On Batgirls Vol. 1: One Way or Another

Well this certainly sounded like a slam-dunk of an idea for a Batman-adjacent series. 

Batgirl Cassandra Cain starred in a solo series that lasted 73 issues between 2000 and 2006; in it, original, retired Batgirl Barbara Gordon served as her mentor. That was later followed by a new Batgirl series in which Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler, took up the mantle from her friend Cassandra (this required some unconvincing hand-waving to get the costume off of Cass and forcing her into story limbo for awhile). In that volume of Batgirl, which lasted 24 issues between 2009 and 2011, original, retired Batgirl Barbara Gordon once again served as the new Batgirl's mentor. 

Then, when "The New 52" happened, Gordon returned to the Batgirl role for awhile, starring in a series that lasted 53 issues between 2011 and 2016, and then immediately relaunching for a new volume that lasted another 50 issues, into 2021. By that time, both Cassandra and Stephanie were both reintroduced into the Batman universe, with Cassandra resuming her Batgirl codename and costume after going by "Orphan" for a while. 

What to do with all these Batgirls? Why not put them all together in a new series, the premise of which would be the obvious one, of the older, original Batgirl Barbara—who had been gradually drifting back towards her pre-New 52 status quo as computer expert and information broker Oracle—serving as the mentor of the two teenage vigilantes? 

That was the idea behind the new series Batgirls, which launched in 2022 after the team-up concept was tried out in some back-up stories in the pages of Batman, during writer James Tynion IV's big "Fear State" crossover storyline. As I said, it sounds like a good one, and given the relative success of the three heroines in solo series throughout the 21st century, putting them all on a Birds of Prey-like team together seemed like an obvious move, one that would bring with it three different fandoms.

Oddly, it only lasted 19 issues, fewer than any Batgirl's solo series to date. 

What went wrong? I don't know, beyond the obvious fact that it's pretty hard to sell an ongoing comic book series these days.

I was a faithful reader of the original Batgirl series, a big fan of the Cassandra Cain iteration of the character, and an advocate for this very premise for a book, and I wasn't reading it, for a variety of reasons (The New 52 essentially having broken the contract between me as a reader and the DCU as an ongoing setting, comics costing more than $3 a pop now, my not reading enough titles to justify journeying to a comic shop each Wednesday any more, etc). 

I can't speak for the rest of the potential Batgirls readership, though.

The title had officially been cancelled by the time I got around to reading the first volume of the series, Batgirls Vol. 1: One Way or Another, by the creative team of writers Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad and artist Jorge Corona. Having finally done so, I suppose I can offer some guesses, the main one of which the title just wasn't very good. 

Extremely plot-heavy with little attention to character, characterization or ideas, it wasn't really a book about anything more than our heroes fighting some villains, the sort of comic of which there is and has always been dozens and dozens of similar books, many of which offer more than just fight scenes. 

(I wonder to what extent the series' launch being tied to "Fear State" might have been a factor. That was a fine storyline by Tynion and company, but it's credibility-straining villains weren't so great as to justify much in the way of tie-ins or the involvement of characters from throughout the extended Bat Family. That said, Bat events have long been used to introduced new Batman-adjacent titles, including the original Batgirl series, which came in the wake of "No Man's Land".)

The Magistrate from "Fear State" are hunting Batgirl Cassandra Cain and Spoiler Stephanie Brown, the latter of whom has apparently recently altered her costume so that he has a purple bat on her chest and is also going by "Batgirl" now (Should Stephanie have resumed wearing her own Batgirl costume if she was resuming the Batgirl name...? I don't know; I personally prefer her original Spoiler costume to this more ninja-like, detail-heavy version.). The Magistrate are presumably doing so because of doctored footage showing a Batgirl killing someone that was released to them.

This leads to The Magistrate, which you presumably already know all about because you were reading Batman—remember, the series started in the pages of Batman as back-ups, which, again, may or may not have been a factor in the series' failure to catch on—targeting sometimes-Batgirl, sometimes-Oracle Barbara Gordon's clocktower headquarters. At the same time, an anti-Oracle of sorts, known as Seer, has targeted Babs, corrupting her information network.

This leads to the two teens having to lie low for a few days, while Barbara sets-up a new status-quo for them and, of course, the new series: The three of them move into a loft together in a new neighborhood, The Hill, and become something similar to a Batgirl-only version of the Birds of Prey, with Stephanie and Cass going out and doing the leg-work of Batgirling, while Babs stays behind-the-scenes, doing the Oracle-ing.

They're immediately set upon by a series of villains, none of whom, I'm afraid, are terribly engaging, which is sort of unfortunate, as Cloonan and Conrad focus on these and their conflict above characterization of the girls and their relationships with one another. (Where were Cass and Steph living before they moved in with Babs? What were their previous status quos? I have no idea; the book offers no clues). 

There's the aforementioned Seer, who can hack his or her way into Oracle's networks and seems to have an unexplained grudge against Babs and the Batgirls. There's Tutor, a prolific spray-paint artist with an anti-society bent and some sort of mind-control abilities that turn victims into mindless zombies that do his bidding. There's Tutor's patron, the latest villain to go by the name Spellbinder (The third, by my count). And there's The Saints, former, radicalized members of The Magistrate who resemble cartoonier versions of Peacekeeper-01 (you did read "Fear State", right?) and are each named after a different saint: Tarsus, Valentine and Assisi. And then there's the Hill Ripper, an unknown, unseen serial killer who seems to be stalking the girls' new turf, though they don't come into direct contact with him or her this volume, despite Steph's certainty that it is a neighbor, based on some Rear Window-esque suspicions. 

