It makes a hell of a lot more sense than a doctor betraying her oath just to make Batman feel bad.

Admission time: I actually wrote a short fanfic to this effect after the original Thompkins “revalation” came out.

You should include Bill WIllingham’s disgusting and insulting defense to the original Leslie Tompkins story, where he contemptuously heaped insults and scorn onto fans who voiced their disapproval. It was really poor form, and kind of turned my off from Willingham since. Since then, I only read his Fables via the library so that I don’t put money in his pocket.

Brian,

Could you please give the issues that these were pulled from? Also was there any follow up between Bruce and Leslie after Steph was revealed alive? Talk about a “nevermind what I said back in Africa” moment.

I keep reading Fables, but Willingham’s constant need to espouse his politics irritates the hell out of me.

I think this kind of “revelations” worked fine on Identity Crisis. A second time is just wrong and silly.

This is possibly my favorite retcon ever, as it eventually led to Bryan Q Miller’s fantastic Batgirl run. I’m still sore that DC cancelled it and that this blog is the closest thing I’ll get to a Stephanie appearance this month.

No, it sucked in Identity Crisis, too.

MBloom, Steph shows up in the Batman: Leviathan Strikes one-shot, in stores tomorrow. As Batgirl, even.

This may be the best retcon in recent years, simply because it explained a WTF moment that destroyed two characters in one fell swoop.

I keep reading Fables, but Willingham’s constant need to espouse his politics irritates the hell out of me.

How are his politics influencing the exchange he wrote above? What is he espousing exactly?

I think this kind of “revelations” worked fine on Identity Crisis.

Nothing worked fine in Identity Crisis.

i thought the whole murder rap facing Leslie was wrong mostly because she was a pasifiss and would not use violent methods at all. plus the fact if stephanie had been dead a memorial for the batcave would show up.

If only more writers at DC could undo most of the stuff that Judd Winick has written.

Agreed with everyone else. The retcon made no sense, but it undid a stupid idea that made even less sense and gave us a terrific character back better than ever.

Moreover, it could be attributed to Infinite Crisis by *readers* without having them make *reference in-comic* to Superboy-punches. That was salt in the wound of Jason Todd’s resurrection, as far as I was concerned: that they kept making reference to Superboy-punches in-story, so that people within the continuity were aware of continuity having changed rather than just living in the new “Talia/ Lazarus Pit” timeline.

Hey Shawn, you silly Judd hater, Judd Winick didn’t write War Games. So piss off. Thanks!

Wow, both of these are pretty awful stories.

Poor Alfred, constantly dropping his tray over some contrived plot twist or another.

T., what did Willingham say about the fans? I’m interested to know what he said in defense of the story when the readers got upset… you’d think he would have anticipated some backlash over a move like that…

After the story and the outrage, he posted the following on a message board:

Yes, deliberately withholding treatment, except in the context of a legitimate triage decision, is quite the unequivocal violation of the Hippocratic oath. In a court of law one could reasonably expect to be found guilty of murder.

Seems like Leslie snapped. Seems like Batman doesn’t like her much anymore (though he still couldn’t bring himself to be the one who brought her in).

After this issue came out, I took a rare tour of other message boards to try to gauge what the general reaction might be. As expected, it was overwhelmingly negative, with lots of “how dare Willingham do this!” What I didn’t expect is how much message traffic this book would generate. Message boards that might have one or two regulars post every few days, or so, suddenly exploded with five and six pages of new messages per day.

Here’s something you readers need to realize: Though we generally hope readers will like our stories, hating them is almost as good. Hating them so much that yours is the one book everyone is talking about now — well that’s golden. One can’t hate without passion and involvement. The one reaction we most fear is indifference.

Yes, I’m a little put out by the (at least three and counting) reputedly male readers who posted testimony that they wept after reading this issue (one claiming it was for the loss of innocence). Not that I believe they actually did. But I’m still from an early enough American generation to find men claiming to act like overly dramatic little girls just a little bit cringe-making.

And of course there were scores of those claiming that this incident was the last straw and they’re giving up my books, or the Bat books, or all comic books, forever. Here’s a splash of water for everyone who ever has or ever will make such an hysterical claim on a message board: We never believe you. If you’re the type to indulge in “how dare they do that!” we know you’ll always be back for further outrages. Those addicted to indignation need constant indignation feeding.

