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Podcast transcripts
Doug Moench (he whoeth decreed that Jason Todd should be also known as Robin II) from Comic Geek Speak:
Pre-Crisis Jason Todd
From the introduction to Rick Veitch's Bratpack, by Neil Gaiman: Shortly before Rick Veitch began Bratpack, DC Comics ran a telephone vote on whether or not Robin - Batman's sidekick, at that time a youngster named Jason Todd, already the second boy to proudly wear the Robin costume - should be killed. And, next issue, Robin died in a bomb blast: thousands of fans had voted, and they wanted blood. It made the front pages of newspapers in the real world. Immediately after that the four issues of Batman in which Robin's deathtrap was wet up became instantly collectible. I seem to remember that the book in which the kid in the green underwear bought it was trading for over $40 at the height of the craze. If you're worried by this, let me reassure you: the dead Jason was rapidly replaced by another Robin, Tim Drake. Batman, after all, must have his kid sidekick. The launch of the new Robin was attended by comics store hype (multiple collectible covers, holograms, and the like) and was also much collected. From 'Notes from the Batcave: An Interview with Dennis O'Neil', in The Many Lives OF The Batman, edited by Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio Q: When did the new Robin come in? Was it while you were editor? A: No. It was 1983, I believe. He was invented by Gerry Conway in an origin that is a virtual duplication of Dick Grayson's Robin origin. I doubt that they were worried about creating a new character. I think they thought, "We've got to have a Robin in the series, so let's go with the tried and true. This Robin has worked for so many years so let's do him again." Q: Why did everyone hate him so much? Why did he get killed? A: Boy, that's a good question. They did hate him. I don't know if it was fan craziness - maybe they saw him as usurping Dick Grayson's position. Some of the mail response indicated that this was at least on some people's minds. I think this is taking the whole thing entirely too seriously. It may be that something was working in the writers' minds, probably on a subconscious level. They made the little brat a little bit more disagreeable than his predecessor had been. He did become unlikeable and that was not any doing of mine. Once we became aware of that, of course, we began playing with it. Q: And this decision was influenced by the fan letters you were getting? A: Yeah. The general response. The fan letters an then being a comic book editor, artist and writer in the eighties mean you go out and meet the fans a lot. What we get in the way of verbal response and mail is certainly not definitive, but it is probably as informative as the television ratings. It's sort of an informal sampling. I think that once writers became aware the fans didn't like Jason Todd, they began to make him bratty. I toned some of it down. If I had to do it again I would tone it down more. But you make these decisions from hour to hour and sometimes not under the best conditions. So we did a story, for example, in which it was left vague as to whether or not Jason pushed someone off a balcony. The writer, Jim Starlin thought he did - I thought he didn't, but we let the reader decide. There was certainly no doubt that throughout much of the story he wanted to push this guy off of the balcony. And then when we were building up to the death of Robin we made him rebellious - he ran away and in a way he got what he was asking for. He disobeyed Batman twice and that's what led his demise. From 'Batman and the Twilight of the Idols: An Interview with Frank Miller', by Christopher Sharrett, in The Many Lives OF The Batman, edited by Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio Miller: A Death In The Family should be singled out as the most cynical thing that particular publisher has ever done. An actual toll-free number where fans can call in to put the axe to a little boy's head. From 'Batman, Deviance and Camp', by Andy Medhurst, in The Many Lives OF The Batman, edited by Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio It's intriguing to speculate how much latent (or blatant) homophobia lay behind that vote. Did the fans decide to kill off Jason Todd so as to redeem Batman for unproblematic heterosexuality? Impossible to say. There are other factors to take into account, such as Jason's apparent failure to live up to the expectations of what a Robin should be like. The sequence of issues in which Jason/Robin died, A Death in the Family, is worth looking at in some detail, however, in order to see whether the camp connotations of Bruce and Dick had been fully purged. The depressing answer is that they had. This is very much the Batman of the 1980s, his endless feud with the Joker this time uneasily stretched over a framework involving the Middle East and Ethiopia. Little to be camp about there, though the presence of the Joker guarantees a quota of sick jokes. ... Jason dies at the Joker's hands because he becomes involved in a search for his own origins, a clear parallel to Batman's endless returns to his Oedipal scenario. Families, in the Bat-mythology, are dark and troubled things, one more reason why the introduction of the fifties versions of Batwoman and Bat-Girl seemed so inappropriate. This applies only to real, biological families, though; the true familial bond is between Batman and Robin, hence the title of these issues. Whether one chooses