If that seems like a lot of moving pieces for the first six issues of a new series, it's mostly just Tutor and Spellbinder who are involved. Seer makes an attack and some taunts but is mainly a background player until they're surprise appearance at the cliff-hanging ending, and the Saints, seemingly manipulated by Seer, attack a couple of times, but they aren't the focus of the storyline either. 

It's all...fine, but it's also light on substance, and what I'd expect from the series, with, as I said, no real focus on the characters or their relationships with one another. 

The art by Corona is pretty great, and it's hard to imagine fans being turned off by it. His Cass highlights her visual characteristics, of being something of a creepy cross between Batman and Spider-Man, in a tight, little, slightly feminine package (There's one great splash panel, near the climax, where her arms blend into her cape, giving the appearance of a monstrous bat). The other two Batgirls are less visually interesting in conception, but nevertheless well-rendered, as are all three characters when they are out of costume. 

I'm curious about what went wrong with the tile, exactly, and interested enough in the characters  to follow the rest of the series in trade, but, with only the first third to go on, I would guess the low-calorie approach to comic book storytelling didn't retain enough eyeballs on the book to make it as successful as any of the girls' solo outings to date. 

Miscellaneous Batmannery

This was one of the variant covers for June 16's Batman #1, by artist Tim Sale. While Sale has never had a regular run as an interior artist on any Batman ongoing series, he has done so many limited series and one-shots featuring the character that, at this point, he's got a gigantic body of Batman work built up. It's a body of work that I imagine eclipses that of many artists who have had regular runs on various Batman ongoing series, in terms of the volume of pages.

I was a little surprised to see him contributing a variant to the new, "Rebirth" era Batman at all, and more surprised still by its content. Sale doesn't draw the current, "Rebirth" Batman, but his own, "Year One" era Batman from his many collaborations with writer Jeph Loeb (Long Halloween, Dark Victory, the Legends of The Dark Knight Halloween specials, etc). Even Neal Adams, an even more classic Batman artist, decided to draw the Rebirth-ed Batman on his variant.

The villains sharing the cover with Sale's Batman are similarly the particular versions from Sale's "Year One" Batman adventures, none of whom look much at all like the New 52 versions and a few of which don't look much at all like the versions other artists draw from any period  (Poison Ivy and The Penguin in particular). Of note is the inclusion of Clayface, who hasn't previously appeared in any of Sale's Batman comics (at least, not this version; I'm pretty sure that Clayface III was in his Showcase story with writer Alan Grant), and whose design Sale seems to have based on that from Batman: The Animated Series (which, in fact, is also the basis for The New 52 version).

The presence of the blond lady baffled me for a while, but I'm like 80% sure she's supposed to be Gotham City District Attorney Janice Porter from Dark Victory, which is a really, really weird choice, considering the villains from the series Sale didn't include, like The Joker, The Riddler, Calendar Man, Carmine Falcone or any of the mob guys. Or a major Batman villain he hasn't drawn before, like, I don't know, Man-Bat or Ra's al Ghul or Harley Quinn or Bane or Killer Croc.

Anyway, it's an interesting piece I enjoyed staring at and picking apart. And much better than the regular cover by the regular artist:

Boo David Finch!

Did any of you read The Dark Knight Returns: The Last Crusade? That was the recent prestige format one-shot in which Batman teams up with Sean Connery to find the Holy Grail before the Nazis can. No, it's the latest of DC release that makes me wonder what on Earth Brian Azzarello is doing with his life (If I had to guess, it would be working on Maus fan-fiction, just to complete the trifecta).

This is his prequel to The Dark Knight Returns, which he is currently writing the second sequel too, as drawn by John Romita Jr. and Peter Steigerwald and featuring vague, nebulous contributions from Frank Miller (He shares a "story by" credit with Azzarello, although "Based on The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller" is the first credit; no one is credited with the script). It is a 57-page answer to a question nobody needed an answer to, which is "What exactly happened to the Robin that the old, mustachioed Batman was narrating about at the opening of Dark Knight Returns like 30 years ago?" The answer, of course, was "The Joker killed him," but then, everyone already knew all that.

This is essentially a retelling then; "A Death In The Family" without all the globe-trotting, international intrigue, adventure, super-scary death scene or heroic sacrifice. It's just an older Batman with graying temples and Robin Jason Todd fighting crime in Gotham City together, until The Joker kills Todd. Sort of. Todd is on the escaped Joker's trail when some guys who apparently work with or for The Joker beat him with pipes until red coloring effects fill the bottom of the panels, and The Joker says "Oh, the fun we're going to have little boy... The fun."

Finis!

If it's a worthwhile read at all, it's mostly because it's still kind of fresh and new and exciting to see JRJR draw DC characters, and here he gets to draw classic (or, if you prefer, the real) version of Batman and Robin, rather than the New 52 versions JRJR's been stuck with since leaving Marvel to play with DC's iconic super-characters for a few years.

