Someone needs to inform the colorist then, because that Jim Harper flashback seemed black to me.

You had me worried for a sec, as I thought I totally missed that scene, so I went back to the issue, and I think it is an awfully big stretch to say he is colored black on that page. I mean, don't get me wrong, if I was told "Yeah, The Guardian was meant to be black there," I could certainly make a case for it - but I think it is more likely that he is meant to be drawn white there, and just the overall "flashback hue" they were using made him appear darker.

Exactly. And any character can be made cool if writers decide to repeatedly write them as badasses.

This was precisely T.'s point: any character can be made to look stupid if writers decide to crap on them long enough.

And T., I don't think you want to go there, because ALL superheroes and villains are pretty stupid if you get right down to it. I mean, a bad guy who uses a dummy on his arm to do his dirty work? I never liked the Ventriloquist, even when Grant and Wagner introduced him. Rarely did he even seem scary - Lapham's portrayal of him is probably the creepiest, and that was when he was pathetic. I agree, however, that killing him might not be the best idea (I personally don't care, but that's just me). Any character is stupid in the hands of bad writers. Unfortunately, most Bat-writers simply bring in classic villains and don't add anything to make them interesting. That's when they get stale.

Exactly. And as we've seen, if you don't rehabilitate characters you've turned into losers, they get turned into cannon fodder for the next big "event." So the Ventriloquist gets offed along with Magpie because someone along the way decided to start writing him as a chump.

I agree, especially when Scarecrow has been an effective and scary villain in the past. The only thing scenes like that do is jolt the reader out of the story by making a comment on an aspect of the story itself, and when that comment amounts to "James Robinson doesn't like the Scarecrow," it doesn't seem worth the bother.

Frankly, I'm not at all impressed with this arc. The story itself is dull and bloated, crammed full of a staggering amount of filler conversations. The characters spend most of their time standing awkwardly around old crime scenes and dropping allusions to the missing year, and Batman himself is criminally boring, stripped of both the edginess of his post-Miller incarnation and the charms of his campier Silver and Bronze Age predecessors, seeming more like an awkward straight man in a silly costume than anything else.

That’s why I am bothered that Cornelius Stirk never took off as a “new” Scarecrow - he was a twist on the whole fear thing, and ever scarier.

Stirk was alright, but he's got a much narrower range than Crane. Every Stirk story is going to be a serial killer story, and there's only so many ways to tell serial killer stories. Crane's fear and control issues lend themselves to a much wider variety of plots. He can try to gas all of Gotham, for example, or team up with the Joker to kidnap the mayor like he did in Knightfall (certainly one of the more entertaining points of the crossover), or just manipulate people's natural fear and paranoia like he did in No Man's Land (a bad story in practice but a great idea for one in theory). Stirk, unless someone revamps him, has to just do the "I eat your heart" deal over and over again.

Think abot Batman. Nothing about the way he's depicted makes you think people should really fear him. He wears his underwear outside his pants even! But the writers play it straight and never mention how ridiculous he looks in-story and it's a story element that still works to this day.

What about Lex Luthor? A middle-aged bald guy with no powers or particular physical prowess, but he's constantly written as the biggest threat to a guy who's just as smart and infinitely stronger, and it's a premise people buy to this day.

These characters are in for the long haul, they aren't going anywhere, so stop making them into losers in-story. If you can't respect them and write them with respect, don't use them.

As for making established villains losers, the problem with what you're saying is that we KNOW they're losers, but writers keep giving them to us. That's why I am bothered that Cornelius Stirk never took off as a "new" Scarecrow - he was a twist on the whole fear thing, and ever scarier. I would love to see writers revamp villains and "make them cool," but then, of course, the fans want the "classic" version back. It's a conundrum!

Also, has the original Guardian been retconned into a black guy? When did this happen?

In other news: what's with Judd Winick turning Billy Batson into a hardass? Man, everything's running on bass and ackwards over there.