to read Robin as Batman's ward (official version), son (approved fantasy) or lover (forbidden fantasy), the sense of loss at his death is bound to be devastating. Batman finds Robin's body and, in the time-honored tradition of Hollywood cinema, is at least able to give him a loving embrace. Good guys hug their dead buddies, only queers smooch while still alive. From a Jim Starlin interview originally located here: Yes, everyone hated Jason Todd. I wanted to kill off Robin as soon as I started writing Batman. The idea of taking a kid along to fight crime is ludicrous. Then Denny O'Neil came up with the phone call-in deal. He immediately started taking complete credit for the idea of killing off Robin. Then the book came out and the executives up at Time Warner realized they had all these lunch boxes and sheets with robin on them and suddenly it was completely my fault for killing off Robin. Within three months I was gone. From a television documentary about the history of superheroes "You hear about characters taking on a life of their own. Jason was the best example of that I've ever personally encountered. Nobody set out to make him an obnoxious little... snot, but he kind of was that." - Denny O'Neil From a Jim Starlin interview originally located here: Well, I always thought that the whole idea of a kid side-kick was sheer insanity. So when I started writing Batman, I immediately started lobbying to kill off Robin. At one point DC had this AIDS book they wanted to do. They sent around memos to everybody saying "What character do you think we should, you know, have him get AIDS and do this dramatic thing" and they never ended up doing this project. I kept sending them things saying "Oh, do Robin! Do Robin!" [laughs] And Denny O'Neill said "We can't kill Robin off". Then Denny one night got this flash that "Hey, if we get this number where people call in and they can vote on it, they can decide whether Robin lives or dies." So that?s how it started. I wrote up two endings and the readers came in and voted and I think it was 93 or something, it was this negliable amount, the difference for him to be put to death. And the death won out of course. So we did this and the book came out, Denny was on all these talk shows across the country that day saying, it's kind of funny because he was taking credit for the whole project. But as soon as the book came out and Robin died, the executives up at DC started going "Whoof!" because they had all these lunch pails with Robin's picture on it - suddenly it was all my idea again. [laughs] from Who Killed Robin? An Interactive Whodunit by Les Daniels, from his book DC Comics: A Celebration of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes: "I had a Robin problem," says editor Denny O'Neil. "We could have lighted his character, or had some event happen to him that made him change his act. That certainly would have been a way to go." Instead, the decision was made to let Robin die. An imaginary sidekick's demise captured the nation's imagination and became the most notorious event in comic book history as of 1988. Obscured in the resultant firestorm of public indignation was the question of who should take the final responsibility for his death. "If I had to do it again, I would certainly have kept my mouth shut," admits O'Neil. --- Created in 1983 by writer Gerry Conway as a frank imitation of Dick Grayson, the second Robin was rewritten by Max Allan Collins as a tough kid from a bad background. It could have been a good idea, but somehow it didn't work out that way. "Jason had drifted in a direction that is probably my fault as much as anybody's," says O'Neil. "We didn't set out to make him an arrogant little snot, but somehow or other in tiny increments he ended up that way. We reached the point where we were going to have to do a drastic character revision on him or write him out of the series." --- Robin I was recruited to ease the way for Robin III, who got a lot of space in the pages of The New Titans, courtesy of the writer-artist team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez. It was a smooth transition, and computer whiz Tim Drake has been accepted as a suitable partner for an American institution. "This time we got it right," says O'Neil. Stephanie Brown From An interview with Chuck Dixon: I have a proposal in for a limited series with Steph. It's awaiting a place on the schedule. From An interview with Chuck Dixon: I joked with the editors when I put her into her first story that she'd probably become popular since I only had her in mind as a plot device for a single story. Heck, Wolverine was a one-off character in a string of forgettable Hulk opponents. And the Silver Surfer was only created so Galactus would have someone to talk to. A Spoiler mini will have to wait until she's no longer pregnant. But I'd love to do one. Her whole reason for becoming the Spoiler was to get back at her dad. Her reason for continuing to put on the mask and cape is to be near Robin. She's a teenager. That's enough motivation for her...for now. I didn't see Tim as being preachy. I saw him as being practical and caring. Stephanie had already rejected abortion as an option (mostly as a hormone-driven reaction to being "told what to do."). She reacted the same way to the adoption lawyer she went to. Her decision to keep the baby was strictly emotional and not thought-out. All of this was in keeping with what happens to teen moms and how they wind up making a bad choice worse. A lot of girls don't have anyone who cares enough