It served as a pretty good reminder that there was nothing really wrong with the original Robin costume that Jason Todd wore; it's not like it couldn't look cool when drawn really well, and JRJR draws it really well and puts it and the guy wearing it in some very dramatic scenes, that red, yellow and green popping in contrast to the blues, blacks, grays and browns of Batman and everything else around Robin.

I know that a lot of people–myself included–have wondered about how much of this new suite of Dark Knight Returns material is really Miller and how much of it is Azzarello, and to what degree Azzarello is simply trying to do a pastiche of Miller. It was with some amusement that I noticed a line that either demonstrates Miller's involvement or that Azzarello was really asking himself "What Would Frank Miller Write?" during this process.

The above panel is from a scene in which Bruce Wayne visits former Catwoman Selina Kyle, whom his narration tells us he visits whenever he's feeling unsure of himself.

Check out the last two panels at the end of the scene, though:

Superheroes having sex in their costumes for kicks! You don't get a whole lot more Frank Miller than that.

The above panels are the last few in a downright shocking scene in Detective Comics #935, the second issue of the relaunched series, which is numbered #935 instead of #2 because...reasons.

What was so shocking about that scene? It's 13 panels spread across two pages. Red Robin Tim Drake is in Spoiler Stephanie Brown's apartment, taking off his costume in front of her like it's NBD. They're talking about Tim's college plans, when Batgirl Black Bat Orphan Cassandra Cain enters the window holding a plastic bag and wearing an expression of surprise.

"Hey Cass...do you think I could have the place to myself tonight?" Spoiler says. "I need to give my boyfriend a lot of crap for not being honest with people."

That's right, Tim and Stepahnie are dating. They are going steady. They are actually in a relationship.

When did this happen? Off-panel, apparently.

Stephanie Brown was only rather recently introduced into the current, post-Flashpoint continuity during the year-long weekly series Batman Eternal, and she did not meet Red Robin until one of the epilogues of the very last issue. Stephanie walks into her roommate Harper Row's bedroom to see Harper talking with Red Robin. Harper introduces them, and they shake hands...and stare silently at one another for an entire panel before Harper coughs to wake them back up from their apparent reverie, and Red Robin makes a lame, awkward excuse about needing to leave. "Um...Okay. I should go,: he says, rubbing the back of his head "Probably some kind of um...mischief going on."

And as far as I can remember, that's pretty much, like, the extent of their relationship up until this point. Stephanie is in the earliest issues of the sequel series, Batman & Robin Eternal, and shares a scene with Tim. In Batman & Robin Eteranl #2, Red Robin climbs in the window of the apartment Stephanie shares with Harper and Cullen Row and finds Dick Grayson and Stephanie, in her Spoiler costume, standing over a badly injured Harper.

How did he know to show up? He says he bugged the house with cameras and censors, which infuriates Spoiler. "I'm just monitoring for trouble," he says. "I mean, have you met yourselves?" They spend a little more time together with other Batman allies at the Rows' apartment and then in the Batcave, before Stephanie and Cullen get stashed in a safe house while everyone goes off to have an adventure that lasts most of the series (Steph and Cullen both reappear at the end).

And that's about it in terms of Tim Drake/Stephanie Brown interactions.

It therefore feels like a bit of a cheat that writer James Tynion, who is writing Detective and co-wrote the two Eternal limited series, just jumped ahead and we missed all of their flirting, Red Robin's revelation of his secret identity, whether or not it was awkward for Harper and all the humor and drama one would expect in a relationship. I mean, I feel cheated. I liked the idea of Bluebird and Spoiler as roommates, and of a possible love triangle between them and Red Robin. I liked the gradual way Tim and Stephanie's relationship played out in the pre-Flashpoint DCU (under writer Chuck Dixon, who co-created Stephanie and wrote both characters almost exclusively during the various incarnations of their relationship to one another).

I wanted to see Tim and Steph date dammit, not just move from meet-cute to one panel of bickering to suddenly being an item and banging in Steph's new apartment (She no longer lives with the Rows, as she says Batman set both her and Cassandra up with their own places, although Cassandra apparently chooses to instead crash at Harper's or Stephanie's).

I can only assume that Tim and Stephanie are going to break up pretty soon, as otherwise there doesn't seem to be much point of suddenly introducing them as a couple, and that Tynion will focus on that drama rather than the drama of their coming together.

Anyway, note their costumes touching each other on the floor of Stephanie's apartment in that last panel. Symbolism!

New 52 vs. DC Super-Pets: Batgirl

Carmine Infantino's cover for 1967's Detective Comics #359

While Sheldon Moldoff and Bill Finger introduced a Bat-Girl, with a hyphen, in 1961, the character Batgirl (without a hyphen) was created by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino at the direction of editor Julius Schwartz in 1967.

When she first appeared, she was waring the costume above, and it changed little over the 20 years between her debut and her 1988 retirement.

Mike Mignola and Karl Kesel's cover for 1988's Batgirl Special #1. I bought this comic from a back-issue bin specifically for the cover, and all I remember about it was that its insides were not as good as the cover. 

