Term
12-31-2013, 05:20 PM
Just a heads up, there will be minor spoilers in this thread concerning Batman's comic continuity, the New 52, and other general DCU points. If you haven't caught up on your comic reading or have an interest in getting into it, turn back now.
So a little backstory here, I finally got around to reading through the first arc of Batman's New 52 line of books by Scott Snyder, thanks to the availability of trades. The New 52, for those who don't know, was the culmination of a DC Crossover event in which The Flash altered the timeline of the DC Universe causing all of DC's holdings to be rebooted and also allowed characters from Vertigo and Wildstorm to be introduced into the DCU when their universes converged when Flash saved the day.
The idea behind this arc from a business standpoint was to help alleviate the biggest issue most people had with introducing themselves to comics, namely that decades of continuity and storylines were too intimidating for new readers and the need to get caught up on certain things was not appealing. So DC decided to press the reset button in order to say to their prospective audience "hey everyone! It's all cool now we're starting fresh and everyone is on the same playing field! All that stuff that happened in the past doesn't matter anymore!"
This would have been great if not for the fact that many aspects of the DCU of old still remained in tact in this continuity. In the instance of Batman, The Killing Joke, one of the greatest Batman stories ever told, still happened, except that Barbara Gordon was not paralyzed and never became Oracle, but instead remained as Bat Girl. The events of "Under the Red Hood" also still happened, in which Jason Todd, the second Robin, was "killed" and subsequently resurrected to take the mantle of The Red Hood as an anti-hero of sorts.
Speaking of Robins, Dick Grayson has already become Nightwing, Tim Drake has already become Red Robin, and Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce and Talia Al Ghul, has taken the mantle of Robin. Unfortunately, Damian has recently been "killed" during the Snyder's third Batman arc, Death of the Family, which has recently been released as a trade. So now there's a vacancy behind the Robin mask, leaving many to wonder who will take the job.
One of the early candidates is a character that was introduced in the Court of Owls arc, a 17-19 or so year old girl with a punk hair cut, several piercings including a nose-ring, named Harper Row. We're unceremoniously introduced to her in issue six of Batman in which she saves the Dark Knight's life with a makeshift defibrillator she created when Batman nearly died after escaping from the Court of Owls. We're treated to an exchange in which Batman says something to the effect of "oh, it's you again. Leave me alone." This infers they have a history together but we've never seen this person before, in any continuity. Harper doesn't show up again until issue 12 which is completely devoted to her backstory. She lives in the Narrows, Gotham's slums, with her younger homosexual brother Cullen. They are emancipated from their father's custody, who is an abusive drunk who doesn't take kindly to his son being gay. Cullen also attracts attention from bullies at school who beat him up on a regular basis. Harper supports her brother by working nights with the Gotham power conpany, which has apparently helped her to become an electrical engineering genius.
For the first quarter of the issue she does nothing but whine about getting dressed up in formal clothing for a Wayne gala and then how much rich people like Bruce Wayne don't understand what life is like in Gotham. The second quarter she spends sticking up for her brother who is beaten up by bullies and the last half is her being obsessed by Batman who, instead of trying to find the assassins who are trying to kill him he spends his time terrorizing teenagers. The next issue that features her is much later in the third arc "Death of the Family" where Snyder again breaks from the more interesting story of the possible deaths of the whole Bat Family and instead we're treated to "Harper and Cullen's Day Out" in which they visit their father who is imprisioned in Blackgate. We're then subjected to watching as Mr. Row spends the majority of the issue emotionally and verbally abusing his children, which makes me wonder if I'm even reading a Batman book at this point. It was already established that their father was a deadbeat who was abusive through exposition. So this entire issue serves absolutely no purpose other than "SEE WHAT A JERK THEIR DAD IS!? SYMPATHIZE WITH THESE CHARACTERS!"
Which leads me to ask "why should I care?" I know the ploys they've used to make me care, but her development has been nothing short of a Mary-Sue level of quality, which is in such stark contrast to what I've already seen out of the Court of Owls arc alone. She's wholly uninteresting, annoying, and has done more to distract from the reason people read the book as opposed to add to it, mainly to see Batman.
So long story short, I really want to like this New 52 Batman. I really do. There's already been some great moments and when they get done with Zero Year I look forward to where we will go back in the present. But forcing Harper Row on me with such awful character development and motivations is making me also afraid that she'll distract from the things I care about in a Batman comic: Friggin Batman.
