Every now and then, I still think about batman #424 and the potential it held… There is such beauty in the ambiguity, where the story offers no clear-cut answer, leaving readers to decide, reflect, and choose what to believe for themselves. The crucial point is that there shouldn't be a definitive answer! There is no conclusive evidence tipping the scales one way or the other! No absolute clues pointing to a specific conclusion! It’s all about the readers choosing what to believe! It’s about questioning what’s right in front of you and choosing to believe in it, even when the evidence is never quite enough! Ambiguity is the key!
I will never forgive Bruce and Starlin for ruining the beautiful ambiguity of this situation. Oh my fucking god, what have you done? The way they handled #425 rendered the ambiguity of #424 is completely meaningless, because the narrative implicitly confirmed that Jason did push the guy. It makes me so angry. So, what was the point of making the situation ambiguous in the first place? If Starlin wrote that scene intending for readers to think Jason pushed him and hate him for that, then the scene, and Bruce’s question, lose all significance. What happened to the potential for Bruce and the readers to debate whether Jason actually did it, and to choose their own beliefs despite the lack of concrete proof? Did we really just skip straight to Bruce drawing a conclusion and "teaching Jason a lesson"? It renders the entire event in #424 meaningless. The handling of this was just wrong. The event wasn't treated properly, and it really frustrates me. What about the potential to link this to Jason's subsequent death? They missed a chance for a seamless narrative, instead, they had Bruce "teach Jason a lesson" about the #424 incident, and then the story just stopped there. When it jumped to #426, they suddenly dragged in this idea of "Jason acting recklessly due to the lingering trauma of his parents' deaths", out of nowhere. I mean, the story could have been written so much more cohesively!!
#424 shouldn't have been handled so haphazardly. It’s a failed attempt at ambiguity or an open-ended scenario that infuriates me. I had to keep rewriting my thoughts on #424 again and again because its foundational premise was destroyed. The aftermath of #424 makes the whole thing feel pointless. Everyone needs to go watch 12 Angry Men right now and write an essay about it for me please. The potential for ambiguity, for exploring beliefs, personal biases, and the lack of objectivity (or the objectivity we do have) when judging others; the potential to link this to Jason's death, the potential of how Bruce would handle that event; the potential to discuss classism, to discuss Jason's motives, to discuss about Felipe, to discuss about Gloria, to discuss about violence against women, to discuss about the boundaries of a vigilante, to discuss about letting criminals go free, and the impact it has on the Bruce-Jason relationship; the potential to understand Jason better, even to hear his thoughts, ALL OF IT was wasted, and it makes me want to cry. The way this case concluded with no connection to adift reducing the conflict between Bruce and Jason to simply "he became reckless because of the pain of losing his parents" makes me want to cry. The way issue #425 played out makes me want to cry. They handled the issue so poorly. The way the ambiguity was destroyed because the story leaned toward a specific answer makes me want to cry.
I like how the ambiguity can easily make all of the arguement around this issue flip-flop around. There’s no absolute thing. No concrete proof. “He fell” is possible, but also possible that he was pushed. “Jaybin went to heaven!” is pretty solid, or it can be that heaven supports his choice of pushing Felipe (and it’s funny.) “If Jason want to kill Felipe, he’d have do it with his own hand like with Two-Face and some random pimp that I don’t remember much” and “I think if he did push him he wouldn’t lie about it” is some interesting argument that I heard, but again, it’s possible that he did push him and lie about it.
“He completely has the full motive to push him” doesn’t mean he did actually do it, it just means that he does have a motive. “It was heavily implied in the story that he pushed Felipe” it was heavily implied that Bruce believed he pushed him, but we only see 2 panels about the situation and there was no concrete proof about what he did or did not do. “Bruce knew that Jason did it, he just didn’t have evidence to prove it” he didn’t know shit, like he said he didn’t catch up in time and he didn’t have a clue about what had happened. “He did that because that’s how he would become Red Hood” or “he did that because Jason’s always been the most violent/ extreme Robin” are what I’ll throw in the trash and will make me want to strangle people. Ambiguity is the key! And it’s interesting to see how these arguments very much rely on what people believe or want to believe. There is no correct answer and no one can really know what happened except Jason. Also interesting to see how this happened because of the lack of Jason’s narrative that I once mentioned. (He’d always be someone for people to judge.)
And it would be even more fun if the answer revealed to be none of the two options above and it will make the ambiguity be x10 interesting. It was none of the options that were listed! Suprised? (Some interesting theory I heard it that Felipe shoved Jason and fell over the railing, some others mentioned something about how Felipe was drunk and the shattered glass on the floor, etc… the more unexpected the more interesting. The more the truth was far different from what the two options were the more interesting.)
(Also: I love how in the 12 Angry Men movie, when asked if he thinks the boy was innocent, Juror 8 said "I don't know." Because the truth is he didn't know, no one did, he didn't even answer it with his belief like "I think he did" or "I think he didn't" and somehow this is the only answer that is "true" for the situation and the question, for me, because, it's true that he doesn't know.)