A few more Batgirls eventually followed in the comics. In 1999's Batman: Shadow of the Bat #83, part of the "No Man's Land" storyline, a mysterious new Batgirl in a new, all-black costume that hides her entire face appears. She's eventually revealed to be The Huntress, having adopted a bat-costume in an attempt to fill the void left by Batman, who was MIA from Gotham at the start of the story.

Damion Scott

She's soon forced to relinquish the name and costume, which both go to Cassandra Cain, who would be Batgirl for the next 11 years, wearing that costume throughout her tenure, with little to no alteration.

Phil Noto

In 2009, Stephanie Brown, formerly The Spoiler (and formerly the fourth Robin, albeit only for about the length of a single storyline), became Batgirl, and she had her own Batgirl costume, a black, yellow, and purple get-up with a utility belt and matching utility garter. The less said of this costume, the better. She proved to have the shortest tenure of any Batgirl, save for The Huntress, as the September 2011 New 52 reboot of the DC Universe excised Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown from continuity, now making it so that the de-aged Barbara Gordon never retired from being Batgirl.

Here's what her new, New 52 costume looks like.

Adam Hughes

From afar, it looks like it's basically her original costume, but the closer one looks, the more new and changed details one finds. Like most of the New 52 costumes, it isn't a simple body-stocking or spandex suit, but looks like something a Hollywood costuming department might put together for a superhero movie. It's a suit of armor more than a costume, complete with plates and seams and segments. There are more breathable, flexible areas where she needs to bend. And check out the palms of her gauntlets—I don't know why, but the grips on those give me the willies.

The inside of her cape is also purple now, and, on that first cover at least, she seems to have her cape affixed with some sort of bat-brooch...that, or she's just wearing a bat-pin on her cape.

It seems that the design has ben finessed a little big already, as the underside of her cape eventually became yellow, rather than purple.

Ed Benes

Either way, I don't like it much, and would prefer something closer to her original costume, or the one that appeared in the 2004-2008 animated series The Batman.

Here's how artist Art Baltazar dresses Batgirl, in the pages of the DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia:

Batgirl was a recurring character in Baltazar's Tiny Titans comic, and the version of her that appears in this encyclopedia is basically a grown-up version of the Tiny Titan, wearing a pretty similar costume. She's got a fairly traditional Batgirl color scheme of blue (and blue-black), yellow and purple, which looks like a blending of her coloring from the live-action TV show and the comic books of the 1960s (where her bodysuit was most often colored gray).

Baltazar's main innovation here is that he changes her tunic into a dress—that, or she's wearing a skirt and a tunic. Baltazar's artwork is so simple and flat that it doesn't really suggest textures, so it's difficult to say exactly what material she might be wearing or how thick it might be, and therefore I can't tell if she's wearing tights or leggings under the skirt (good), or wearing pants under her skirt (bad...and weird).

As un-Batgirly as the skirt or dress might be, I actually kind of like it in the way it evokes the original Bat-Girl costume, and the way it differentiates this look from the original Batgirl costume (The costume from The Batman that I like is actually a dress over tights).

I don't think this is the best possible Batgirl costume, and I don't think the design is quite the home run that Baltazar's Animal Man costume is, but I don't like it any less than I like The New 52 design and, with some tweaks, I think Baltazar's basic design could make for a far superior costume than The New 52 costume.

***********************

Baltazar is apparently quite enamored of the skirt/dress design when it comes to superheroines and supervillainesses. In addition to Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Aquagirl, Green Lantern Katma Tui, Black Canary, Zatanna, Hawkwoman, Raven, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Star Sapphire and Circe all wear dresses or skirts in the DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia...as does Batwoman, a relatively short-lived character who has only been around long enough to have one costume design so far (Unless you count the Golden Age Batwoman, which I'm not counting).

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas...

It's mostly the color scheme and the dress-over-tights look, but the first scene of Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's Bandette really reminded me of another caped and masked young person, here drawn by Damion Scott, I believe.

At any rate, I have a brief review of Bandette Vol. 1: Presto! in this week's issue of Las Vegas Weekly. It's a really great comic book, and I had a blast reading.

I was particularly impressed with the way Coover's art looked like something from a classic European comic album, rather than the work of the Colleen Coover I've most recently seen in American comics. It wasn't so great or so fun that it made me want to start following it online or anything—I'm probably always gonna prefer paper to the screen of my laptop—but thanks to Dark Horse's collection, the curious need no longer choose between reading it online or not reading it at all.

 I can't wait for the next one.

Stephanie Brown coming to the New 52U, convention questions about Cassandra Cain expected to double.

News from New York Comic Con! Stephanie Brown, aka The Spoiler, aka Robin IV, aka Batgirl III, is making her New 52 debut in the rather goofily-entitled, Scott Snyder-showran Batman Eternal! If you like the character, this is either great news (she is no longer non-existent in The New 52U) or terrible news (I know when I've seen some favorite DC characters of mine re-introduced into The New 52 so far, my thought process has generally been something along the lines of, "Oh cool, it' s Captain Marv---AAAAH!").

There's been no revelation of what, exactly, Stephanie Brown will be wearing or what she'll look like, but the few articles I've read have said she'll most likely be appearing in her Spoiler identity (although with Damian Wayne dead and Robin III Tim Drake's superheroic identity retconned so that he was always "Red Robin" and never [just] Robin, there does seem to be an opening for a new Robin).

