“I might even bump this up to a 4-star book.
The version I read had the reprinted phone number you could call!
For those not in the know, a little comic book history:
Back when, after Dick Grayson, Robin I, left the Batcave to become Nightwing, Batman took on a new ward: Jason Todd.
Jason Todd was different depending on which book you read. In some, he was basically Dick Grayson again, and there wasn’t much to it. In others, he was…kind of a little dickhead.
He was also a bit out of control. He probably, definitely pushed a bad guy off a balcony, a bad guy who totally deserved it and was going to get away with killing someone totally free, but still that’s not the Batway.
Basically, Jason never listened to Batman. Like, ever. He was the rowdy, unruly, punk teenager, which is sort of what Batman signed up for, but like a lot of fathers, Batman was perhaps not well equipped to deal with a problem child.
Fans of the books had…not great opinions of Jason Todd. I think there was some “this asshole doesn’t deserve to be Robin,” going around, which sounds kind of corny and awful, but I think it’s really more a testament to how much people like Dick Grayson (and still do today).
You know, this edges into fanboy territory, and I would like to just proffer an example of this sort of fandom in a different realm: Gilmore Girls.
Yes, we’re going there.
I watched some Gilmore Girls, and just recently, my partner forced me to watch A Year in the Life, the set of 4 movies set in Gilmoreworld that take place about 10 years after the original series ended.
I say “forced” because I enjoyed the original series, and I’d heard very bad things about this continuation, so I figured I’d just pretend it didn’t exist. That’s kind of how I roll. A Star Wars isn’t good? I skip it! A Marvel isn’t all that good? I skip it!
Anyway, I think what incensed Gilmore fans (themselves probably called Gilmore Girls, but that gets confusing) is that the story picks up, but we really don’t spend much time with a lot of the characters we would like to. We spend WAY too long with Logan’s dopey fratboy brigade, who NOBODY cares about. Where were Rory’s school friends, those two dopey girls? What were they doing? We get more of The Life and Death Squad or whatever they’re called than we do of Dean and Jess COMBINED. How does that make sense?
Part B is that fully 1/3 of the titular Gilmore Girls are…kinda miserable.
Rory’s arc sucks, her life sucks, and while I get it, that’s reality, I think fans of the show felt like, “You know, you brought me back into this world after a pretty good farewell, and you did it to show me that the lives of people I liked are worse, and then you wasted a bunch of time with nonsense only to drop a POST-FADE-TO-BLACK bombshell that’ll probably never be followed up on.”
Which brings us to Star Wars.
Star Wars fans got a lot of shit for being basement-dwelling fanboys who complained because their heroes weren’t the leads anymore, and I know those people were out there, but I think there’s more to it than that, and I think it’s highlighted by talking about Gilmore Girls because Gilmore Girls fans felt the same thing, but because it’s not male, it doesn’t get that basement-dweller tag.
I think a lot of Star Wars fans, with the newer trilogy, felt like, “Damn, you trot Han Solo back out to show us he’s miserable, old, and then to have him get killed by his own son for no real reason. That…sucks.”
And, yes, sucky things happen in real life. We are all irrelevant meat sacks. Acknowledged.
But I think a lot of us felt like, “Listen, I’m all for passing the torch to new characters, but maybe you don’t need to step over the corpses of characters we liked, who have been reduced to husks of their former selves, in order to do it?”
I liked how Return of the Jedi ended. I liked that it was, overall, a happy ending. It had its tinge of sorrow, Darth Vader’s arc is truly tragic and kind of awesome. And our heroes were alive, well, and they had good, long lives ahead of them to enjoy.
And then it’s like, Fuck it, the Empire is back and in control for some reason, Han Solo’s life completely trainwrecks, Leia knows nothing but war, and Luke walks out on his responsibilities like a tool.
Ghostbusters Afterlife makes it seem like the world has forgotten the Ghostbusters completely. Which seems weird, right? If fucking ghosts were real, I think people would remember that shit and remember the first dudes who busted them.
Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that fandom sometimes reacts negatively, and does so in ways I do not approve of, however, I think this fandom isn’t always wrong to prefer the things they had before.
Let’s go back to Batman.
Dick Grayson was a good character. He was Batman’s chum, and later on, he had an uncomfortable period where he was outgrowing the little green briefs and needed to become his own person. This was a great arc, and it was kind of a new thing in comics: the sidekick, brought in so that young readers would have a character to identify with, was going through what all of us were: at some point, your parents are the stupidest, lamest people on Earth, and you need to get out from under them.
Jason Todd was picked up when Batman caught him trying to steal the wheels off the Batmobile. Jason was kind of a jerk to Batman. Jason was not as beloved as Dick Grayson because he was ungrateful, and most kids reading Batman comics would’ve KILLED (or not, as would be required) to be Batman’s sidekick.
So, when Jason Todd was captured and beaten by the Joker, the issue ended on a cliffhanger, and fans were given the option to call two numbers. If you called phone number A, you told DC “Save Jason.” If you called phone number B, you told DC “Kill Jason.”
The rumor for a long time was that it was a landslide to kill Jason, but after the poll closed the vote was actually VERY close, and there was a rumor that one fan rigged an autodialer to continuously call the “Kill Jason” number.
I guess that’s a minor spoiler for how things turned out, but y’all, this is like almost 40 years old? I think we’re outside statute of limitations on spoilers here.
Plus, Jason Todd is one of the MANY characters who came back in comics.
Recently, I heard Ms. Marvel was killed off, and people were pissed because “she’s the only Muslim female superhero,” but, guys, she’ll be back. They ALL come back.
Forever, the list of stayed-deads was:
Bucky (revived as Winter Soldier)
Jason Todd (revived as Red Hood)
and Uncle Ben (I think he also came back, like in the last year or so).
Anyway, how does this all connect?
I think it’s interesting and fun to be part of a fandom that does care. I wish people wouldn’t express their care in horrible ways, and a lot of fans could probably work on that, but I do think it beats the hollow feeling of caring about something that nobody cares about.
Like my books that I write. There is NO fandom for those. “