about them to talk sense to them. But this was a comic book and superhero comics are about heroes. So Steph had a caring, strong friend who was willing to confront her with the truth. It worked dramatically for the characters and I think made for a very compelling sub-plot. It is also, sadly, a very real issue for boys and girls of the age that I was writing for on the book. My editors at DC and I talked a long time before introducing this subplot. I was reluctant to introduce what was an "issue" to the book but felt that ignoring this too-common occurence in teenagers' lives would be a mistake. I would only do it if it were presented as a part of the story and NOT marketed as a cautionary or message tale. I didn't want any Seduction of the Gun treatment. The guys at DC agreed. From an interview with Tom Lyle: Chuck writes full script, so the first I saw of Stephanie was in the Detective storyline that introduced her (Tec #647 was her first appearance). I did sketches based on the story and sent them to DC. They liked the costume. I liked her from the beginning since I (and I think Chuck does as well) see her as the female counterpart to Robin. I never thought that she'd be as popular as she is, but I'm very pleased. I wish that DC would give her her own book since Chuck and I own a piece of her. I wish they'd at least make a action figure out of her. From an interview with Chuck Dixon: We'll never see Steph's baby (at least until I'm off this continuity.) He or she is not a dangling plot element. The whole point of the story was that Steph made the compassionate decision in releasing the baby to be adopted. It's better that she not know anything about the child and get on with her life. One of the highlights [of Dixon's writing year] was the Spoiler pregnancy storyline. I'm really pleased with how that turned out. From an interview with Jon Lewis: Who is Spoiler? She's Stephanie Brown, about the same age as Tim Drake. She and Tim now know about one another's "secret identities". Stephanie's father is the Cluemaster, a second-rate supervillain and perfectly rotten guy. Her Mom is a pharmaceutical addict in recovery, who has a good job as a nurse. How has Spoiler's relationship with Robin changed over the past few years? I guess it's sort of solidified-- they both feel like they're in it "for real" now. They're in that unique teenager state of feeling like they're discovering THE REAL THING for the first time. The fact that they know each other's identities and even work together sometimes as Robin and Spoiler has been a good thing in some ways for Tim - for the first time he has someone in his line of work who's like a peer instead of an older sibling or a Dad. It's kind of unified his Robin life and his normal life. But not having those halves compartmentalized has its downside, too. There are reasons for keeping your work life and private life separate. As for Steph, Tim's the first really good boyfriend she's had, and the first person she's come to trust so totally that she can talk to them about anything. But she feels like the rest of the "Batman Family" don't approve of her being Spoiler, and she wonders whether Tim agrees with them deep down and isn't telling her. The subject of molestation and abuse is one that a lot of people shy away from and do not feel comfortable tackling. What, if any, reservations did you have about revealing this aspect of Spoiler's past? I just wanted to write it as well as I possibly could, and in a way that was really true to THIS SPECIFIC SITUATION - not a symbol for all instances of molestation, and not a "statement" on the issue. The story itself is very sensitive to Stephanie, but though nothing awful is shown it is an awful story emotionally to read - or I suspect it is. I know that after writing it I had a black cloud of depression over my head for two or three days. Why is the time right now for Steph to talk about this childhood trauma? Because there are certain questions about it that she now suddenly knows she will never get the answers to. Things she was putting off investigating that now she'll never get a chance to know. I'm sorry to be so vague, but the catalyst for her thinking about this part of her past right now is an event I don't want to ruin for the readers beforehand. What inspired this story? It just seemed very obvious to me, when I saw that Stephanie grew up with a small-time crook for a father and an addict for a mother, that this child would have been exposed to really inappropriate situations because of the world her parents were inhabiting, and the other adults they would have had around them. This is the kind of environment in which these things happen. The parents are too wrapped up in their own nonsense to look closely at the kind of "friends" they're surrounding themselves with. Looking at the facts of Stephanie's background, I just felt, unfortunately, that it was very very likely that this was part of it. You can see that this is not something I've just whimsically pulled out of a hat from the fact that I laid the groundwork for it in a brief flashback sequence back in issue 102. How is Robin going to react to this news? How will this change their relationship? At first it upsets him terribly, makes him ashamed to be male and makes him want to find and pulverize the person responsible. Then he starts to suspect that this might be what a real relationship is all about, this sharing of everything with one another. Ultimately he feels closer to her than before. What are the biggest challenges to writing