As for the costume, I assume it will look a lot like her original duds, maybe with more black or a darker purple, and certainly with visible seams, armor plating, treads on her boots and fussily detailed gloves. You know, New 52 (If she's first appearing in issue #3, and Jason Fabok is drawing the first story arc, he'll be the first to draw her in a story, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be designing her).

So why did I post the above picture, of a Spoiler costume designed by the great Dean Trippe a few years back? Oh, just because I love that costume, and the way it cleverly yet organically blends her Spoiler and Robin costumes together (Her Batgirl costume was fairly awful, her Spoiler costume not so great unless Damion Scott or Jeff Parker were drawing it and her Robin costume was just Tim Drake's with a longer shirt to act as a mini-dress; that Trippe costume is the best she's ever looked, if you ask me. And you didn't. But I'm answering anyway).

I've said this before—long before the New 52 was announced—but Trippe is such a good designer, and so adept at designing costumes for DC's teen superheroes, that I wish DC would have hired him in some Re-Design All Our Teen Heroes capacity.

Now, they obviously went with Jim Lee, a handful of his WildStorm cohorts and/or whatever artists happened to be drawing whatever title was in question when they redesigned the costumes of their entire universe. If I were in charge, I probably would have went to Darwyn Cooke* and asked him to re-design much of the DC Universe, coming up with costumes that were instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever heard of heroes like Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, but more streamlined, and taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-tweak them into "ultimate" costumes. And then I would have looked to folks with similar abilities and sensibilities to design different corners of the DCU, asking Trippe to take on the younger heroes, from Nightwing own down (It goes without saying that I would not have condensed the entire history of the DC Universe into five years, so there would actually still be a bunch of different superheroes of various ages running around).


*And if I were the Boss of All DC and was in charge of the New 52-boot, and Cooke said no, I probably would have next asked Bruce Timm, and then maybe Frank Miller (Shut up there are some totally awesome costumes in Dark Knight Strikes Again I don't care what you say!) and/or Alex Ross. I'm actually surprised they didn't ask Alex Ross, given how much everyone, the current DCU regime included, have loved so many of his designs from Kingdom Come, importing the likes of Red Robin, Zatara, Offspring, Wildcat, Gog and others into the DCU in the years between Infinite Crisis and The New 52-boot. I suspect there's some hard feelings somewhere, as Ross has been notably absent from DC for so long, but who knows. 

My legal obligation as a comics blogger: A post about Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown

So I had kind of an unusual experience Friday afternoon. I was sitting in my wingback armchair, enjoying a pipe and a good book, which is how I usually spend my leisure time, when I heard a thunderous knock on my front door.

Standing on my porch were two clean-cut looking people in their mid-thirties, one male and one female, each wearing dark suits with ties and carrying expensive-looking briefcases. When I cracked the door and asked if I could help them, they said they were from the Comics Blogosphere Bureau of Regulation and asked if they could speak with me for a few minutes.

I was naturally skeptical, and told them I’d never even heard of any such an organization, but they quickly produced badges, as well as I.D.’s and some very convincing paper work.

So I welcomed them in, offered them seats and asked what they took in their tea, when they abruptly cut me off and asked me to have a seat.

From their briefcases they produced a manila folder with my name of it, full of print-outs of my past posts, a few unflattering headshots of me, and other information pertaining to Every Day Is Like Wednesday. They curtly informed me that I had yet to broach the subject of Stephanie Brown in any great detail.

For those of you who don’t know, Brown was a minor heroine in DC Comics n the 1990s and early aughts who went by the name Spoiler, was Robin IV for about fifteen minutes, and then died a violent death in one the stupidest Batman stories ever written, a distinction which would immediately be surpassed by the story that immediately followed it.

She’s also, somewhat surprisingly, become incredibly popular online (Particularly for a character who never carried her own title…or miniseries…or one shot. Or, um, solo story. Anywhere. Ever). She’s also become emblematic of online comics feminist criticism, a popular Exhibit A in the case arguing rampant sexism in Big Two comics. Mostly because Batman hasn’t erected a glass case with her uniform in it, as he did for Robin II when Robin II died.

Anyway, the two agents in my parlor this afternoon informed me that I was legally obligated to post at least 1,000 words about Stephanie Brown on my blog a year, or else risk losing my comics blogger’s license. I could appeal of course, but there was no guarantee the judge would side with me, and in the mean time they would be able to seize my blog.

All in all, it seemed far easier to comply, so here we are: A rather lomg post about Stephanie Brown.

As it turns out, the timing couldn’t be better, as it’s Stephanie Brown week at Project Rooftop, the website where talented artists redesign superhero costumes, often coming up with designs that are one hundred to one thousand times better than what DC and Marvel had previously designed for the characters.

As usual, Dean Trippe came up with the best. That’s it at the top of the post. He mixes Brown’s Spoiler costume with her Robin costume, and comes up with a look that’s better than both. If I ran DC Comics, I would have long ago put Trippe on the payroll and given him some fancy title like Senior Vice President of Teen Aesthetics and Fashion Consultant, and a one-sentence job description: “Redesign all of our teen heroes so they don’t look quite as stupid as they do at the moment.”

Trippe’s previously drawn the best Supergirl ever, the best t-shirt version of Superb*y, and a not-so-bad version of Batgirl (although I couldn’t see the Cassandra Cain version wearing either of his designs; the cape and skirt one being cooler than the Catwoman-like one).

