Wrong turns made in storylines for DC Comics

[witchboy]

Except, Jason was only edgy near the end of his run as Robin. Otherwise, he wasn't a "dark Robin", unless you count his tragic background. But then, Dick, Bruce, and a ton of others have just as or even moreso tragic backstories. But even in his "edgy" ending, Jason still went out a hero, trying to protect the woman that sold him out to the Joker from the blast.
The "edginess", for the most part (outside the last 2 arcs or so) was only added after his death. So Dick and Tim being "special" is BS. Jason was given a rotten chance and handled by a writer that hated the very idea of Robin in the first place (he even suggested giving Jason AIDS).

And the "Batman endangers minors" thing again. These are comics. Where even the "grounded, unpowered" heroes have ridiculous feats.

Do you know how they were going to have Jason contract HIV?

[Stanlos]

I liked Hal going bad, it kinda made sense. Well, not the whole Parallax thing, the whole Coast City thing. I think Parallax was dumb but Coast City was smart. But what Do I know, i express opinions on the internet...

That was well handled in my opinion as well and part of why I questioned the whole assassination thing. Based on the story told and the way it was told that just doesn't bear out. But with the rumored behind the scenes stuff it may be possible that there were editorial layers to which I haven't experienced.

[Jim Kelly]

A long time ago, I read a blog that explained all the levels involved behind the scenes in cooking up the Parallax plot. It cleared up a lot of things for me. But it would be impossible for me now to fetch that out of cyberspace.

When we know that the stories have been manufactured to push an agenda--rather than simply coming naturally from the established characters--it spoils our investment in the universe.

[NathanS]

I mean even the fucking writer thought they handled it like **** because they had three damn issues so had to go 'he sad... that means he KILL! Because HE CRAZY! Feeling feelings make you CRAZY!" which likely seems deep and well written if you are in grade school. That adult would defend it as such says a lot more about them than the work. And it dosn't need to be done out of malice to be character assassination. That you care nothing about Hal's life and stories before that event, and that event feels like it should permanently de-rail him from coming back from it kind of shows just how much it draged his name through the mud even if no malice was involved.

[Jackalope89]

Do you know how they were going to have Jason contract HIV?

Nope. Just that it was an idea the writer had put out there for the editors, but looks like it got shot down. And this was during the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, so...

[Nomads1]

Nope. Just that it was an idea the writer had put out there for the editors, but looks like it got shot down. And this was during the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, so...

I remember hearing about this.

Peace

[Alan2099]

Anyhoos, I wanted to ask you what KILLING JOKE did to Joker?

Killing Joke marked the start of Joker no longer being The Clown Prince of Crime, but rather being Shock Value: the character.

While Joker used to be a killer, the core of his character always seemed to focus on his ego or self gratification. Joker was obsessed with himself, having the spotlight, and fun. I mean, granted, his idea of fun could mean poisoning the city, but he still did it because it was fun.

Now Joker can't really remember who he is, he has a tragic origin, and he start to become focused on proving things to people or death and chaos. Now there's nothing wrong with the death and chaos part, but Joker really doesn't seem to be enjoying himself the way he used to.

As for Parallax, I'm no fan of the mad cackling evil Hal, but I realy enjoyed it when writers treated him like a fallen hero. He was still trying to do good, but he had fallen too far and become too jaded. He almost felt like a cosmic Magneto. I thought that was the most interesting Hal had been in a long time.

[NathanS]

As for Parallax, I'm no fan of the mad cackling evil Hal, but I realy enjoyed it when writers treated him like a fallen hero. He was still trying to do good, but he had fallen too far and become too jaded. He almost felt like a cosmic Magneto. I thought that was the most interesting Hal had been in a long time.

Thing is.... they did that all of once. When they killed him off. Every other appearance was A) cackling evil or B) him showing up to people he knew and going "Let's hang out." and them going "Noooo you are evil! LEAVE" and then he does.

[Chris Lang]

- Cassandra Cain's ill-conceived heel turn in One Year Later.
Just the dumbest, poorly thought out, shock for shock value, treating your audience with transparent, giggling contempt. The fact they spent years desperately trying to roll it back just proves what a dumb-assed idea it was. And in retrospect, that it was probably the first shot in Dan DiDio's efforts to regress Barbara back into the Batgirl role just adds another layer of awful to the whole thing.

Both that and the 'Leslie Tompkins deliberately let Stephanie die to teach Batman a lesson' thing were horribly conceived stories that never should have been greenlit. The latter one was retconned so that no, Leslie didn't actually let Stephanie die - she healed Stephanie and smuggled her out of the country - but it still doesn't change the fact that the idea was horrible.

- Making Zeus Wonder Woman's father and the rapist Amazons.
Just a completely wrong-headed approach to the character and her mythos that misses one of the main points of the character. Wonder Woman was created to subvert the original myths. When you "deconstruct" subversion, you're just regressing. It's like re-making the Shrek movies and deciding this time the ogre will be the villain who kidnaps a princess that doesn't know martial arts. In other words, the exact kind of fairy tale the story isn't supposed to be.

