"you can't go home again. and you must go on."

i've been seeing the idea that stephanie brown is hard to properly tackle as a character in the comics because of how horribly she was treated in war games. how what she was made to do is difficult to approach because out-of-universe sexism is what caused it.

and while i agree to some extent, you can't deny the sexism of it all, and how it in retrospect validated everyone irl and in-universe who questioned her ability to be a vigilante for reasons other than her inexperience. but i might be alone in thinking this, but when it comes to rehabilitating characters from bad writing decisions and character assassinations, to me.... steph is not too hard to do this with?

because ultimately what stephanie did wasn't so much *out of character* for her, but very dramatic and having far-reaching terrible consequences for her and gotham. it's not leslie letting a teenager die on her table. from a pure writing perspective, taking stephanie's history into account, it feels like a logical if high stakes culmination of her flaws finally biting her thoroughly in the ass, with innoccents getting caught in the crossfire in ways she can't ignore.

like i can see a world where war games becomes steph's reason to continue being a vigilante. she did this horrible, reckless mistake that got so many killed and hurt people she cared about, and while she can never take it back, being a vigilante can maybe make up for it even a little. after her dad is dealt with steph needed a new motivation to be a vigilante that fits her, and isn't just "because she wants to". and people are right to be hurt, to distrust her, and having stephanie be humbled, yet stubborn and desperate to prove she *can do good*, that she *wants to do good*. having her fumble around until she reaches that point, tackling her own flaws that led her to unintentionally starting a gang war, clumsily yet earnestly trying to repair the relationships that were strained by this, maybe even ending up with better bonds as a result of her trying and growing as a person...... i dunno there's something compelling about it to me.

i don't know if it's any good, but i've been thinking about it lately. sorry for the wall of text in your inbox, feel free to delete if you prefer that.

You're extremely valid, anon. I pretty much agree with everything you said here. There's some real meat in War Games that, in the hands of the right creative team, would make Steph as crunchy and compelling as Cass or Babs.

This whole attitude of "Steph is soooo hard to tackle because War Games was sexist" is a prime example of what I meant in a recent post, that the way people in fandom (and increasingly in canon) discuss Steph actively gets in the way of both feminist critique and letting Steph be fully actualized as a character.

Because if that were true every single woman in superhero comics would be treated the same way.

Babs had Killing Joke. Cass has that forced villain era. Carol Danvers had Avengers #200. I've lost track of all the shit they've put Mary Jane and the various Black Widows through. Ditto Selina Kyle and the Black Canaries. Lois Lane and the original Kara Danvers had the entirety of the 1950s and a decent chunk of the 60s. Modern Kara has big chunks of her reintroduction storyline, especially the art. Starfire, Cassie, Raven, Zatanna, and countless others have the New 52. Leslie Tompkins had fucking War Games (and, more specifically War Crimes).

So why is Stephanie singled out? Why is she, and she alone, treated as tainted, ruined by sexism to the point where we just have no choice but to strip her down to the factory-model-female defaults of "sassy" and "pure of heart"?

It all winds back to this frustrating attitude of putting Steph on a pedestal and demanding that everything about her (and her story, and her suffering) be hailed as special and unique and not like other girls.

There's nothing unique or targeted about the problems with War Games, they're symptoms of deep-rooted systematic issues in the industry: namely, the general lack of regard for any audience beyond middle-aged straight white men, and the fact that way, way too many male comic artists never learn (and are never instructed to learn by their editors) how to draw women outside the context of sexy pin-ups, even when it's gross and inappropriate.

Steph's treatment is a part of that. But so is the fact that, unlike the other characters removed by that storyline (who were people of color, elderly, disabled, etc.), Steph, the only conventionally attractive young white person, got a leading role with full plotlines before, during and after that are constantly dedicated to showing off her character traits, good and bad, and reinforcing how talented and special she is to shore up the tragedy.

Hell, hers is the only removal that gets treated like a tragedy and not a moment of shock value. Even the scripting on her fucking torture scene is way more restrained and treated with more respect than a scene of the same villain torturing a random male character from earlier in the exact same storyline. The problem was never in the writing, it was in the fact that said scene ended up in Catwoman, and was thus drawn by Paul Gulacy, who was on that book in the first place because he draws women like sexy pin-ups and fetish dolls.

War Games is not a story of Stephanie Brown being uniquely targeted by sexist creators who specifically hated her for... reasons. It is one of countless sexist, racist storylines that have happened, are still happening, and will keep happening, because the comic book industry is a part of our larger culture and is thus shaped by the systematic problems and biases that infect that culture.

But that scary reality is big and hard to fix and can't be addressed by harassing creators on social media. And it doesn't fit the narrative that Stephanie is special. It's practically a direct refutation of that narrative, the ultimate slap-in-the-face proof that she is, in fact, Like the Other Girls. You can't girlboss your way out of a systematic problem.