But, that aside, all is good. Feel free to blame me for ruining Batman. I could claim that editorial mandates were in force here and thereby split the blame a bit, but I think this time I won’t. I willingly took the job, and I’m too greedy to want to share the credit this time.

You can see this and more of his responses here:

http://www.clockworkstorybook.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=291&st=0&sk=t&sd=

Man, the Batbooks were so bad at that time. The War Games story was horrible, and revealing that Leslie was responsible was even worse. And I remember what T is talking about. Willingham basically called everyone whiney fanboys afraid of change, and not in a more civil way than I am, when they pointed out how stupid and badly written his reveal of Leslie as Killer was. I don’t think I’ve bought a WIllingham comic since. There’s plenty of comics out there, I don’t need to support ones created by people I think are assholes.

Ironically, he later seemed to backpedal months down the line, although to be fair this was secondhand reported hearsay from an apparently young girl who saw him speak at a panel after Stephanie was resurrected:

http://nevermore999.livejournal.com/111736.html

Bill Willingham came in the panel, and ohmygod this really stupid guy bought up Steph, saying her death was poignant and he didn’t think they should have bought her back because it was so important Batman kicked her to the curb and Leslie Thompkins (yes, he apparently liked THAT too) and Mom got all uncomfortable next to me…to Willingham’s credit, he shut the guy down, saying the death was never his plan and he actually argued for Steph to live. Sattler said he wasn’t around for it, and that the fans are really into Steph, and that he thinks it’s important they redeemed Leslie Thompkins.

So he went from proudly standing by and taking responsibility for the story decisions and refusing to claim editorial mandates made him do it in any way to claiming he was adamantly and vocally against said story decisions and claiming that he felt it important to redeem Leslie.

Then he added the following gem, which the girl at the panel called him on, which led to another backpedal:

Then Willingham had to ruin everything and say, and I swear to God this is a direct quote “I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the memorial case.”

My jaw just dropped open. I knew from interviews and shit that Willingham was an asshole- and I’m sorry, he is, for mocking people at panels, and mocking men for daring to cry over a comic book death- but that is just a creepy as fuck thing to say. I raised my hand and I wanted to say “Willingham, you’re an asshole” but instead I just told him a) I hated Stephanie’s death and b) You shouldn’t want to gun people down for being passionate about a character.

Backpedaling time! No, see, those silly girls were just distracting from important issues at panels by asking the same question over and over again, andandand they just don’t understanf how the comics industry works and then, I swear to god, he word for word said the “being hated is almost as good” quote. He DID. He and Sattler telled me that when fans hate a story, it’s almost as good as if they love it, because at least they care.

Again, this panel experience is hearsay and there are two sides to every story, so maybe in context or with Willingham’s side of it it comes off sounding less bad.

Oh, looks like T posted the links while I was writing. There you go.

T. actually chopped off the last sentence/paragraph of Willingham’s post, which read simply: “How do you like them apples?”

Isn’t it nice when crappy writers also turn out to be crappy people? It makes life nice and symmetrical. When I read something like Frank Miller’s OWS piece, I inevitably (and illogically) think, “Do I have to stop liking his comics now?” When I read any of Willingham’s screeds, I think “Oh good, I never liked any of his comics anyway!”

I actually like Willingham’s work on fables and HERO, but this? I could see circumstances in which Leslie might kill or withhold treatment (she knows it’s the only way to save 1,000 people from Evil Person) but this? Not in a million years.
I’m glad they retconned it. She was one of Denny O’Neil’s best contributions to the Bat-mythos (and I’m not an O’Neil fan).
As I stopped reading Batman regularly after that stupid earthquake plotline (as someone who used to live in a hurricane-prone area, the absurdity of the whole No Man’s Land concept turned out to be the straw that broke my back) I had no idea there was an issue about Stephanie’s plaque. But I liked her so I’m glad she’s back. Was back. If she ever existed post-Flashpoint (argh!).

That’s some awesome Cammo artwork there.

So, wait, what the hell happened to Stephanie’s kid in all this?

Then Willingham had to ruin everything and say, and I swear to God this is a direct quote “I wanted to gun down those girls who kept asking about the memorial case.”

This isn’t really any surprise. The line “Now you know why there’s no memorial in the cave” reads like it’s directed at fans, not Robin at all. I’m surprised they didn’t both turn and smirk at the reader after he said it.

