentions this in another interview, but here's the relevant bit:

Greg Rucka@Comics Alliance

So, in sum: Denny isn't the only one who used Talia as a love interest for Bruce.  He didn't hate or sabotage Selina.  He maybe?? didn't ship BatCat, but it didn't make a huge difference since he ultimately didn't let anyone give Bruce a substantial romance anyway.

I could frankly talk even more about more silly Denny/Talia/BatCat myths, but my computer lag is, as always, a limiting factor.  So, have a fab day and hope you enjoyed Talia Mythbusters Part 1, lmao.

By the way if anyone has specific Talia myths you'd like addressed or researched, feel free to let me know.  I've been lazy about this. I did Denny/BatCat stuff first because I knew I could do this more or less from memory+ knew where where the receipts were offhand.

I do have a list but you know, input is great and also if more than one person cares to have one thing looked at, I'll know where to focus my attention. 

[thecomicsnexus]

NEW TEEN TITANS #26-27 DECEMBER 1982 - JANUARY 1983 BY MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PEREZ, ROMEO TANGHAL AND ADRIENNE ROY

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

The New Teen Titans return to Earth from the Vega system, and Robin, having revealed his true feelings during the battle, begins a romantic relationship with Starfire. Several weeks pass uneventfully. Then, Dick and Kory, on a movie date, witness the accidental death of a drug-crazed youth who attacks D.A. Adrian Chase and his wife before running into the path of a car. The next day, at the site of the Statue of Liberty, Changeling battles a young costumed girl, who calls herself Terra.

Raven heals the wounded youth at the cost of almost being taken over by the spirit of her demonic father, Trigon. The boy proves to be the older brother of the teenager whose death Dick and Kory had witnessed (in the previous issue). He had come to New York to investigate his brother's death only to be set upon and nearly killed by gangsters employed by drug czar Anthony Scarapelli. Returning to the youth center, the Titans meet with Adrian Chase and Roy Harper, the latter working as a liaison between federal and local authorities in drug-related cases. Leaving with the Titans, Roy resumes his identity as Speedy, and together the young heroes break up Scarapelli's plans to have his new drug shipment distributed throughout the city by duped teenage runaways. Two of the youngsters, however, are killed in the melee, despite the Titans' efforts.

REVIEW

New Teen Titans was DC’s most important book, more important than Batman (in sales). It’s hard to think about it after seeing DC trash these characters for the last 19 years. But in 1982... boy, that was a great comic to wait for.

Of course I was barely alive in 1982, (but alive indeed), I didn’t get to know the Titans until the nineties, and even then, I didn’t have access to their comics. It wasn’t until I got access to comic shops that I was able to find them. But I am more familiar with the next volume. This volume was hard to find and I could only get my hands on trade paperbacks. Of course these days all these books are collected. So you should know, this is a good read.

I wasn’t expecting anything at all from this two-parter. They just came back from space, and instead, I get this very deep, ruthless, modern-agey story about runaway kids. And let me tell you something... it’s dark.

But you know what isn’t dark? The titans. This is something to have in mind, you don’t need your characters to be grim and gritty to be able to tell a very dark story. Ok, one of them is at risk of being possessed by a demon from another dimension... but that’s pretty much it.

Roy Harper is also back for this story, as it involves a drug dealer (who uses kids to do the dealing). This story feels just too real. And of course, it doesn’t have a happy ending, everyone is miserable in the end.

There is an actual interview to Marv Wolfman where they discuss this story (that motivated the government to ask DC to do those drug awareness stories):

MacDONALD: How about in the Runaways story? Was that both of you?

WOLFMAN: I tend to work, for the most part, with a fairly complete plot. You can always tell when George and I come up with a plot together, because the credit reads co-plotters. And there will be a separate credit that say co-creators. George gets the plots and does what he wants with them, takes away scenes, adds scenes. He never changes the story, but he will pace it his way, change the fight scenes around and whatever else and add what he wants. With the “Runaways” story he completely followed the plot. I don’t think there was a single change. He tells me that I caught without knowing it a relative of his very closely, and it made him care about the story even more. It’s the first issue of the Titans that he did full pencils, he used to do layouts on the book. And he liked the character Louis, it was very close to one of his relatives and very similar in a lot of the set-up, and I was just taking it from my own talks with runaways.

MacDONALD: I detected either restraint or constraint in that story. Did you have any Code problems with that?