I like Trippe’s Spoiler costume so much that it actually makes me wish DC would bring Spoiler back to life and start putting her in their comics again. Of course, that’s a popular position among people who write about DC comics on the Internet, what gives this declaration weight here? Well because, in all honestly, I never cared about Stephanie Brown one way or the other.

In fact, I find the strong emotions swirling around the Internet about her rather fascinating, as I can’t quite figure out what makes her so special. Certainly there are plenty of other Tim Drake love interests, dead or in limbo, whom no one seems to insist on seeing more of.

Just as there are plenty of other Gotham vigilantes, female or otherwise, dead or in limbo, whom no one seems to care about.

And God knows there are plenty of female supporting characters in comics who were killed in stupid stories that were, at worst, offensive and, at best, tone deaf. What makes Brown so special? Is it that she’s a little bit of each?

Trippe offers a nice, evenly toned overview of the character’s history in his intro the Project Rooftop entry.

I personally found her intriguing in her first appearances, in some of Chuck Dixon’s earliest Bat-writings, when he was still transitioning from the series of Robin miniseries to Detective Comics.


If I remember my Bat-history correctly, Brown made her first appearance in a three-part story that ran from TEC #647-#649. Dixon reintroduced second-rate Riddler The Cluemaster to Gotham (previously he had fallen far enough into joke status that he was part of the Injustice League/Justice League Antartica in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice titles).

In addition to Batman and Robin, someone else kept spoiling Cluemaster’s schemes, and the big reveal was that it was his daughter in disguise.

It’s a neat origin for a heroine, playing off the teenagers rebelling against their parents idea, although Dixon played it straight and soap opera-y, instead of going for the inherent fun and laughs in the situation.

I’m sure in a black and white drawing, the original costume didn’t look too bad: A body suit with a hood and a full-face mask (to completely conceal her identity). But for the first few years of her existence, the costume was often hideously colored a sort of fuchsia. Sometimes it would be straight purple, sometimes more of a lavender, but more often than not, it looked fuchsia, and the sleek bodysuit was full of 90’s style ornamentation—shoulder pads, pockets, belts and straps that didn’t seem to do anything but make the costume less appealing. Additionally, the gloves, boots and mask were often more of a navy than black.

Brown began appearing in Dixon’s ongoing Robin almost immediately, and I dropped the title around that time (Not because of Spoiler; it was honestly just a coincidence).

See, Dixon is a great pop comic book writer, but he’s far better at coming up with cool action movie-like plots than character work (For a good example of this quirk of Dixon’s writing, think of just about any Dixon-written DC story of the 1990s. Okay, now change the protagonist, from Robin or whoever stars in the one you’ve chosen to Batman or Nightwing or Green Arrow or Catwoman or Black Canary. Okay, now how does the change in protagonist change the plot? Exactly).

Having seemingly abandoned the far more interesting King Snake and Lynx as Robin archenemy and love interest, Dixon started using Cluemaster and Spoiler in pretty the same roles and, well, if heroes are defined by their villains, and Cluemaster’s your main villain…

Dixon cultivated a romance between Robin and Spoiler, which seemed rather unconvincing to me (Did Tim Drake really have time for girls? As a reader his age at the time, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief enough to buy a 14-year-old high schooler who was popular, serving as Robin, keeping his secret life from his family, and had an active love life. Still, Brown was better than Tim’s previous girlfriend, Arianna, since she was actually a vigilante, giving her a leg up on people who weren’t vigilantes).


Let the record show: This costume is pretty sucky

Over the years, all kinds of questionable things would happen with the character, including her getting knocked up (not by Tim, who’s totally still a virgin I bet*.), having the baby and giving it up to adoption. It was all very after school special-y.

For a brief time, when Batman was being an especially antisocial dick, Spoiler was the only Gotham vigilante he was talking to, but her presence in Bat- stories really betrays the fact that DC wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.

One month she was blacklisted by Batman, the next he was personally training her, the next she’s retired. Then she’s Black Canary’s apprentice, then she’s blacklisted again, then she’s Robin, then she’s blacklisted again.

I never cared for her as an ongoing component in Robin, or in the Bat-books in general, where she seemed to occupy a weird space between accepted agent of the Bat Family (like Azrael, Robin, Nightwing, Oracle and Batgirl), black sheep (like Huntress) and just some random vigilante who only appeared in stories written by writers who loved her (like Anarky).

I personally only warmed to her in the pages of Batgirl, a title I came to too late. The introduction of a new Batgirl struck me as a bit random in No Man’s Land, but when I actually tried an issue of Scott Peterson, Kelley Puckett and Damion Scott’s Batgirl, I realized what I was missing.


Same costume, suddenly pretty awesome-looking

I still can’t speak highly enough of that series, particularly the first 25 issues, which comprised one big complete story. Cassandra Cain was a heroine unlike no other in the DCU, and was the closest thing to either a martial arts hero and a manga protagonist that DC Comics was publishing at the time.