“MBloom, Steph shows up in the Batman: Leviathan Strikes one-shot, in stores tomorrow. As Batgirl, even.”

Hells, yeah. Thanks, Michael P, I’ll be sure to pick up a copy.

Hey, Matt Bird, great blog.

Thanks, T.

For what it is worth, I think that there is about a 100% chance that Willingham did not come up with the Leslie Thompkins idea and about a 99% chance that Willingham did not come up with the idea to kill Stephanie Brown.

In the first case, he was just brought in to write these couple of issues of Batman and in the second case, he was just writing Robin at the time – he did not have much say in what the Bat-books did.

That is not to say that his comments were not bad, they were. Just noting that it makes sense to me that he’d backpedal after the fact after defending his editor at the time, because there really is not much need to defend the editor later on when the editor has left the company and the decisions made at the time were all retconned away.

So, wait, what the hell happened to Stephanie’s kid in all this?

Yeah, that’s a damn good question. I wasn’t reading Bat-books during the mid-2000s, and hadn’t followed the Stephanie Brown character for years and years until she became Batgirl.

As far as I can remember, Bryan Q. Miller (wisely) never even hinted at her having a kid in his awesome Batgirl run… until I read it in this blog, I never even knew she had a kid?

So, what happened to the kid? Is s/he hanging out with the Parker baby?

For what it is worth, I think that there is about a 100% chance that Willingham did not come up with the Leslie Thompkins idea and about a 99% chance that Willingham did not come up with the idea to kill Stephanie Brown.

To me that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter which statement is true, whether it’s his first statement claiming that it was his idea or whether it’s his second later on claiming he was vocally against the idea all along. Since it’s impossible for both statements to be true, one of the statements is a blatant outright lie, which for me is the big problem in and of itself.

If the first statement is the lie, then that means he was pretending it was his idea solely in order to bait and antagonize the fans. It’s basically a form of trolling the fanbase. If it indeed was the editor’s idea, why did he feel the need to so blatantly lie about that fact and claim credit in such an abrasive, defensive manner? Especially if he later claims he was actually arguing against the idea himself and believed that Leslie needed to be eventually redeemed, Why would he then mock fans for agreeing with what he supposedly believed himself behind the scenes?

And if the second statement is the lie, that means he changed his public stance afterward in order to save face.

Neither interpretation is particularly flattering.

If it indeed was the editor’s idea, why did he feel the need to so blatantly lie about that fact and claim credit in such an abrasive, defensive manner?

Clearly, to defend the editor.

Again, I am not saying that it made his comments any less bad as it does not, I’m just saying that it is extremely likely that he did not, in fact, come up with either of the two plots himself. No more, no less.

Clearly, to defend the editor.

Yes, I get your point, but again I repeat why do it at all? And more specifically, why do it so obnoxiously and callously?

If the editor did indeed write the story, why does he need Willingham to blatantly lie to defend him? I’m not saying he should throw the editor under the bus or bash him or encourage fans to rip him apart to deflect criticism from himself, but why so enthusiastically take the rap while defending the story choices? He could have just not given a public statement at all.

Or if he is going to fall on the sword and take credit for his editor’s idea, he could still do so tactfully.

And furthermore, what’s the point of defending the editor and falling on the sword at first if he’s just going to throw him under the bus later on retroactively, even if the editor is no longer on the book and the decision is retconned? Either way the end result is the same, the editor’s reputation ends up soiled.

according to her wiki page, Stephanie gave the kid up for adoption right after birth.

There seemed to be some kind of ridiculous backlash against Denny O’Neil in the Bat-offices for some years after he left, as characters that he created himself or were created under his editorial aegis were trashed, made unrecognisable, or killed off, etc etc.

Just off the top of my head:

Harold
Leslie Thompkins
Arnold Wesker/Scarface
KGBeast
Vesper Fairchild

And of course the undoing of the closest thing Batman has ever had to a permanent change in his status quo – the death of Jason Todd.

That was the worst creative mis-step in decades, but what happened to Leslie was almost as bad.

Gunning down those people complaining about the memorial case seems a bit much. Much easier to just point and laugh at them.

But one thing I don’t get is why Batman would go out of his way to take the Batplane to Africa, and sneak around dressed as Batman, just to confront a person who already knows his identity.

Batman’s speech to Leslie is one of the best holier than thou moments Bats has had. Not annoying at all, which is something writers hardly manage to get.

The retcon was poorly written, though.