The problem isn’t so much ‘how do you tackle Steph’s culpability for War Games and move the character onwards’ (as you say, plenty of female characters have had to move past plenty of bullshit). The issue is that any return stories had to choose how to navigate: the out of universe misogyny linked to WHY Steph was killed (and every female character who was not a villain was abruptly pulled out of Gotham to clear the table for UTRH) and DiDio’s communication style about it; how Steph’s death had affected other characters and plot momentum for the previous 5 years; the extent to which Steph was responsible for everything that happened during War Games by setting it off; the extent to which Steph feels guilt and responsibility over what happened; and you know present an interesting plot for people to buy that had forward momentum.

That’s a list that I’ve rarely seen navigated with panache across all the categories. Something was going to get missed or sacrificed in the initial stories given how many balls were in the air.

The situation we have stems from the fact that Chuck Dixon choosing to have Steph act like ‘that’s the past. Why are you bringing it up?’ (Reasonably in line with Dixon’s previous characterisation of Steph) was followed by Bryan Q. Miller treating his entire run as ONLY addressing and refuting the out of universe misogyny Steph experienced, while excusing Steph from any personal responsibility or self reflection over why say Tim might be mad at her right now.

BQM wrote a run only focusing on one side of the problem, and glossing over and excusing the other half. He never spent any time looking at the other aspects, and due to Steph’s time off page and her reset in n52 there was no next run for another writer to layer a different approach on top that focused on different aspects. And that has, in the end, resulted in a bifurcation of the character, when added to the very real out of universe reaction to Steph’s writing and how long she was off page for people to rewrite her in their heads to better fit their personal narrative.

Because you have sunshine and optimism blonde haired Steph from the BQM lineage that is most seen in the Batgirls 2021 characterisation of the no-controversy, all pep, sunshine and rainbows approach. Which, while it does have some precedence before 2004 (some of it is rooted in Jon Lewis’ approach to Steph), largely sands off any rough aspects to Steph’s character. It also contains the two titles in which she’s been the headline character, meaning they appear obvious stating points.

And you also still have a spiky, difficult, overly independent line of Steph characterisation that is most prominent in James Tynion IV’s ‘Tec run and Mariko Tamaki’s work. And this is a lineage that does dig in and look at Steph’s feelings about victims and how far they should be allowed to go in response, and where that line is, and how to process that harm. It does a bunch of the work to pivot to look at the other angles.

The problem is that as these two approaches are not in communication with each other and cross pollinating, you can never quite be sure which one you’re going to get from any particular writer, as it’s highly dependent on what they personally have read. And so without an editorial mandate on direction, they stay separate.

Steph is not the only character with a huge, difficult to address, thing in their past. Her problem is that she’s simply tertiary enough her characterisation has fragmented as a result and there hasn’t been any solid attempt to consolidate that fragmentation.

Impulse (1995-) #12

Is a taco a sandwich?

Is an eel a fish?

This and other questions will be answered on today's episode of "Asks that will make for goddamn certain somebody is gonna yell at me no matter what I say!"

But been there, done that. Bring it on.

(An image of Huntress. Just the best look at her I could find)

So, to define our terms so I know at least my college professors won't be mad at me. At least not for that.

The Huntress is a superheroine, mostly known for her purple ensemble, her openly Christian iconography (most of her costumes include a visible gold crucifix which is rarer than you would think among superheroes in general much less American superheroes), and use of a specially designed crossbow as her main weapon. While she does all the wonderful things a superheroine does her main focus has always been on targeting organized crime. All superheroes battle organized crime to various degrees, one can argue that along with fascism, organized crime is one of the root enemies that gave birth to the modern superhero. But she has always paid special attention to taking out mob organizations.

"The Batfamily" is a much less helpful term, because it's not a technical term at all. It usually refers to the group of sidekicks, proteges, partners and allies that have sprung up around Gotham City's Batman. Unlike, say, the Justice League there is no official membership roster. If the Batman and his allies even recognize some sort of definite concept to that name we have no idea. We also have no idea what relationships the various members have to one another, who is within the "in group" of said relationships, nothing. The Gotham set have some of the most firmly sealed secret identities in the business, and they are VERY rarely in contact with the press or news media. And it's certainly not a publically facing organization that we have the ability to analyze from the outside. (Batman Incorporated IS a semi-publicly facing organization but the two groups are SIMILAR but not the SAME. I think. Maybe.).

Is Huntress an ally to Batman? Certainly. She's worked in and around Gotham for most of her career and has often been spotted working alongside Batman or more firmly established members of "the Batfamily". But like I stated above, we have no idea what "The Batfamily" is beyond a totally vibes based definition. One that might be instantly thrown off what the actual MEMBERS consider the definition. It could be entirely literal, that all members are related to one another directly. If that's the case then Huntress' membership or lack of membership comes entirely down to the woman's secret identity. Which we know nothing about. Is she somebody's sister? Daughter? Mother? Wife? Some other 5th thing? Any combination of previous guesses? I don't know, most likely YOU don't know, the list of people who know is probably VERY limited and that's just one theory. Because we know nothing about Batman himself, much less how anyone could be connected to him. Are they all members of the same martial order? Bonded by some kind of demonic blood pact? Any other Bat-related conspiracy you might plug in here could change the calculus on a dime.