That first 25 issues of Batgirl essentially comprised an ongoing conflict between father figure Batman and mother figure Oracle over how best to raise a teen vigilante, one which, interestingly enough, was pretty much the Dark Knight version of Batman if he happened to be a mute, illiterate teenaged girl. Batman treated Cain like his ultimate weapon, and Oracle wanted to convince Cain to be a real, normal human being in addition to dressing up like a bat to beat people up. Cain herself leaned toward the Batman side of the debate.

Spoiler began popping up occasionally, and the girls formed a sort of friendship based on mutual need-fulfillment. Batgirl didn’t really have any friends (Robin was the only person her own age she knew, and he was kind of terrified of her), and Spoiler gave her someone to play rooftop tag with and have the occasional brief, clipped, reluctant talk with. Spoiler, meanwhile, still wanted to be a hero, but Batman had shut her out almost completely at that point, and she looked to Batgirl for training and a bit of Bat-approval.

If Spoiler didn’t work quite as Gotham Vigilante #8, or as Robin’s girlfriend, or as an ongoing Very Special Message in the pages of Robin, she worked quite well as a supporting cast member in Batgirl.




Spoiler walks in on Batgirl during a typical destroy all mannequins training session

And damn, did Damion Scott make that costume work. Check out those huge Spider-Man-sized eyes on her mask! I love Scott’s version of Spoiler’s costume, and I suppose the fact that she stopped looking stupid went a long way towards helping me to enjoy comic book stories about her.

And then things went to hell.

During that dark period between Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, during which the quality of DC’s line of super-books began to slide, and so many of the “rules” of the fictional universe just seemed to fall apart, Bill Willingham was writing Robin. He was writing a pretty intense arc about Tim’s dad Jack Drake finally discovering his son’s secret identity, and understandably being a little pissed off that the weird millionaire he knew was secretly dressing his teenaged son up in tights and sending him against mass murderers every night.

So Drake did the responsible thing, respected his father’s wishes and quit the Dynamic Duo. So Batman turned to Brown and made her Robin. This wasn’t out of necessity. Batman’s gone thorough most of his career saying how he doesn’t need anyone else to anyone who will listen, and in cases where he needs to bounce ideas off some one or help kicking ass, it’s not like he didn’t have Nightwing and Batgirl on speed dial. No, he made Spoiler the new Robin basically as a classic Batman dick move, to shame Drake into returning.

This new status quo lasted three issues of Robin. Stephanie-Brown-as-Robin appeared in an issue of Batgirl and Teen Titans and maybe elsewhere during those months, but she was Robin far less time than Jean-Paul Valley or Dick Grayson were Batman. Or Huntress was Batgirl.

And this is why the frustration at Batman’s failure to memoralize these three months (Or, more specifically, DC’s failure to memoralize these three months through Batman) confuses me.

I don’t think anyone suspected for a moment that Stephanie Brown was ever going to be Robin for longer than a story arc, did they? Certainly it didn’t seem any more permanent than Jean-Paul Valley or Dick Grayson permanently being Batman. In fact, JPV got to be Batman for three rather sizeable story arcs.

Batman quickly fired Brown as Robin for some dumb-ass reason. Maybe because she just wasn’t as properly trained as Tim was, despite the fact that every two months or so Batman would forbid her to be a vigilante and would force her to quit training.

And then things get really stupid, because from there we get into “War Games,” one of the very worst Batman stories ever told. What makes the story so bad is its Countdownian transparency—you could almost see through the panels of art and dialogue bubbles a poorly thought-out memo listing plot points to get the various Bat-characters from Point A to Point B, no matter what. The result was a story in which all of the characters seemed to be either hysterical or stupid (or both), the events driving the plot don’t make any sense if you stop and think about them, and everyone’s actions seem to contradict their own fictional histories.

Stripped of her “R” blouse, Brown goes back to being Spoiler, and initiates a war game of Batman’s in an attempt to win his love or whatever.

The game assumes every crime boss in Gotham is stupid enough to answer an anonymous invitation in person with one body guard, and then that they would all somehow simultaneously kill each other by accident.

This somehow leads to a gang war so big that not even the combined forces of Oracle, Batman, Orpheus, Obsidian (Is that her name? The bald chick?), Batgirl, Nightwing, Catwoman, Robin and Tranatula II (Or III?) can possibly stop it.

It also hinges on Black Mask being able to go hand-to-hand with Batman, Barbara Gordon forgetting that she knows martial arts too and thinking that Black Mask could actually take Batman in a fight, and a were-scarecrow.

The centerpiece of it all? Black Mask torturing Spoiler to death with drill bits. Well, she escapes, but dies from the injuries sustained in the battle. It’s a cruel, depressing, relentlessly negative story, one which makes all of its heroes seem not only highly incompetent, but to be pretty bad people.

But as stupid as it was for DC to willingly engage in such an exploitive story with the cloud of women-in-refrigerator-ism still hanging like a thick, black cloud above them, and hard to refute claims of outright misogyny stemming from Identity Crisis leveled at them, it was also just a really, really badly told story.

The end result? Robin and Batgirl are sent to Bludhaven, Nightwing is sent to New York to go undercover as a gangster or some such shit, Batman is labeled a wanted vigilante by the GCPD like back in the old Year One days, Oracle moves to Metropolis and refuses to speak to Batman anymore, Orpheus is dead, Spoiler is dead, and, oh yeah, Leslie Thompkins, pascifist lifelong friend of Bruce Wayne, is a killer. Point B looks a lot different form Point A, and the story was just the most direct line between them, quality be damned.