And man, I hate modern lettering.

“Poor Alfred, constantly dropping his tray over some contrived plot twist or another.”

Dean FTW.

You know, what Willingham said in the quotes T posted is pretty much true, though, really. It’s just that no one usually comes right out and SAYS so. For that, I’ve got some respect for Willingham. (Probably the forum that he chose to do it in wasn’t the best way, but I much prefer someone telling me what I know is true rather than someone doing a spin job on me.) The writers and editors (particularly at that time at DC, I think) would rather you pay attention to their books because you #$%%ing hate them than not pay attention at all.

Which isn’t a good long term strategy, which may be why Willingham backpedaled.

I sure hope that con goer is a fairly young girl, especially with the “He and Sattler telled me…” bit. Ay yi yi.

“Yes, I’m a little put out by the (at least three and counting) reputedly male readers who posted testimony that they wept after reading this issue (one claiming it was for the loss of innocence). Not that I believe they actually did. But I’m still from an early enough American generation to find men claiming to act like overly dramatic little girls just a little bit cringe-making. ”

I do agree with this bit from Willingham as well, particularly the “loss of innocence” one. If you’ve been reading comics for any amount of time, or EXISTED for any amount of time, this story shouldn’t be the “loss” of your “innocence”. If someone said that just facetiously, they deserve to be called out on it, and if they said it seriously…

I keep thinking I should reread War Games and see if it was as bad as I thought, but then I see something better at the library, and say, no, I’ll read that instead. But War Games was WAY stupid. (Like the bit about Batman having been just an urban legend before this, until he got caught on camera at the school, or whatever. REALLY? Ow. My head hurts even remembering THAT much.)

I assumed what “loss of innocence” refers to was Stephanie’s death, not the speaker’s disillusionment. For all he knows, it’s someone who saw her as someone similar to their sister or daughter.
And this implies that while Willingham thinks it’s wonderful if guys hate him for his work, he’s horrified if they’re moved enough by a death to cry over it. Issues much?

Granted, Fraser, but Stephanie wasn’t the first sidekick to die horribly either, so I’m not sure I see the “loss of innocence” on that point.

I think, based on what Willingham is saying earlier in what T quoted, it’s the reveal that this post starts with, Leslie as murderer. Which to me does seem to be an odd thing to cry over. Steph’s death, sure, but Leslie as murderer? To me it was more “SHAKES HEAD” “mutters WTF?”

But it is odd that someone who makes a living as a writer (someone who deliberately manipulates people’s emotions) gets…worked up over someone whose emotions were manipulated by said writing.

It’s like a sibling punching you in the arm and then asking “why you crying?” Sorta.

T wrote:

“And furthermore, what’s the point of defending the editor and falling on the sword at first if he’s just going to throw him under the bus later on retroactively, even if the editor is no longer on the book and the decision is retconned? Either way the end result is the same, the editor’s reputation ends up soiled.”

Understand this is only something I’m putting forth, but I could see being angry at falling on his sword only to have DC then change the entire story, making said gesture pointless. Maybe then he decided it wasn’t worth it, and threw said people under the bus because DC already in essence did the same to his initial gesture. Mind you, the actual editor at the time more than likely wasn’t the same one who retconned the idea, but I could certainly get behind the idea of being less than thrilled after taking the heat for someone else’s (DC’s) idea only to have DC then retcon the whole thing.

Of course, pretty much everything gets retconned eventually (Although Gwen and Uncle Ben are still dead so far…), so maybe it just wasn’t worth it either way.

The whole memorial case is another issue. While the pro-case people had a point, I remember it getting brought up SO often, and used as concrete “proof” of sexism, that the very vocal proponents of the memorial case were the ones that eventually soured me on the idea just because it was so non-stop.

Take it and run,

That retcon had already happened in my head way before it was made official. It was too obvious – and much more in character.

In my version though Leslie’s reasons were exactly the same as the stated ones for killing Steph – To shock Bruce into seeing sense.

Understand this is only something I’m putting forth, but I could see being angry at falling on his sword only to have DC then change the entire story, making said gesture pointless. Maybe then he decided it wasn’t worth it, and threw said people under the bus because DC already in essence did the same to his initial gesture. Mind you, the actual editor at the time more than likely wasn’t the same one who retconned the idea, but I could certainly get behind the idea of being less than thrilled after taking the heat for someone else’s (DC’s) idea only to have DC then retcon the whole thing.