this issue? Like I said, trying to be true to this specific situation with these specific people, and not "make a statement" about an issue. However, there are a couple things I did put in there for purely rhetorical purposes. I felt I needed to point out the depressingly high percentage of women and girls who have experienced something like this, that it is unfortunately not a rare phenomenon. Also, sometime early this year I read a bit in the entertainment section of the newspaper about how the season finale of that show "Felicity" had been scrapped, because it had Felicity being sexually assaulted. The producers asked for a totally new episode, and released a press statement saying "we felt that after all this character has achieved for herself professionally and personally, to reduce her to nothing more than a victim of rape would be totally unacceptable." I found that sentiment so utterly disgusting, this idea that rape strips a woman of her personhood and negates all her achievements. It stuck in my craw. Months later, when I wrote Robin #111, I just had to put it in. There's a scene where Steph and Tim are in a diner, and there's a TV on in the background showing the equivalent of Entertainment Tonight, and there's a newsbit where a that press release is read almost verbatim. Obviously, that's something that is in the story only because as the author I wanted to ridicule and revile it. But otherwise I tried hard to just tell the story, be inside the characters. A lot of people are going to look at this as a publicity stunt instead of looking at the character and her past. Her father was a criminal, her mother used drugs, she was around an unsavory lot ... This is reality, not publicity. What problems, if any, did you have with the publishers of DC Comics in wanting to present this story? Did anyone try to persuade you not to go this direction? No. When I was starting on ROBIN, after I'd absorbed all the backstory on the characters, I talked to Matt and Pete about what Spoiler's family history said to me. So this was no surprise to them. I was slightly nervous though, when I finally got around to addressing it in my 12th issue on the book, that Matt might have forgotten all about it in the intervening time and would read the script and be totally horrified. But he wasn't. And the pages I've seen from Pete on the issue are amazingly nuanced and effective. As usual for me, I myself had no doubts about writing the story until after I finished, at which point I totally freaked out. "How dare I try to write this experience? What was I thinking?" I know people are going to have major misgivings about the story beforehand, as to why I would write it, but I think if they actually read it those misgivings will be allayed. Even though it won't exactly be a pleasant read. Why do you think people view a female who has lived through abuse as "less" or "damaged?" Unfortunately there are these ancient traditions of ascribing any "filthy" aspects of sex to the woman, as if the supposed "spiritual damage" of sex all falls onto the woman. If you start from that attitude about CONSENSUAL sex, then obviously, FORCED intercourse is going to be seen as making a woman unretrievably polluted. Sadly, we're coming from many centuries of several parallel traditions of viewing women as a kind of precious cattle. Sorting that baggage completely out will take time, and little ghosts of it linger in all of us, even in those who consciously and convictedly know better. To me the worst is how echoes of these values can lurk in a woman's own feelings about herself. That's so awful and unfair and insidious. I don't mean to condemn the great cultural and spiritual traditions of the world, they're all full of profound and beautiful things, but every last one of them has this atrocious disgusting blind spot when it comes to women. Why should people check this issue out? It's an integral part of the series, continuing the paths of these characters in important ways, and there's far more to the issue than just the part about the sexual abuse. It's also a self-contained issue that's constructed and told differently than any issue of ROBIN we've done yet. It has some damn funny parts, believe it or not. And it's looking like it's going to be one of Pete's best issues yet, which is saying something. And it'll be followed by the most ambitious story arc I've attempted. But people shouldn't wait for #111 to check the series out. They should run right out and get the current issue right now, which begins an arc about gross monsters and teenage dating problems. From an interview with Bill Willingham: Our new Robin is not cut out for the job; they absolutely need Batman there for a while and I’d like to explore that. The whole idea of doing the teenage sidekick is to look at how someone learns to do that job; at least, that’s what’s interesting to me. At first [Batman]’s like, "How dare you break into the Batcave?" and then he thinks it over and says, "OK, you want the job. It’s yours." One of the things I want to do is that we’re not going to look inside Batman’s head a lot. The only things we’re going to find out about him are the things he says to [the new Robin] and to us on screen, because I want to keep his real motivations secret for a while. To use a military analogy, he’s the drill sergeant, so far all we know about him is that "Boy, he’s big, he’s mean, he screams a lot and nothing I do seems to be good enough for him." From Wizard magazine, issue #150: "She breaks into the Batcave with her homemade