That radical shift in the status quo was revealed to be little more than poorly-planned random change for change’s sake a few months (our time, a year Batman’s time) later, however, when the various Bat-characters would get another radical shift, for the most part, in the direction of their pre-“War Games” status.

One Year Later, Batman had adopted Robin, and the pair of them were in Gotham and on better terms with the police than ever before. Nightwing was back in the fold, although sent to New York to star in some exceptionally shitty stories (even by Nightwing standards). Batgirl was suddenly the Totally Evil Leader of the League of Assassins (I’m still waiting for the reveal that that’s the Earth-3 Cassandra Cain we’ve been seeing…the various “fixes” to the original shitty Robin arc don’t match up at all). Oracle seems to be speaking with Batman, but she’s still steering clear of Gotham City. Leslie Thompkins is simply not spoken of. Spoiler and Orpheus are still dead.

And there’s no memorial case in the Batcave for Robin/Spoiler.

Is this a big deal? I don’t think so. And I don’t think there ever will be one there, either.

If fans didn’t start asking about it, I doubt anyone at DC would ever have even entertained the thought. The fact that Robin II still has a case likely has more to do with the fact that artists drawing the Batcave know from experience that the five things that signify a drawing of a cave as a drawing of the Batcave are a dinosaur, a giant penny, a computer, a parked Batmobile and a glass case with an old-school Robin costume in it.

I assume any Bat-artist drawing the cave could have drawn a Stephanie Brown-related memorial case in if they wanted to**, especially since clearly DC’s not real big on editing art to make sure characters are on model or that long dead people don’t accidentally cameo these days.

But of course, once fans started asking about a second, Stephanie Brown-specific case, then editors had to start thinking about one, and the obvious answer is that, “Good God, memoralize one of our greatest mistakes?! Why would we want to do that?”

I’m assuming DC wants to simply forget “War Games” and “War Crimes” ever happened (they’ve undone almost all of the changes effected by them already) and a memorial to the fallen Stephanie Brown would double as a memorial to those stories, just as the memorial to Robin II has always served as a memorial to “A Death in the Family.”

So I don’t think we’ll be seeing a case there ever, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.

Will we ever see Stephanie Brown again? That’s a more interesting question, I think.


Like I said near the beginning of this post, she was never really that popular a character. She was popular enough to guest-star here and there, but never carried a title of her own (Hell, Anarky got a mini and a monthly). So I don’t think there’s any kind of financial impetus to bring her back to life. And creatively, I think resurrection stories are to be avoided at all costs, because they simply erode the drama of death in your fictional universe.

But then, there was no real financial impetus to bring Jason Todd*** back to life, or Ice, and DC resurrected them both since Brown died. And both of those were accomplished in the most pedestrian, random ways (A character in another comic punching the walls of continuity in the case of the former, magic herbs in the case of the latter).

Hell, Spoiler’s fellow minor Bat-characters have had even more goofy resurrections.

Lynx, who, like Spoiler, died in “War Games,” simply appeared alive again in Robin…at least long enough to be killed by Batgirl a few panels later. Killer Moth, who was torn apart in Infinite Crisis, similarly just appeared alive again in “Face The Face.”

Next month, totally dead forever Ra’s al Ghul is expected to return to life in a storyline called “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul.”

So maybe Stephanie Brown did come back to life along with Lynx and Killer Moth in the Infinite Crisis/52 rejiggering, and she just hasn’t made the scene yet.

Or maybe she’ll come out of a Lazarus Pit like Ra’s in the next issue of Robin.

Or a Spoiler from one of the other 51 Earths will immigrate to the main one.

Or maybe the upcoming Final Crisis will involve some sort of final continuity rejiggering, which will essentially undo all of the stupid things that were done between Identity Crisis and Final Crisis, including all of “War Games.”

If and when she does return, however, I hope she’s wearing that outfit Trippe designed for her.






* Although I bet if we wonder if Robin’s gay enough, Dixon will be sure to write a story in which Robin totally bangs a bunch of chicks.


**Does Batgirl I have a memorial in the cave? In some stories there’s a glass case containing Barbara Gordon’s costume right next to Jason Todd’s. In others, there’s a glass case containing it elsewhere in the cave. In plenty of stories, there’s no sign of one, but then, in plenty of stories there’s no sign of a penguin statue, an assortment of penguin umbrellas, or Batman costumes either, but in other stories there are.


***Oh sure, it probably boosted sales on Batman for exactly one arc, and helped get Judd Winick more royalties off a short run on the title than he otherwise would have, but it’s not like we’re going to be getting a Red Hood miniseries or monthly. Or a Red Hood/Jason Todd movie. Or even DC Direct toys. Jason Todd doesn’t even have a marketable name or look at the moment; he’s just a secret identity of a former superhero.

Friday Night Fights: Spoiling for a fight

So what are you doing tonight?

Me? Nothing much. Just, you know, this.






As for Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown...



they're busy training for their all-out assault on the offices of DC Comics, to exact vengeance upon the writers and editors whohave so mistreated them over the past few years.




(From 2002's Batgirl #28 by Kelley Puckett, Damion Scott and Robert Campanella, published by DC Comics.)