Batman: Urban Legends, Cheer
I’ve talked a little bit about why Batman: Urban Legends is a bad story already, but I just saw a post talking about this panel and how well Bruce has been written in this story. And while the post didn’t really say anything about Jason, OP’s comments in the notes talked about how this seemed to be a direct response to people trashing Bruce for beating on the poor and disenfranchised, talking about how he’s finally “in character”, how he has a lighter touch and tends to think things through and how the story is teaching Jason a lesson about his “tendency” to brute his way through things without thinking about them, and how Jason wasn’t OOC.
My first post about UL touches on why that last bit is nonsense, but the stuff about Bruce reminded me of something else in UL that really, really bothered me.
It’s the above panel and these, not just in the context that this story rewrites Jason as ALWAYS having been prone to violence and willing to wail on the weak, but also in the sense that Bruce, of all people, is the one chosen to teach this lesson to Jason.
[that sentence ends in the next panel with “…stealing the Batmobile’s tires?”]
It’s just one more way DC keeps chipping away at what makes Jason (the Robin raised in poverty, the one who grew up with a first-hand insight into the way Gotham’s systemic corruption and crimes do the most harm to the poorest and least powerful people, and the only one to be personally affected by addiction) special and interesting. It’s just the most recent way they’ve bastardized his roots to villainize him (the poor homeless kid who was brutally murdered) so that Bruce (the billionaire) looks better, so that Bruce is absolved of all his responsibility in how Jason came to be the Red Hood.
Because in actuality, Jason taught Bruce that criminals can change.
Bruce didn’t listen. He stalked Penguin and when he found him, Bruce had to eat his words.
Penguin had actually tried to change. Bruce realized his mistake and tried to defend him after he was arrested, but the damage was done.
By the way, this is from when Penguin was just a jewel thief. Let that sink in for a sec. Go back up to the panel from Urban Legends with Batman and Robin in the alley and reread it.
And this, this story with the Penguin, is how it should be. Not that crap from UL.
I don’t know why people have to keep saying this but Jason isn’t stupid. He’s incredibly smart and his actions, even his violence, are rooted in empathy and indignation on behalf of the innocent who are harmed, not rage. The above panels in UL are basically like saying that Cassandra Cain has suddenly changed her mind that everyone can be saved and decided to join Jason in killing super villains. This is the core of the character we’re talking about. It’s not the dumb little details like whether he likes coffee or eats cereal or whatever. It’s the heart of the character. It’d be like taking the circus out of Dick’s story, or the love of Robin from Tim’s, or making someone other than Talia Damian’s mother.
Jason is very aware that petty crime is often motivated by desperation. He literally lived that life. That’s why he’s never targeted people like that the way this book shows him to.
Even when he returned, he was never an indiscriminate killer and he was never violent for the sake of it. He didn’t beat the shit out of addicts because he was an impatient little bitch. He was methodical and calculative and he only killed people who preyed on the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless.
Like the mob’s drug lieutenants who dealt to kids:
Like these bastards, who were deep in denial and broke Jason’s golden rule, no dealing to children.
Because drug dealers purposefully target kids, relying on addiction to make them repeat customers for life.
Rapists and the scum who prey on people at their most vulnerable:
And nazis.
The fact is, Jason certainly has his faults, but he would never, ever, do this to an addict:
Writing him like he would is out of character. Drastically.
Jason doesn’t go off half-cocked. He doesn’t jump in blind. These aren’t lessons he needs to learn in anything except this story which specifically wrote him as idiotic and mean as possible to squeeze him into the box the writer needed him to fit into.
Jason has never been written quite this bad before, but even if you take the few random instances over the last 15 years, where he’s been written as meaner and dumber than usual as his core character, how can you stand there and say that Bruce’s style is a calmer, more rational approach and say how he’s been written for the last 30 years is ooc????
For the kind of story Batman: Urban Legends seems to be telling, Bruce is literally the last character this message should be funneled through. Bruce is a billionaire (or… multi-millionaire, for now in the main continuity but who knows what’s canon for this). It’s so fucking tone-deaf to keep writing this kind of interaction between Bruce and Jason.
Do I agree that Bruce should be written as more understanding and empathetic and less vicious than he sometimes is since the 80′s, by the way, this isn’t new? Absolutely.
Do I think this was a good example of that or a reasonable template going forward? Absolutely not.
DC needs to stop sacrificing what makes Jason Todd interesting, what makes the character an excellent tool to tell meaningful, topical stories, for today’s audiences, just to prop up Bruce.
For starters, Bruce doesn’t need that?
Their roles in this story don’t have to be swapped. There are ways to write this kind of stuff that doesn’t fuck up a character. See the above example with Penguin. And that’s from the fucking 80′s. How are Reagan-era comics telling stories about poverty, addiction, and reformed criminals with more nuance and tact and consideration than something in 2021????
I just think it’s fucking sad.
And extremely frustrating.
