Batman 644 reveals the real killer of Stephanie Brown (Robin nee Spoiler). It turns out it was Dr. Leslie Thompkins, who killed her just to try to send Batman a message. (Swipe that to see the identity.) Bill Willingham has addressed the numerous outraged fans with a message that boils down to “controversy is good, anyone crying over it is a disturbed geek and no one is going to quit reading Batman over it.”
I have not read the issue in question; it could have been done well or ham-handedly, I don’t know. I’m already peeved that they killed off a character as rich as Stephanie, so I don’t know that I can get all that mad about it, but it’s completely out of character for Thompkins (a doctor who took the Hippocratic Oath).
Honestly, it’s hard for me to get worked up over much of anything after “Identity Crisis.”
5 responses to “Willingham speaks out on Batman 644 controversy (SPOILERS BIG TIME)”
Glad to know I’m not the only one outraged. Not outraged, really, just disappointed. I’m not sitting here thinking, “How could you do that to … to LESLIE? *choke*”.
I’m thinking, “yow, let’s have a longtime supporting play act WILDLY out of character with a threadbare justification merely to hew to an editorial mandate that ‘Batman must become a loner again’.”
What’s next? Batman deduces that Alfred was sodomizing Stephanie and has to deported?
I am enraged by this. It must be Ret-Conned ASAP. I don’t care how. Say Leslie was actualy a shape shifting alien, or robot. Hell say she was possed by the devil, i don’t care. Just FIX IT!!!
“Because most of us quit reading Batman years ago.”
Ain’t that the truth. I don’t read any story that crosses over from one title to another. I haven’t done that since Zero Hour.
I was excited by the “Hush” storyline. But like everything else it left a bad aftertaste. We now have a new “unidentified” villain added to the rogues gallery. Maybe I’m looking at this upside down, but I would have been satisfied if Hush’s identity would have been established and the character killed off.
I gave up reading the main Bat-titles years ago because of these sweeping full-crossover storylines. I think the Bat-Family is up to nine or a dozen titles. That’s a good chunk of change. I also gave up the main titles to read the Batman Animated companion. Not only were the television episodes well written, but so was the comic. Stand alone stories that actually had a point. And each character stayed in character.
It’s a shame that stories are only told for the shock value in order to generate interest.
I don’t read Batman, and I only know Leslie from Hush and the early Catwoman trades. But this sounds like a really bad idea to me.
Shorter Willingham answer:
“Yeah, we don’t understand why comic sales are plunging into the abyss of no return.”
Both the big companies are really struggling right now with creative catastrophes, but DC has taken the lead in the race to commit hari-kiri. There is no clearer an indicator that someone has an arrested development problem than when they start waxing rhapsodic about how darker, “grittier”, superhero comics are more “realistic”. If one’s tastes run to realism, one is not reading superhero comics.
It’s not as if I was reading Batman before: the last time I did was Brubaker’s run on the title, through the Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Bruce Wayne: Fugitive storyline, which actually tried to allow the lead character a bit of room for emotional growth and refinement of his heroic impulses while also dragging him through some dark territory. That kind of balance and loyalty to the genre’s essential conventions now seems completely quaint in the current market. Which is why I almost don’t bother to go and pick up the two titles I still, somewhat reluctantly, bother to read. Pretty much now I’m down to an occasional trade paperback when I’ve seen good buzz on it or I like the creative team doing it.