She doesn't wear the Bat Symbol but that could mean LITERALLY anything, technically Nightwing doesn't either and we're 99% sure he's the first Robin. If Nightwing doesn't count then NOBODY does. We are technically unsure if the Batman that exists now is the SAME Batman that existed at the beginning of his career. We can only generally assume that because of Occam's Razor giving us no reason to think he ISN'T but then again the only things we know about him at ALL is that he's a tall, white male with a strong chin. Which also fits the description of 85% of the people in his orbit.

The Bats are also well known for being Masters of Disguise.

So my main thought is that Friendship is the hardest form of love for our culture to see as distinct and important in its own right, and “found family” often (though not always) ends up as a sort of...middle ground between that point and the “Only Romance Is Important” idea. In a ship-dominated culture, Friendship is often reduced to Level 1 Romance, and—at least in some ways—a found-family-dominated fandom culture can end up reducing Friendship to Level 1 Family.

In practice, I think that....even when we know that we don’t see or want to see an important relationship as Romantic, a lot of us still struggle with the idea of Friendship by itself being equally valuable or important. So we equate “familial” with “important” (because family is undeniably as important as romance, right? Or at least it’s a lot easier to make that case—and also, there is the not-at-all-insignificant benefit that it marks your view of a relationship as CLEARLY platonic!), and then we try to fit every relationship we love into a clearly-labeled Family-Shaped Box, in order to affirm its importance and give it legitimacy that “just friendship” might not.

...which is, ironically, what shippers are sometimes doing when they seem to be putting every relationship they love into a Romance-Shaped Box for the same reason. That’s the highest-status box there is! Don’t you think this relationship deserves the highest Relationship Rank??

But Friendship—philia, using the Greek word (or at least using it as C. S. Lewis uses it—isn’t a weaker form or “first stage” of other loves. It’s its own form of love. Not lesser, but different. And if we keep following our instinct to “legitimize” it by conflating it with family/storge, we end up doing both kinds of love a disservice.

(And I am definitely including myself in the group of people with this instinct! There’s a fandom I’ve gotten into recently that—as not infrequently happens—has a central relationship you could easily consider “father-son,” “best friends,” or a mixture of the two, and there’s variance within the fandom. I personally view this relationship pretty much purely as “best friends” in my own interpretation, but...a few years ago, I would have been much closer to the “father-son” camp. And even though I’ve consciously changed my approach to character relationships over those last few years—mainly due to a variety of other fandom exposures over the past few years, and the pro-friendship opinions I‘ve formulated while thinking about them—I still have some of those pro-familial instincts I entered fandom with! They’re very much what I came here with, and even though I now like other approaches better, they’re still in my brain.)

The disservice to philia comes in the fact that we are still not celebrating it as a non-romantic, non-familial form of love in its own right—which stinks, because it’s great!! and important to humans!! and we should all appreciate how wonderful Friendship is without feeling like we have to turn it onto another kind of relationship once it passes some Importance Threshold. It’s also a less-important disservice to specific fictional relationships that we try to fit into a Family Box and maybe end up misrepresenting or oversimplifying in the process.

The disservice to storge comes in the fact that, with the label of “Family” so highly valued in itself, it tends to get overused and slapped on everything until it’s started to lose all distinctively familial meaning. It becomes harder for us to explore the depths and beauties of distinctively familial love when we’ve lost the verbal distinction between “relationships founded upon specifically familial roles, a strong shared background, and/or an unchosen yet unbreakable connection” (which is how I would identify storge relationships just off the top of my head) and the “found family” definition of “any group of people who love each other not-exclusively-romantically and aren’t related.”

DC comics relating to the trinity released in June 2026, not including comics uploaded to DC GO!:

Batman:

• Batman #10

• batgirl #20

• poison Ivy #45

• Harley and Ivy life and crimes #6

• Batman #163 (variant)

• absolute Batman #20 (reprint)

• nothing butt nightwing #52

• absolute Batman Arkham special (reprint)

• Wayne family adventures #93

• Barbara Gordon breakout #1 (reprint)

• absolute Catwoman #1

• Barbara Gordon breakout #2

• Batman: gargoyle of Gotham #4

• absolute Batman #21

• Wayne family adventures #94

• nightwing #139

• batman/superman worlds finest #52

• batwoman #4

• Catwoman #88

• detective comics #359 (facsimile edition)

• detective comics #1110

• Harley Quinn #63

• Gotham academy: first year #5

• absolute Batman 15 (reprint)

superman

• supergirl the world

• supergirl survive #1

• adventures of superman: book of el #9

• superman #36 (reprint)

• Jon Kent: this internship is my kryptonite #27

• absolute superman #19 (variant)

• bizarro year none #1 (reprint)

• action comics #1099

• supergirl #14

• supergirl and the legion of superheroes #23 (facsimile edition)

• Batman/superman worlds finest #52

• superman unlimited #14

• absolute superman #20

• superman #39

• bizarro year none #2

• summer of supergirl special #1

• superman: father of tommorow #2

• supergirl: woman of tomorrow (IMAX variant)

Wonder Woman:

• absolute Wonder Woman #21