So a little backstory here, I finally got around to reading through the first arc of Batman's New 52 line of books by Scott Snyder, thanks to the availability of trades. The New 52, for those who don't know, was the culmination of a DC Crossover event in which The Flash altered the timeline of the DC Universe causing all of DC's holdings to be rebooted and also allowed characters from Vertigo and Wildstorm to be introduced into the DCU when their universes converged when Flash saved the day.
The idea behind this arc from a business standpoint was to help alleviate the biggest issue most people had with introducing themselves to comics, namely that decades of continuity and storylines were too intimidating for new readers and the need to get caught up on certain things was not appealing. So DC decided to press the reset button in order to say to their prospective audience "hey everyone! It's all cool now we're starting fresh and everyone is on the same playing field! All that stuff that happened in the past doesn't matter anymore!"
This would have been great if not for the fact that many aspects of the DCU of old still remained in tact in this continuity. In the instance of Batman, The Killing Joke, one of the greatest Batman stories ever told, still happened, except that Barbara Gordon was not paralyzed and never became Oracle, but instead remained as Bat Girl. The events of "Under the Red Hood" also still happened, in which Jason Todd, the second Robin, was "killed" and subsequently resurrected to take the mantle of The Red Hood as an anti-hero of sorts.
Speaking of Robins, Dick Grayson has already become Nightwing, Tim Drake has already become Red Robin, and Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce and Talia Al Ghul, has taken the mantle of Robin. Unfortunately, Damian has recently been "killed" during the Snyder's third Batman arc, Death of the Family, which has recently been released as a trade. So now there's a vacancy behind the Robin mask, leaving many to wonder who will take the job.
One of the early candidates is a character that was introduced in the Court of Owls arc, a 17-19 or so year old girl with a punk hair cut, several piercings including a nose-ring, named Harper Row. We're unceremoniously introduced to her in issue six of Batman in which she saves the Dark Knight's life with a makeshift defibrillator she created when Batman nearly died after escaping from the Court of Owls. We're treated to an exchange in which Batman says something to the effect of "oh, it's you again. Leave me alone." This infers they have a history together but we've never seen this person before, in any continuity. Harper doesn't show up again until issue 12 which is completely devoted to her backstory. She lives in the Narrows, Gotham's slums, with her younger homosexual brother Cullen. They are emancipated from their father's custody, who is an abusive drunk who doesn't take kindly to his son being gay. Cullen also attracts attention from bullies at school who beat him up on a regular basis. Harper supports her brother by working nights with the Gotham power conpany, which has apparently helped her to become an electrical engineering genius.
For the first quarter of the issue she does nothing but whine about getting dressed up in formal clothing for a Wayne gala and then how much rich people like Bruce Wayne don't understand what life is like in Gotham. The second quarter she spends sticking up for her brother who is beaten up by bullies and the last half is her being obsessed by Batman who, instead of trying to find the assassins who are trying to kill him he spends his time terrorizing teenagers. The next issue that features her is much later in the third arc "Death of the Family" where Snyder again breaks from the more interesting story of the possible deaths of the whole Bat Family and instead we're treated to "Harper and Cullen's Day Out" in which they visit their father who is imprisioned in Blackgate. We're then subjected to watching as Mr. Row spends the majority of the issue emotionally and verbally abusing his children, which makes me wonder if I'm even reading a Batman book at this point. It was already established that their father was a deadbeat who was abusive through exposition. So this entire issue serves absolutely no purpose other than "SEE WHAT A JERK THEIR DAD IS!? SYMPATHIZE WITH THESE CHARACTERS!"
Which leads me to ask "why should I care?" I know the ploys they've used to make me care, but her development has been nothing short of a Mary-Sue level of quality, which is in such stark contrast to what I've already seen out of the Court of Owls arc alone. She's wholly uninteresting, annoying, and has done more to distract from the reason people read the book as opposed to add to it, mainly to see Batman.
So long story short, I really want to like this New 52 Batman. I really do. There's already been some great moments and when they get done with Zero Year I look forward to where we will go back in the present. But forcing Harper Row on me with such awful character development and motivations is making me also afraid that she'll distract from the things I care about in a Batman comic: Friggin Batman.