Okay, that theory is somewhat plausible. I can see it.

Understand this is only something I’m putting forth, but I could see being angry at falling on his sword only to have DC then change the entire story, making said gesture pointless. Maybe then he decided it wasn’t worth it, and threw said people under the bus because DC already in essence did the same to his initial gesture. Mind you, the actual editor at the time more than likely wasn’t the same one who retconned the idea, but I could certainly get behind the idea of being less than thrilled after taking the heat for someone else’s (DC’s) idea only to have DC then retcon the whole thing.

Yep, that’s exactly why I brought it up.

True, a lot of sidekicks have died, but who knows if the guys who lost their innocence read those issues? And the fact Steph is female is going to push different buttons for some readers than say, Jason Todd buying it.

While I do find people get waaaay too dramatic over super hero comics, I have to wonder what line of thought led to people thinking making Leslie Thompkins a murderer was a good idea. Yikes.

“While I do find people get waaaay too dramatic over super hero comics, I have to wonder what line of thought led to people thinking making Leslie Thompkins a murderer was a good idea. ”

The same line of thought that leads to a Spiderman deal with the devil or Professor X having a private lust for Jean Grey turn him into a villain.

I would argue that it’s a recent evolution in comics that we need to see the good guy doing “questionable” things because having the villain do it doesn’t carry any weight with the fans to drive discussion (and by extension, word of mouth sales). Magneto or Doctor Doom slaughter an island town? Eh, whatever. Good, sweet, nice old lady Leslie Tompkins lets a patient die to stick it to Bats? Hey, now we’re talking.

Look at the major stories of the last decade: Civil War (heroes doing unethical things like cloning Thor and enforcing, essentially, police rule over superhumans), World War Hulk (caused by the Illuminati questionably sending the Hulk into space), Sharon Carter kills Captain America, Wonder Woman kills Max Lord, Cyclops currently goes near villain and does everything from sending kids into battle to secretly retaining a mutant hit squad, Spiderman makes a deal with the devil, Batman becomes even more paranoid with OMAC, Scarlet Witch goes nuts and first creates a mutant ruled world before decimating the mutant population, Superboy Prime goes Kid Miracleman, the JLA sanctions villain lobotomies and so on.

With heroes like these, who really needs a villain anymore?

To some extent, while bad for business over time, what Willingham says about being hated is true and indifference is the worst thing possible as a writer. They know that making the heroes do crap like this drives discussion and makes for sales. And if you look at it, there have been some hints at the inverse of this paradigm happening. After all, Norman’s Dark Avengers were still somewhat heroic, and Sinestro has had a bit of the hero turn.

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point a major villain (Magneto, maybe?) does a complete reform over a year and winds up putting down a former hero who goes too far (Cyclops, maybe?). It just feels at times like that’s where it’s headed…which just muddles everything, so what’s the point then?

I remember when I read this story, I was pretty well appalled. After all, a few short years earlier, during “No Man’s Land,” there was a scene where Leslie Thompkins was severely admonishing Batman for suggesting that she withhold treatment from mass murderer Mr. Zsasz. That’s how princpled Leslie is about the sanctity of life. To then have a story where she let an innocent person die just to prove a point to Batman was rhidiculous. It’s wrong to let a brutal serial killer die, but not to save the life of a teenage girl? Yeah, right, sure. So I was definitely happy when this retcon was written. In addition to bringing back Stephanie Brown, it also undid a horrible subplot that totally ruined the character of Leslie.

In retrospect, the retcon means that the Goddamn Batman ™ got the wool pulled over his eyes by an old woman! Smooth move, Willingham!

Willingham lost it because he was so used to the praise he got for Fables its clear. He was stunned no one liked his shitty story on War Games. He couldn’t defend his point at all on the story and I think everyone knew a story was gonna retcon this. Didio himself a year or 2 later claimed he had just became EIC by the time it went through and couldn’t stop it. But he did allow it to be changed.

I understand the whole “Women in Refrigerators” logic of why Stephanie shouldn’t stay dead, I understand that she was a fan favorite and I certainly agree that “War Crimes” was an abysmal idea—but her death had major impact, and gave the ending of the War Games story line a weight that it completely lacks now that she was brought back. She should have stayed dead.

@Josh

You must be joking. Steph’s death was pointless and served no purpose and it was a waist of a wonderful character.

