Batman and Robin #37 Preview/Discussion

[ABH]

That's kind of a silly thing to say. If Jason has a bone to pick, its obviously going to happen in-story, and because writers have collectively made Jason's insecurities and fear of being forgotten/unloved such a large part of his character since his return. Believe me, this is not nitpicking, this is more of an anvil hitting readers in the head, and I'm simply curious whether or not it'll be addressed.

It's no sillier than wondering how this makes Jason feel, when you consider that he feels however the writers want him to feel. If someone decides there's a story there, they can add this to Jason's list of issues, otherwise this one time that Jason went to Apocalypse to help bring back Damian, and will eventually be forgotten.

[Fuzzy Cactus]

The rest don't seem to give a crap that Dick died. At least Bruce though knows he's not actually dead. The others i don't know. The whole indifference about Dick's "death" has been a floating issue for a bit now.

And they didn't just mellow out the killing with Jason, but also his tension with Bruce. Its not like Bruce ever really did anything to appease Jason not feeling Bruce loved him enough. They pretty much just swept their issues under the rug with the 52 so they can have them working together more. Which im not a fan of, but like i said, its the bed they made.
So they can't really have it both ways. Either Jason has accepted that he's not Bruce's favorite, or he hasn't. U can't have Jason back hanging out with Bruce, and on good terms, yet at the same time have him bring up the same issue he went on a rampage about, and what they had tension about in the first place.

Quite frankly they just don't want Jason to have a bone to pick with Bruce anymore, unfortunately. And im not sure they really know what to do with Dick's "death". So i doubt we are going to see a mention of either.

Babs had a whole issue where she grieved for Dick, and I believe it even interrupted an ongoing storyline. Jason and Tim didn't, but their books also aren't edited in the Bat office. The Dick "death" has at least been acknowledged by Tomasi in Batman and Robin #34.

[Godlike13]

Babs had an issue of her telling herself not to think about it. They just threw in a weird filler issue. Then pretty much nothing. Ya i guess its something, but still. Im hardly expecting much now. And ya Tomasi acknowledged it, but i still don't think he's gonna have one of the others say something. Actually wait, hopefully he has Damian say something. That i could see. The the others though, not so much. Babs doesn't want to think about it, Jason and Tim don't care, and i don't think Alfred would go there.

[Badou]

If he has Damian acknowledge it he should have him comment on how dumb it is. I mean Damian is smart. Bruce went nuts when Jason died and he also went nuts when Damian died. So the fact he didn't go nuts when Dick died should tell the the others that something is up. Would be funny to see Damian waltz back to life and immediately figure out the obvious lie Bruce is hiding. xD

[Dzetoun]

Yes, I think the general opinion is that the whole Grayson death plot is dumb as doggie doo and has been handled very, very badly. I suspect sudden changes in plan had something to do with that. Also, the less-than-enthusiastic response to NIGHTWING #30 probably made people unwilling to touch it. They seemed to be angling for a big angst subplot and family explosion, but they have pulled back sharply from that and, as Godlike says, now they seem to be in a corner and don't know what to do. Probably they wish they could just retcon the whole thing and forget about it.

We will see what happens with the various annuals and special issues next week. The expectation in a lot of Tumblr feeds and discussion sites is that Damian will be the Bat Family member to finally show an appropriate reaction. I don't know, but we don't have long to wait.

[tako]

Yes, I think the general opinion is that the whole Grayson death plot is dumb as doggie doo and has been handled very, very badly. I suspect sudden changes in plan had something to do with that. Also, the less-than-enthusiastic response to NIGHTWING #30 probably made people unwilling to touch it. They seemed to be angling for a big angst subplot and family explosion, but they have pulled back sharply from that and, as Godlike says, now they seem to be in a corner and don't know what to do. Probably they wish they could just retcon the whole thing and forget about it.

We will see what happens with the various annuals and special issues next week. The expectation in a lot of Tumblr feeds and discussion sites is that Damian will be the Bat Family member to finally show an appropriate reaction. I don't know, but we don't have long to wait.

I dunno, for something handled "very, very badly", a pretty great book came out of it.

