shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 4, 2024 15:37:30 GMT -5
I don't think readers had that negative a reaction to Robin as he and O'Neil claimed. The letter pages don't seem to be filled with missives attacking the character. Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle hadn't used him in about a year over in Detective Comics and I don't recall readers swarming over to that title for their Robin-free needs. Anecdotally, a lot of folks claim they couldn't stand the brat and wanted him dead. Of course, their reasoning is always either because they read his first Post-Crisis appearance and didn't stick around to see him evolve and quickly soften under Batman's wing, or because they read A Death in The Family.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Apr 4, 2024 16:58:58 GMT -5
I don't think readers had that negative a reaction to Robin as he and O'Neil claimed. The letter pages don't seem to be filled with missives attacking the character. Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle hadn't used him in about a year over in Detective Comics and I don't recall readers swarming over to that title for their Robin-free needs. Anecdotally, a lot of folks claim they couldn't stand the brat and wanted him dead. Of course, their reasoning is always either because they read his first Post-Crisis appearance and didn't stick around to see him evolve and quickly soften under Batman's wing, or because they read A Death in The Family. I don't think he was really all that hated, for one Jason only lost by 72 votes and 320 of those came from a single person and O'Neil said he had met the person who supposedly had set up the auto vote and he didn't even know there was a different Robin, he just hated the character as a kid watching the Adam West show. And that guy wasn't alone as Dick Giordano has said he had met all kinds of fans who said they voted to kill Robin and thought it was the original, and on top of that they were flooded with more hate mail after killing Jason than they had ever received regular mail in the previous five years before the event combined. Again, some of that could have come from casual fans who thought Dick Grayson was dead but still it's not as if he was universally hated.
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Post by Calidore on Apr 4, 2024 18:12:20 GMT -5
However, the whole crowbar scene was just Starlin further stacking the deck against the kid. Were readers really supposed to believe that if you enjoyed having the kid around then you better vote for him to live to get the same type of stories you were enjoying (even if Starlin didn't want you to enjoy them)? It wasn't really a vote to see whether Jason lived or died; it was a vote to see whether readers wanted him to die or just be treated to issue of issue with Batman checking in on him in his coma. I thought the point of that was to help out the creative team by minimizing the extra work they'd have to do for the in-progress follow-up issues depending on how the vote went.
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 5, 2024 10:29:23 GMT -5
However, the whole crowbar scene was just Starlin further stacking the deck against the kid. Were readers really supposed to believe that if you enjoyed having the kid around then you better vote for him to live to get the same type of stories you were enjoying (even if Starlin didn't want you to enjoy them)? It wasn't really a vote to see whether Jason lived or died; it was a vote to see whether readers wanted him to die or just be treated to issue of issue with Batman checking in on him in his coma. I thought the point of that was to help out the creative team by minimizing the extra work they'd have to do for the in-progress follow-up issues depending on how the vote went.
I see what you mean, but it still isn't playing fair. Having already regressed Jason to the unlikable persona he had matured out of in an effort to encourage readers to hate him, Starlin went a step further by offering less of an enticement for those wanting Robin to live to vote than he did for those wanting him to die. With Jason already on the brink of death after that crowbar scene voters knew that regardless of how the vote went, Robin wasn't going to be part of the titles for a considerable while. Those wanting him dead merely had to call that number to give him the nudge they needed to ensure that this came to pass in the next issue. Those who wanted him to live would be hoping that a year from now, they might see Jason take his first few faltering steps out of a hospital bed. Sort of like having the option of voting either for a candidate to decisively win a race the next day or voting for him to go on to the next round in a year's time. It's still a win or lose situation but one side is hardly being given much incentive to consider their path that much of a victory.
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Post by zaku on Apr 5, 2024 10:41:29 GMT -5
I imagine that the best choice narratively would have been for Robin to simply retire from superhero life, so Batman would have remained a "loner", as in the case of the death of the Boy Wonder.
And by the way, he got beat up with a crowbar. In real life if he doesn't die he will probably remain in a wheelchair.
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,402
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Post by shaxper on Apr 5, 2024 22:25:03 GMT -5
I imagine that the best choice narratively would have been for Robin to simply retire from superhero life, so Batman would have remained a "loner", as in the case of the death of the Boy Wonder. Having been there when this happened, a major concern we all had was whether or not it would "stick". If Jason simply retired, someone was eventually going to bring him back. To repeatedly whack him with a crowbard and then blow him up? That MIGHT stick. ...and it ultimately didn't.
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Post by zaku on Apr 6, 2024 2:33:05 GMT -5
I imagine that the best choice narratively would have been for Robin to simply retire from superhero life, so Batman would have remained a "loner", as in the case of the death of the Boy Wonder. Having been there when this happened, a major concern we all had was whether or not it would "stick". If Jason simply retired, someone was eventually going to bring him back. To repeatedly whack him with a crowbard and then blow him up? That MIGHT stick. ...and it ultimately didn't. Well, they live in a world with Lazarus pits and cloning technologies. It actually doesn't make much sense for someone to remain disabled (or dead) for long. I remember it was one of the criticisms of Oracle's character.
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