I couldn't have put it better myself. To me, things like that and Amazons Attack read like someone went "No, no, no! Wonder Woman's been missing the point of the Amazons for decades! In Greek mythology, they were the ANTAGONISTS! They existed as female antagonists to be defeated by the likes of Heracles and Achilles." That someone clearly missed the point of Wonder Woman and her mythos, which was always a SUBVERSION of the idea that Amazons had to be the villains. So making Wonder Woman's Amazons antagonists is just as bad an idea as the hypothetical Shrek remake you described: It's something that completely misses the point of a subversion.

Then Infinite Crisis tells us the real problem is Wonder Woman isn't human and doesn't understand humans. And it's like...since when? Where the hell did that come from?

Someone's head canon, probably. Some people's headcanons have things in them with little or no evidence in established continuity, and ignores plenty of canonical evidence to the contrary.

Similarly, saying that Batman is a loner ignores plenty of canonical evidence that shows him working very well with his Bat family and others. More on that later.

I'd say my biggest one is Identity Crisis...never mind what happened to Sue Dibney or the actions of the League, though both of those are awful, but just the idea that the natural character progression of some longtime villains...Trickster and Pied Piper turning into heroes, Captain Cold and Golden Glider becoming anti-heroes, Dr. Light becoming an ineffectual fool with a fear of children...was done away with as having their minds altered by Zatanna. It was really the first nail in the coffin of DC for me, demonstrating that any kind of reform by a criminal MUST be because of tampering by a hero, rather than actual growth. Just hamfisted fanboy "these guys were bad when I read comics and they should be bad again!" garbage.

I found that whole thing to be incredibly cynical, at best. It was writers/editors believing that 'once someone's bad, they're ALWAYS bad. Leopards don't change their spots'. The thing is, these people were just petty thieves who reformed, for the most part. They were always shown to have their good sides, and had lines they wouldn't cross. Aside from, oh, Eobard Thawne, very few of Flash's villains were portrayed as irredeemable monsters.

You're absolutely right. Barry was only brought back because Dan DiDio wanted him back, along with the other Silver/Bronze Age iterations. The man hated legacy characters, including Dick Grayson and especially Wally West.

True. From what I hear, Wally West's Character Derailment in Heroes in Crisis was Didio's idea. His way of making fans who wanted Wally back suddenly wish Wally had stayed gone.

I also hear DiDio had to be talked out of mandating Dick Grayson's death in Infinite Crisis.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure if Brian Cronin tackled either of these in his 'Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed'. Maybe he steers clear of these so as not to get comic creators mad at him.

Batman's reputation as a loner is far more head canon than truth.

Indeed. People who play him as a loner ignore plenty of stories that have him working very well as a team player and/or team leader.

I know most won't agree with this but Raven should have died at the end of the Trigon story in the first arc of the Baxter series New Teen Titans. Every writer since has struggled to find anything interesting to do with her character besides rehashing the "my father is the devil and I might go evil myself" storyline.

I tend to agree. Just as 'Kraven's Last Hunt' (and maybe 'Soul of the Hunter', its sequel where Spider-Man has to help Kraven's spirit find peace) should have been the final word on the original Kraven Sergei Kravinoff, then the Trigon story should have been the conclusion to Raven's story. What are writers to do with Raven once her evil Big Bad demon father Trigon is out of the picture? Writers have struggled with that ever since.

Armageddon 2001. The annuals were really great. But changing the reveal last minute resulted in quite a mess. This was before the internet / social media, so the "leak" was not really that big of a deal. Changing to Hawk from Captain Atom was bad because:

• Monarch was a genius who wanted to create an orderly totalitarian society. Hawk was a lunkhead who literally embodied chaos. If anything it made more sense for Dove to have become Monarch
• Dove - this was before "women in refrigerators" was a thing, but a great example. She was helpless and didn't even get to defend herself before being slaughtered in order to advance the male hero's character development. Pretty shameful for such a great new character, very happy she was eventually brought back
• The Hawk & Dove annual was the only one to specifically rule out the two as candidates for Monarch
• The whole thing just underscored the poorly thought out nature of the premise. Even if it were Captain Atom, does it make sense for a hero to suddenly turn on everyone? Also the title and concept ensured it would be dated within ten years. It should have just been that no one became Monarch in the end

The whole 'Oh no, the solution got leaked so we've got to change it now!' thing was a terrible idea.

Mystery stories are designed so that it all leads to the reveal of the true culprit. This true culprit's identity has to fit what has gone before - everything that happens leads up to the reveal, and once the reveal happens, it sheds even further light on the events from before. In good mysteries, the audience goes "Of course! That makes sense! That explains why such and such happened, and why they acted that way in that previous scene, or were missing in that other scene, and so on!".

You can't have a good mystery if you panic and change the reveal at the last minute. The new reveal has to make sense with what's been previously established. It has to fit both the character AND the story.

