I only read this for Lady Shiva's and The Outsiders' stories. gonna edit in my thoughts later.
THE SIGNAL (Duke Thomas) is DC's secret shonen protagonist so I made him a fandom wiki
also, check out "The Signal Tape" a Duke Thomas fan project.
currently following:
- DC: Red Hood: The Hill
- Marvel: TBD
- Manga (Shonen/Seinen): One Piece, My Hero, Dandadan, Jujutsu Kaisen, Kaiju No. 8, Reincarnation of The Veteran Soldier, Oblivion Rouge, ORDEAL, The Breaker: Eternal Force
"power does not corrupt, power always reveals."
Pretty much, yeah. Is as if for Jason the last 10 years didn't happen and this was a direct follow-up to UtRH. Very similar to Three Jokers in that regard. I've brought it multiple times in the Jason Todd thread but every time I'm getting more and more convinced that the editorial only idea for Jason is for him to go the way of Bane and get stuck rehashing UtRH.
That is something that was already present during UtRH (Bruce never attempted to really take down Jason despite how many people he killed) but is just the same plot beat of Jason being a stubborn ass that can't step aside and think for five seconds to consider Bruce's perspective. Of Jason becoming sloppy and careless by getting his emotions getting the better of him, of getting into a petty fight with Burce for things that could've been solved if he were actually willing to talk things out with Bruce instead of lashing out all the time.
Batman: "We don't assault people unless others are in immediate danger."
Goons from chapter 2 disagree.
I will take this version of Jason over this version of Bruce any day. The chapter needed more scenes with Jason and Tyler.
The Lady Shiva story was unexpected - but pretty consistent with her portrayal in Hill's Batman and the Outsiders run and Taylor's DCeased: Unkillables. I liked it fine.
Outsiders still didn't manage to fully catch my attention. But the addition of Duke Thomas in future stories sounds promising.
Grifter is still my favorite story of the anthology.
Altogether I liked this issue a little bit more than the last one.
Batman stalked them.
Batman assaulted them.
Batman scared the **** out of them and behaved like a monster out of a horror movie.
Batman literally sent one of them flying with his grappling hook - which is traumatizing to a normal person.
And what exactly did these people do? They were buying groceries! Nobody was in immediate danger.
I don't care that they REACTED by drawing their guns and trying to kill him. Batman started and what he did was not justified and contradicts his own statement.
You can't be serious. Scaring the **** out of people is literally the whole reason for Bruce to dress like a bat. And again, he only wanted to talk with the guy who actually broke his promise with Batman by joining Freeze's gang.
What he was arguing with Jason was using violence just for violence's sake. He didn't contradict himself at any point.
Actually, the whole thing is another example of Zdarsky missing completely the point of Jason as a character. The two main reasons that drove Jason to use the lethal option with criminals were: doing acts so horrible that killing them is justified and those rare few that simply aren't scared from Batman. In this issue Jason was merely lashing out and essentially acting like a bully.
Last edited by Dark_Tzitzimine; 05-11-2021 at 04:21 PM.
It is really interesting how fans always claim that they want their favorites to be three dimensional, but get mad when they don't act as flawless Mary Sue.
Is Jason being idiotic and reckless here? Absolutely, but it makes sense because he is being emotional and not thinking clearly since the case is becoming personal to him. It's the same with how he acted when he found out about his father and what the Penguin did to him. So, Jason isn't being ooc here and it's actually close to his characterization in rhato (and in general).
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
– Dale Carnegie