Robin suit all sewn up -- which actually looks pretty bad," says Willingham . "While Tim showed up ready for the job, Stephanie has a lot to learn." Although Batman accepts Stephanie as the new Robin, his reactions remain ambiguous. Does he really think she's right for the job, or is it just a ploy to lure Tim back to his post? "We're not going to look inside Batman's head because I want to keep his real motivations secret for a while," explains Willingham. "All we know about him is from Stephanie's point of view. He's big, he's mean, he screams a lot and nothing seems to be good enough for him." Once training begins, Stephanie quickly realizes that running with the Bat isn't all that easy. "Batman's looking for her breaking point," says Willingham. "Can she be provoked into losing it? The greatest challenges facing her will be psychological more than physical." Worse than any villain she might face, Stephanie's doubts threaten to defeat her. "It's like being the first girl at West Point," suggests Willingham. "She's the fourth in what's becoming a long line of Robins. Is she every bit as official as they were? Is she good enough for this job?" And, of course, the successes of her predecessor loom large over everything she does. "Bruce is constantly comparing her unfavorably to Tim," says Willingham. "All through training, he's saying things like 'Tim mastered this in the second week and here you are in week three and you still haven't got it.' For a while, she's definitely going to be under Tim's shadow." After her training has progressed, Stephanie still sticks close by her Dark Knight. "Stephanie is a Robin who, unlike Tim, absolutely needs Batman there for a while," asserts Willingham. "The whole idea of doing a teenage sidekick is to look at how someone learns to be a hero. At least, that's what's interesting to me." Yet, even with all the growing pains, there's no question that Stephanie's living a dream come true. "She comes into Robin with a sense that she's been kind of mopey, but once she finally gets the big job, she brightens up and just has a wonderful time," notes Willingham. From an interview with Bill Willingham: He’s a comic book icon, the archetype of the teenage sidekick. I don’t think that iconic status will change, now that ‘he’ is becoming ‘she.’ Yes, the future of Spoiler was one of the pre-ordained events, before I was brought on board. Spoiler’s future was one of the things locked in before I came onto the series. I got to add one important development to the planned events, but I can’t reveal what that is yet. She needs to learn the job. One thing I didn’t like about the previous takes on Robin was that Tim came into the job already prepared for it, and as many critics have now pointed out to me, ad nauseum, Tim no longer needs Batman’s training and instruction. This made little sense to me. Robin should always, at its core, be the superhero in training. If he’s ready to be out on his own, what is he still doing in the Robin suit? So Spoiler needs to learn how to be Robin, and that is what I find compelling about this story. Everyone has past mistakes, current mistakes and future mistakes. No one ever gets to the point where they don’t make them ... or if they do, why bother telling their stories? Perfect people are dull, boring, tedious and did I say dull? She wants the job. She wants it like a drowning man wants air. She isn’t planning on just dabbling in the superhero trade, until something better comes along. Damion Scott has perfectly captured her enthusiasm in her first appearance as Robin. What areas does she still need improvement in? All of them. Isn’t that fun? How tough was it for you to get to know Stephanie Brown and get into the Spoiler mindset? As tough as it is to get into any fictional character’s mindset. Teenage girls who fight crime on the sly don’t think like middle aged men whose crime-fighting days are long past ... at least I hope they don’t. Then again, how many of us have actually put on gaudy clothes to go out and battle super criminals; or fought against sword-wielding barbarians in some forgotten kingdom; or hung out with talking animals? Writing in the various fantasy-adventure genres is all about getting into the mindset of fictional characters who bare very little resemblance to you. It’s not easy, but it beats shoveling dirt for a living. What is Spoiler's mindset? Does she really take all this seriously or just have the wrong idea about what it means to be a true hero? How does one answer this question? In truth, anyone who puts on a costume to use ropes and sticks to fight gunmen has the wrong idea about what it means to be a true hero. Within the admittedly bizarre fictional conceits of a superhero universe, one presumes she better be taking this seriously. She’s the devoted one. She’s already convinced this is a job that needs doing. Tim is the one struggling with the level of his commitments to the cause. My template for writing female characters is simple: Design each as an individual character. None of my characters could (or should) be able to serve as a role model for whatever group they might be perceived as belonging to. In fact none of them should ever be perceived as representing any given gender, group or lifestyle, or I’ve failed miserably. How does Steph compare to Carrie from Dark Knight Returns? Well, since the Dark Knight takes place some unspecified number of years in the future, Carrie would still be an infant now, or not yet be born, so I would imagine Steph could easily take her in a fight. |