#lobdell

 And things can be left in the past. Jason’s parents can be dead. They can be bad or useless people/parents and still be loved by Jason. It doesn’t have to be complicated and I don’t need to keep hearing about them. I’m not impressed or astounded that there’s some twist with his dad and Ma Gunn, I’m just annoyed that you couldn’t stop rehashing his origin and write him in an actually comprehendible story that doesn’t take me ten minutes every new issue to figure out wtf is going on and why he’s there. Legitimately, I am not sure what is going on almost every time I start an issue. And I generally don’t have a much better idea by the end of said issue. Stop. Jumping. Around. please, i’m so tired

There’s stuff I like with RHATO, obviously. But there’s so much that is just frustrating. Hundreds of fans working together write him more consistently and comprehensively than one guy manages to. They make him an actual person. And I KNOW Lobdell can do it. He managed it for like the first... dozen? chapters of Rebirth. And then it’s like he couldn’t help himself and had to make it progressively more stupid and overly complicated.

And who is hiring these artists? Jesus christ, just hire fan artists at this point, since half of DCs artists are drawing arms that look like braids and women that look like a laffy taffy with boobs. Don’t even get me started on faces. (Dexter, you can ignore this part, I love you. Jason walking through smoke in his classic outfit. *chefs kiss* the motorcycle??? yes. so much yes....omg side note since this is just a messy rant anyways, but like go look at Nick Robles art of Jason. I’d give that man my right kidney to draw a full series of him. the writing can be bad, idc, I just want female-gaze!Jason.)

No worries, it’s not a stupid question :)

Lobdell has been Jason’s sole writer for like... 9 or so years. That’s a pretty long time for a writer to have so much control over a character’s development. 

In my opinion, Jason has been written as a very inconsistent character ever since he was brought back to life. But his characterization took another big hit during Lobdell’s run. 

It seems like Lobdell initially tried to repair Bruce and Jason’s relationship. Y’know like a father and son vibe or whatever. But then we went from having Jason being a batfam team player that abided by Bruce’s “no kill” rule to a Jason who actively tried to murder Penguin for the sake of his birth father (which is another questionable motivation of his). 

Now idk if that turn of events was all Lobdell’s idea since King needed the batfam out of Gotham for his Bane storyline (plus Roy’s death in HIC). But yeah... it just shows that Jason’s morals/motivations have been flip-flopping all over the place. 

Lobdell is also responsible for Roy’s atrocious characterization in The New 52 and Rebirth. That’s honestly the biggest beef I have with Lobdell. Maybe now we can scrap his Roy characterization and try to bring back some semblance of Post-Crisis Roy for the next reboot. 

Anyways, I know there are a lot of people out there who praise Lobdell for his RHATO run, but I aint one of them. 

Lobdell leaving means that we could get a new writer for Jason who can write Jason from a fresh perspective while also coming up with a new direction for his storylines. 

Jason’s existential crisis. I’m a teacher now. Fuck.

Hasn’t sorted his life out must teach others to.........

Me:

I have actually read all of the New 52 Teen Titan issue’s so I can make an argument (I’ll be honest I skimmed through A LOT of them so I have a vague memory of most of them, but I have read enough of them to get Tim.)

Well I can tell you now, I do not like it.

But what’s funny to me (not haha funny either cause I ain’t laughing) is that the rest of the Teen Titan’s got better as Tim got worse.

Tim turned into a sociopath towards the end of Lobdell’s run

What really gets me about Tim in the New 52 Teen Titan’s is at the beginning, I could at least see where Lobdell got some of it. Like it’s very clear he wasn’t Tim’s biggest fan or had a good understanding, but I could at least see where some of his characterization came from. (That doesn’t mean I like it)

I think I could at least some what deal with Tim till I got to the zero issue where it showed his origin. That’s where I got mad at Lobdell.

That’s where he showed that he didn’t know jack about Tim in an understanding sense.

His origin made him become the opposite of who Tim was. It made Tim less sincere, and more arrogant and just so different from who he was.

He made it so Tim WANTED to be Robin, and he seemed to arrogant about it to me. 

The Tim I knew only became Robin because he thought Batman needed one, and Dick wouldn’t do it again. It was never his intention to become Robin.

So it’s clear he didn’t know the kind of kid Tim was.

and then he goes off and makes him a Olympic athlete. The Tim I knew kept in shape before he was Robin but he wasn’t any Olympic athlete. So that shows he didn’t know the skills he had very well or his kind of background.

Then it says his parents didn’t die, they were just taken away. Which doesn’t bother me, they had to squeeze in a timeline and I understand that.

but

Wouldn’t that make Tim more like when he was still Robin? Since his parents weren’t dead, and no body important in his life died.

Lodbell’s Tim, to me anyway, comes off as a badly understood Red Robin series Tim, where he’s still being effected by the deaths in his family, and sad that people didn’t trust him about Bruce being dead. So he’s more cold as a personality.

It is said Bruce did ‘die’ (albeit for a lot shorter time) so we can assume that Tim was the one that saved him. When nobody believed him. Which would still make him be bitter and cold.

but that doesn’t explain why Tim comes off as a sociopath a lot of the time, and that just irritates me.

I don’t understand why they’re still acting like Tim had to go through the deaths of his best friends, and family.

For all I know it isn’t even Lobdell it’s just editorial telling him to write it like that. Who ever god damn caused this I’m still salty about it.

The more I read Lobdell’s New 52 Teen Titan’s the worse they got Tim. They did eventually replace Lobdell and they did seem to get a better idea of Tim, but it still wasn’t good.

The rest of the Teen Titan’s did get better, but they weren’t as interesting and still didn’t have any of the depth they did before.

At the beginning of it all they made Kon some big word using jerk who was made to destroy the Teen Titans, Bart was a loud mouth jerk, Cassie stole cars and was a jerk. (notice a theme about them all being jerks?) They were all un-likable to me.

Kon did get to be a lot more like how he was before but he never got the depth he did before. It just feels like Lobdell or editorial just rolled there eyes when they got complaints and went, fine we’ll make him more like how he was. Without really caring so they just did a lazy job of it.

Bart never really got to be how he was before they just made him less of a jerk, he was still a jerk but he never got that lovable air-headed personality I loved him for before.

Cassie I’m kind of iffy on. She wasn’t as mean as she was in the beginning but I still don’t see Cassie in her. Almost at all.

They also made Bart some kind of reactionary bad ass where he killed people??? I’m not to sure where they got that … I guess everything has to be edgy and ‘cool’.

I recall them saying that Kon was Tim’s best friend, but they never showed why. I can’t recall them ever having any moment that showed that they would call each other best friends. It just felt like they were tired of complains of un-doing everything, so they just lazily re-did it.

It sucks to see them be absolutely forgotten by DC still, instead of just fixing them and getting them a good writer they just replaced most of them.