No Batgirl/Red Robin Play-by-Play This Month
March 18th, 2010 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: batgirl, DC comicsThank you, those people who requested it. I like when people miss the stuff I write enough to ask about it, but I’m not doing a play-by-play of the team-up/crossover, and here’s why:
Have you ever eaten a bad egg salad sandwich? If you have, you’ll know it put you off eggs for a while.
I don’t think it’s a mystery to anyone what this month’s egg salad sandwich was, and even though I just sampled a corner, it put me off a lot of things. I don’t want to think about people acting like jerks because continuity says they have to, or because they were in a relationship and apparently the only way to make that interesting is to have them fight. I don’t want tragic, convoluted history or recriminations. I don’t want one character to be all grrrrrr and dark. I don’t want a crossover event for which I have to read a bunch of books in order to get one story. I don’t want a female character framed in a rifle sight at the end of the issue, because apparently the only way I would be interested in reading the next issue is if a hero’s friends, family, or love interest is on the chopping block.
(Also I hate the art and the way they stick Leslie’s head on a twenty-year-old body in a clingy dress.)
Yeah, I read and I’m going to keep reading Batgirl, and next month’s issue looks good. But I’ve eaten some very bad egg salad. Those issues are like a quiche. I know there’s some good stuff in there, like Babs and St Nick finally having a good time, flirting, each knowing that the other one has a secret and being intrigued by it. I just don’t have the stomach for it right now.
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I personally though RR was alright, Miller was the one who made more mistakes and Steph kicked a person in the face in RR and left Tim speechless. But different strokes.
“I hate the art”
Amen to this (for Batgirl)
I won’t deny I’m disappointed but I do understand, believe me. A few years back, when Maxwell Lord murdered Ted Kord while boasting that he’d been “keeping the League ineffectual for years”, I pretty much divorced myself from DC Comics and anything current DCU related. Even today, Batgirl is the only DC title I regularly buy (and even there, it helps that it’s unlikely the series will ever touch upon the crap that drove me away from DC). I also share your resentment at having to get 4 Red Robin issues (even though I loved RR # 10).
I wonder if you’d respond that negatively to RR # 10’s ending if it hadn’t come so soon after DC’s latest egg-salad-and-bullshit-sandwich. Because all that ending is is a traditional cliffhanger ending. Myself, I’ve always loved such endings for the excitement, suspense, and guessing they generate. In this case, which of them is being targeted? Will they survive? If so, how? The traditional way of surviving (hero to the rescue!) seems ruled out since Our Hero and all his fellow heroes are being cornered on the other side of town. I don’t believe either of them is really going to die (and if either of them did, this crossover would quickly go from pretty good to terrible) but I have no idea how they’ll make it, and that keeps me interested.
There was a time, when Death first came to superhero comics, when that helped make such cliffhangers that much more suspensefull. But now, with Modern Comics preoccupation with death, death, death, and more death, such cliffhangers can, as in your case, result in a kind of antagonistic apathy. Man, I hate Modern Comics.