[Sacred Knight]

I think what needs to happen is for it to be revealed that Darkseid has some sort of plans for Damian, and as a result he let Batman succeed on Apokolips. IOW we need the All According to Plan trope to kick in. If its not in Tomasi's plans, Johns should do it in Darkseid War or something.

[Dzetoun]

I dunno, for something handled "very, very badly", a pretty great book came out of it.

Oh GRAYSON is a much better book than NIGHTWING, I agree. But getting there was awkward in the extreme with poor execution and plot holes big enough to fly the Bat Plane through. And the fact of GRAYSON being generally a good book in no way excuses the terrible handling of the "death" plot.

[RobinFan4880]

If he has Damian acknowledge it he should have him comment on how dumb it is. I mean Damian is smart. Bruce went nuts when Jason died and he also went nuts when Damian died. So the fact he didn't go nuts when Dick died should tell the the others that something is up. Would be funny to see Damian waltz back to life and immediately figure out the obvious lie Bruce is hiding. xD

"Father, I have deduced that Dick is still alive based on the way you failed to act irrationally when he died (as compared to when Jason and I were killed)."

"The Chaos Shard gave you super deduction! You're a super hero! Get out of my cave!"

[Godlike13]

I don't think the Grayson death plot was dumb, just poorly handled and so ended up rather anticlimactic. They failed it more so than it was a bad idea IMO. It could have made for good drama, and still can (when the cat comes out of the bag), but they just didn't really do anything with it.

[Dzetoun]

I don't think the Grayson death plot was dumb, just poorly handled and ended up rather anticlimactic. They failed it more so than it was a bad idea IMO.

Maybe "mistaken" or "poorly considered" is a better description. As Claude has said, given the status of Dick in the Bat mythos, a status DC themselves seems to want to re-emphasize these days, nothing short of a major impact was ever going to be convincing, much less satisfying. We are talking a major theme in ETERNAL, or at the least pretty much grinding the entire line to a halt for a month while the various books addressed the plot thread. That obviously didn't happen. Likely by the time the final decision was made about the "death" ETERNAL was far enough along in plotting and writing that doing things correctly would have required massive rewrites with subsequent risk of delays. And bringing the line to a stop in the middle of the 75th anniversary year was never a live option.

So, although the plot might have worked if they could have done it right, the timing was terrible and the opportunity for preparation completely inadequate. The spectacularly dumb part was pressing forward with the plot thread even though it must have been obvious pretty quickly that they weren't going to be able to do it correctly, and even though it was unnecessary as they could have easily arrived at GRAYSON without it.

[Godlike13]

While ya, they could have arrived at Grayson without it, i don't think they would have. If not for FE he'd probably be still running around as Nightwing spinning his wheels, while being dragged along in Eternal. And while Dick didn't technically die, Nightwing kind of did. They didn't really kill Dick, but they did basically kill Nightwing.

[coffeelad]

I dunno, for something handled "very, very badly", a pretty great book came out of it.

It's a great book, but it's still a great book with gaping plotholes that makes Spyral look like the stupidest spy agency in the entire world. And the fact that 5 issues in and there's still no indication yet of whether Spyral is actually as oblivious as it seems or not...not to mention that there doesn't seem to be much of a mission statement yet.

[Badou]

I still argue the Grayson book would have been better without the dumb "death" plot. Rather than just have this convoluted mixture of him having to pretend to be dead and the entire world knowing who he is (which lead to nothing really) they could have just had him infiltrate Spyral without all that. I mean I think it is kind of distracting that Spyral knows who he is and that he used to be Nightwing. If Spyral honestly doesn't think he is still working for Batman in some form then they are naive.

Though honestly, I don't think the death plot could have been good even if it was handled better. Since the only reason the death plot existed was to write Dick out of all other ongoing Batman stories so they wouldn't have to deal with the Forever Evil fallout with the entire world knowing who he is. That is the root of the problem. Him getting his identity exposed was handled terribly (in the end no one gave a shit it was exposed anyway) and as a result the death plot was also handled terribly. Johns clearly didn't have a bigger plan for exposing him and only did it as a gimmick to sell his event.

[Fuzzy Cactus]

I dunno, for something handled "very, very badly", a pretty great book came out of it.

Well, Tim Seeley and Tom King weren't the ones who planned the "death"