For example, let's say there's a story where a bunch of prosecutors in Gotham are being murdered, and Harvey Dent (aka Two-Face) survives an unsuccessful attempt on his life. At first it seems the Joker is the culprit, but Batman quickly figures out that it's too obvious - someone is deliberately using similar methods, but variations on them.

Now, the clues point to duality, and to the culprit's clearly deciding some methods or elements seemingly by chance, or on the spot. Unfortunately, someone leaks the ending in which Two-Face is revealed as the culprit (having used the old trick so many Agatha Christie culprits do of faking an attempt on his life to reduce suspicion), so the writers changed the culprit's identity to Jervis Tetch, aka the Mad Hatter.

Bad idea. The M.O. doesn't fit Jervis Tetch, he has to be given a painfully forced motive just to even attempt to make it work, and the readers don't buy that Two-Face was intended as a red herring.

In other words, if you're writing a mystery story, it's best to stick to your intended reveal, regardless of what gets leaked.

[Jim Kelly]

I feel like Alan Moore gets a bad rap for the "deconstruction" he did in things like KILLING JOKE, WATCHMEN et al. It's not his fault that people took the wrong lessons from his comics. Moore was paying homage to classic comics in those books. But the copyists only lifted from the destructive parts of his work.

[Adekis]

Killing Joke marked the start of Joker no longer being The Clown Prince of Crime, but rather being Shock Value: the character.

This is a really fun summation of basically the reason I don't usually like Joker very much. Interesting. I don't know if I would pin it all on Killing Joker, but like you said, it definitely helped to instigate a trend, er, deliberately or not (it was not).

[marhawkman]

A long time ago, I read a blog that explained all the levels involved behind the scenes in cooking up the Parallax plot. It cleared up a lot of things for me. But it would be impossible for me now to fetch that out of cyberspace.

When we know that the stories have been manufactured to push an agenda--rather than simply coming naturally from the established characters--it spoils our investment in the universe.

Another of these that was a pretty weird curveball... Resetting the Yrra Cynril story.

one part of it was that a Durlan shapeshifter both tricked John Stewart, but also... STOLE A STAR SAPPHIRE RING!!!!! How the.... does a shapeshifter STEAL A POWER RING?!?!?! Yeah, Yrra Cynril was separated from the ring by a Durlan stealing it from her. This Durlan then impersonated her and USED the ring!

Then comes the plot device where Yrra reveals she never had any real feelings for john and that if was all the ring... even before she started using the ring???

[Captain Smith]

Vampires - I have never read a comic universe arc where all of a sudden vampires surface and NO ONE knows what to do for a bit. Heroes are taken over until some savior saves the day. It's always a surprise that there is a hidden, powerful group of such. Bah. Then, the heroes forget their powers when faced with one.

[Refrax5]

Killing Joke marked the start of Joker no longer being The Clown Prince of Crime, but rather being Shock Value: the character.

While Joker used to be a killer, the core of his character always seemed to focus on his ego or self gratification. Joker was obsessed with himself, having the spotlight, and fun. I mean, granted, his idea of fun could mean poisoning the city, but he still did it because it was fun.

Now Joker can't really remember who he is, he has a tragic origin, and he start to become focused on proving things to people or death and chaos. Now there's nothing wrong with the death and chaos part, but Joker really doesn't seem to be enjoying himself the way he used to.

As for Parallax, I'm no fan of the mad cackling evil Hal, but I realy enjoyed it when writers treated him like a fallen hero. He was still trying to do good, but he had fallen too far and become too jaded. He almost felt like a cosmic Magneto. I thought that was the most interesting Hal had been in a long time.

I think Hal as the "cosmic Magneto" was very interesting and I think it all would have been more palatable had he not gone full Anti-Monitor mass murderer in Zero Hour. Johns I think even said in his Rebirth pitch that the body count Hal racked up was so high that the possession angle was necessary to make him redeemable and I have to agree. Hal doing some bad things in a state of grief and madness is one thing and he was a cool and complex villain. But when he went full on murderer of trillions, something had to be done, I think.

[Jim Kelly]

In the last season of THE ORVILLE, Malloy tried to stop Ed from going back in time and changing events so he wasn't stranded on Earth for years (in which time he got married and had a family). Ed was happy to change the timeline because he believed that this timeline was wrong and it needed to be corrected. Which supposedly meant that Malloy never had any kids or made contributions to the society of the past. Did Ed wipe out an entire timeline and thus the divergent lives of everyone in the universe or did he simply create another timeline? In which case nobody died.

Hallalax seemed to think if he changed the past this dark universe he was in would not have existed--and therefore it was acceptable to kill bill onions--because he would be saving bill onions more in this kinder gentler timeline he wished to retroboot into existence.

I'm kind of on the side of Pallalax, since I didn't like the universe that had been created after Crisis and I wanted a better timeline. In the end they did Zero Hour the timeline--so there was still a change, just one where Halifax's murders were still all in continuity. This was the worst timeline--because it had all the bad stuff from the previous timeline plus more bad stuff like rebooting the Legion and killing off more of the J.S.A. But it did have Jack Knight as Starman so it wasn't all bad. Just mostly bad.