WOLFMAN: No. no. We were prepared to go without the Code symbol. We submitted into the Code as we always do, and assumed that they would reject, but they didn’t. The only correction they made was we misspelled a word that they spotted. I was very much surprised. Our idea was not to hit the readers over the head with the message. I don’t like those type of stories. I just wanted it to be there, where you judge for yourself and make your own decisions. The only concept that I wanted to get through was letting people know about runaway shelters. Otherwise it was a fairly straight story.

MacDONALD: Did you do a lot of research on runaways?

WOLFMAN: Yeah. Len [Wein] and I went to a runaway shelter here [in Manhattan]. They just loaded us down with material. And took the story from that point.

MacDONALD: You did it again, the bad parents and the kids.

WOLFMAN: You know, that is a problem because it is a problem with runaways.

MacDONALD: Yeah, even though it worked in that story…

WOLFMAN: I couldn’t avoid it there. We did try to have with Luis, good parents and a bad kid. So the parents were really loving and caring, but the kid wanted freedoms that the parents in all honesty knew he wasn’t ready for, as proven in the story. The parents were good there. One of the biggest problems we discovered with runaways is not kids running away, but kids being thrown out. So in the case of the girl who was pregnant, for instance, she was actually tossed out. So a throwaway is as much of a problem as a runaway. And we could not avoid the main concept, that most kids are running away because the situation at home is bad. They are not running away for fun. it's not taking to the rails like the bums.

MacDONALD: Maybe to avoid having two bad parents, Lizzie’s mom wasn’t around.

WOLFMAN: No, she wasn’t.

MacDONALD: Was there any reason for that?

WOLFMAN: Yeah, I wanted the father to be raising the girl by himself. Because fathers would have more of a problem understanding the problems of a girl if there wasn’t a mother to temper…

MacDONALD: Well, the father could kick her out and the mother could give her cookies. Teenagers do have conflicts with their parents.

WOLFMAN: Yeah, that’s why it had to be one of the themes. We overdid it in the early issues I think. But we couldn’t avoid it in “Runaways.” I wouldn’t have even dreamed of avoiding that subject.

MacDONALD: It just seems that when you are writing about teenagers, there is too much of it.

WOLFMAN: As I said, it was a problem and I recognized it about issue #20 and decided I wouldn’t do it again. I don’t think the runaways issue did it again, I think that was a separate type of storyline, and we haven’t done it within the main thrust of the story. But that was the special case.

MacDONALD: Let’s talk a little about that. Terra…

WOLFMAN: Terra becomes a member with issue #30. Strangely enough, Mike Barr and I came in with identical characters, the same day. Mike is doing a book called The Outsiders and I wanted a new character for the Titans, and he came up with a guy who had earth powers [Geo Force], and I came up with Terra who has earth powers. And we both came in the same day so we couldn’t say who was first, and I came up with the idea of making them brother and sister. So Mike and I have cooperated to make these characters work between the two books. And Terra will be a regular character, for how long I will not say, because that ties in with some of the things we have in mind.

Where we are moving is that Wonder Girl will be getting married, and, shock of shocks, she will not be leaving the Teen Titans, and it will not affect her work in the Teen Titans. She’s marrying somebody outside the team, who’s not a super-hero.

MacDONALD: You always have a lot of plotlines, there’s Thia…

WOLFMAN: There’s a guy up in space…

MacDONALD: Yeah, what’s going to happen to the guy in space? (The Monitor).

WOLFMAN: What happened there.. that was a mistake in that everybody else didn’t pick up on it fast enough. I was creating a character for all DC to use, and I told everybody what it was, but they didn’t pass it on down to their writers. So I have to reintroduce him. I want a character who’s available, who’s called the Monitor, who keeps track of everybody and he sells information. And any writer could use it.

MacDONALD: You mean like The Watcher as a blackmailer?

WOLFMAN: Yeah. I had the character about 18 years ago. I called him the Librarian then because I didn’t have a good sense about names and thought that it would be a neat idea to do that. You know, one villain that the whole company could use. I didn’t have to sell it to Marvel, because they already had one universe, but when I came back to DC I indicated that I wanted to do it here. Everyone liked it but forgot to hand out the sheets I gave for their writers. So I have to redo it indicating how far you can take the character from month A to month B. Like for three months you can only show this much and after six months you can show that much, and at the end of a year we can reveal who that character is and start getting into interesting stories that all the writers can pick up on.

MacDONALD: So he’s going to be all around?

WOLFMAN: Oh yeah.

MacDONALD: He’s not specifically Titans?

WOLFMAN: On no.

Interesting ah?

In any case, I give this story a score of 10