I think Jason's a good example of how the time-delay in superhero comics canon works. He's been officially back for five years now and they still can't figure out what to do with him. He was a villain, then he went vaguely heroic in Countdown and now he's an even crazier villain. Nothing's sticking because they've yet to find anything that works. I don't think the hairdye thing will be allowed to stick, either, it makes Batman look like too much of an asshole.*
The main problem with Jason is the same problem they had with Stephanie Brown; Batman's entire thing is being the guy who's such a Chessmaster that he's on par with Wonder Woman and Superman in practical power levels. This is not a guy who's supposed to be able to screw-up to the degree that it gets children under his care killed and canon will just keep going into convulsions until people find a way to explain that (or, like with Steph, just eventually throw up their hands and go "It never happened, okay? Happy now?").
* (Not that he isn't often that big of an asshole elsewhere but usually not in his own books and certainly not against Jason, Jason's not popular enough for that. The Bat-family in general, though, has a pretty bad case of shifting characterisations because half the members have long-running solo titles and when you've got 5 different people taking turns to be the main character everyone else's characterisation keeps shifting to make the current main character the most heroic. Which can lead to some extreme variations because of, for example, how far apart Stephanie Brown and Bruce Wayne are on crime-fighting philosophies.)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Examples from Comicverse
Date: 2010-05-20 08:59 pm (UTC)The main problem with Jason is the same problem they had with Stephanie Brown; Batman's entire thing is being the guy who's such a Chessmaster that he's on par with Wonder Woman and Superman in practical power levels. This is not a guy who's supposed to be able to screw-up to the degree that it gets children under his care killed and canon will just keep going into convulsions until people find a way to explain that (or, like with Steph, just eventually throw up their hands and go "It never happened, okay? Happy now?").
* (Not that he isn't often that big of an asshole elsewhere but usually not in his own books and certainly not against Jason, Jason's not popular enough for that. The Bat-family in general, though, has a pretty bad case of shifting characterisations because half the members have long-running solo titles and when you've got 5 different people taking turns to be the main character everyone else's characterisation keeps shifting to make the current main character the most heroic. Which can lead to some extreme variations because of, for example, how far apart Stephanie Brown and Bruce Wayne are on crime-fighting philosophies.)