#felipe garzonas

"He slipped"

Tim now has to decide, as he watches Batman and Robin's relationship deteriorate before his eyes, if revealing his presence is worth potentially saving his heroes' relationship

They brush his comment aside, continuing their conversation as if the case name isn't special.

But it is.

Not only does it dehumanise the victim, but it shifts the focus of the story. How those with dipolamtic immunity, can use their power to dodge any charges against them. How the system fails consistently. How a man can easy get away with a crime if they have enough money to.

It removes the harm and impact the victim experienced, sometimes undermining it, and instead is remember as just the victim. The victim's name often forgotten, turned into just another statistic.

But by using the Gloria's name, it bring more agency, making it known who exactly the victim was and what she experienced. She wasn't just a victim, she was a victim of rape by a man that could silence her and anyone else that might protestagainst him.

By using Gloria Stanson's name, it focuses on how society and the systems fail. How the justice system is corrupt, letting a man who did a horrendous act like rape get away due to diplomatic immunity and money.

By using Gloria's name, it reduces Felipe's notoriety, preventing him from being glorified, turned into a film to watch as the victim is depicted inaccurately or completely different or wiped from the story.

It brings recognition to those that see the case just how fucked up society and the systems are. And from that, change can happen.

Felipe’s death obviously comes first, and whilst it’s left up in the air whether or not Jason intended for him to go over the balcony, Jason definitely caused it, and the entirety of #425 serves the meta purpose of solidifying the narrative of the consequences of Jason’s “actions”.

However, what isn’t discussed as often is Jose’s death. Of course, this is far less ambiguous as Bruce would never kill on purpose, but ultimately, Jose is killed by a car which falls on his after Bruce climbs up the scrap heap. Even if this wasn’t the intended outcome, like with Jason’s ‘spooking him’, it was Bruce’s actions as Batman which led to Jose’s death, and yet the narrative does not feel the need to follow up on this in the same way that it does with Jason and Felipe - thus, Bruce is effectively, and perhaps hypocritically, deemed blameless.

Anyway, I just think that how the narrative treat each of the Garzonas men’s deaths is really interesting. It’s obvious that Jose’s death was an accident so the narrative exonerates Bruce immediately, but even the suspicion of guilt is enough to fully doom Jason.

It ultimately doesn’t matter that Jason said he didn’t mean to cause the death, as the issue’s very existence (as a continuation of the Diplomat’s Son plot) is enough to find Jason guilty. If the narrative didn’t want us to find him guilty, the story would have been allowed to move on without following up on the aftermath (as it does when Bruce is indirectly responsible for a death, like Jose’s). By choosing to linger on this, the writers highlight Jason’s involvement in the Garzonas case as significant enough for comment, in a way that Bruce’s involvement in the death of Jose Garzonas isn’t. Thus, regardless of whether Jason did it, the narrative finds him guilty of Felipe’s death (and perhaps even all of the subsequent deaths in the junkyard), in a way that it would never for Bruce. And I just think that the contrast in the treatment of Bruce and Jason in the wake of the Garzonases’ deaths (especially since the plot revolves around their diplomatic immunity, aka real life plot armour) is really telling of the treatment of Jason’s character at the end of his OG Robin run, and how formative this is for Jason’s revival in the 2000s.

“He fell - it was an accident!”

Wrong. Lame. Unoriginal. Operates within a narrow window of possibilities that would frame Jason as either good or evil. And has way too little drama.

Twelve-year-old post-Batman-The-Cult Jason Todd was a suicidal little bitch who tried to jump off the balcony to frame Garzonas for the murder of Robin, hoping to make his passing easier on his family while simultaneously getting that piece of shit in trouble with the Justice League. Garzonas reacted on instinct and tried to catch him. There was a scuffle. The wrong person fell. Then Batman turned up.

Jason Todd/Robin & Bruce Wayne/Batman DC Collage 💔