So you are wrong, bringing back Steph was the right thing to do.

Gods, Stephanie Brown is a HORRIBLE character. Boring. Generic. Who is she now? Spoiler? Robin? Batgirl? They REALLY should have kept this turkey dead. It’s not like Bats needed another supporting character. There’s like two Batgirls? One Batwoman? Two Robins? They need one Joker and one crowbar to trim off some of the fat.

I don’t know if it makes any difference chiming in so long after this discussion…but I will anyway.

I’ve talked to Bill about this story and it isn’t something he came up with on his own. This story was going to happen whether Bill wrote it or not. The Bat editors clearly had plans of a shake up in the Bat-books and needed certain things to happen to make it work. I don’t know what those plans were or if they got carried out but many of the stories you read in comics are editorially driven. Particularly when it’s a franchise group of books, crossovers, or big event type stories.

Another thing is that it’s a big no-no for writers to blame the editors/company of some of the behind the scenes decisions. There have been a few writers who’ve lost work because they said things or revealed stuff that editorial felt shouldn’t have been made public. I don’t know if any of you remember what happened to Dwayne McDuffy after defending his run on the JLA by revealing some of the behind the scenes stuff. He got let go from the book.

Bill’s a great guy and did what he was asked and took the grief for it.

At the risk of setting myself up as Devil’s Advocate . . .

At the risk of ignoring the retcon and subsequent appearances of both Leslie and Stephanie . . .

But mostly out of a desire to incite debate and not being a so-called troll . . .

Suppose the retcon NEVER happened?

Suppose Leslie is regarded as a murderer up to this day?

Clearly the Batman has NEVER forgiven her for this. Let’s face it, the Batman is not about forgiveness. The Batman is about vengeance. Whatever else you may think his speech to Leslie, this speech is VERY much in character for him.

A retcon like this only diminshes the impact of that particular scene.

I remember when nearly 7 years ago, this news first came out and I realized that Willingham had even gone so far as to insult the fans of Spoiler and Thompkins, I was really filled with disgust. Seeing how he didn’t change his attitude much in the years that followed, that’s just why my opinion on him hasn’t changed much either. As a conservative myself, it was embarrassing to learn Willingham was, because of the poor example he set. The really bizarre, eerie thing is how he aided the degradation of another conservative’s creation (Chuck Dixon, also a conservative, was the creator of Spoiler years before, of course).

This is semi-related, but in 2009, when he wrote about “superhero decadence” on Breitbart, I wish I could’ve said I appreciated his op-ed more than I did, but the disgust I still felt at his insulting the audience back in 2005 kept me from doing so. I recall that I posted a reply to that item he’d written where I brought this up along with the fact that he’d written Day of Vengeance, and even if it was editorial mandate, he’d still participated on his part in additional character degradation on Jean Loring. He wrote this special reply just for me where he tried to make clear that what happened to Spoiler was editorial mandate, but he wouldn’t actually address my mention of Jean Loring. I wonder why? It’s as though he thought that wasn’t important, and he seemed kind of embarrassed that I would remind him of the insulting reply he’d given to fans of Stephanie and Leslie. I wonder why?

Seeing that Willingham didn’t change much even after 5-6 years, I guess that’s one more reason why I can’t feel too sorry if he’s now mostly washed up in superhero comics. If he’s smart, he’ll stick with his creator owned books and avoid participation in corporate owned books if he can’t manage to stand up to editorial mandates and if he can’t avoid making crude remarks that only have the effect of alienating potential readers.

I never cared for War Games bc both the story and artwork were horrible. Fables is an enjoyable read even though I hve never been a fantasy fan. I know several women who never had a desire to read comic books until they read Fables and then they got into comics. So Willingham deserves some credit. What I’m sick of is some comic fans complaining about Frank Millers OWS rant or Chuck Dixon. Isn’t it ironic that the same Liberals who claim to be for Free Speech demonize anyone who disagrees with them??? Its ok for Mark Waid,
Or Gail Simone to bash conservatives every chance but not ok for someone who disagrees with them to express their views. Marvel and DC both should be ashamed of themselves for always pushing their Leftists views on us fans. Mark Milliar was right about one thing and that was his defense of Frank Miller bc Liberalism should be about allowing everyone to be heard and not persecuting the oposition just bc they believe a differnt way. As a Free Speech advocate I’m disgusted with the way Leftist Comic book creators treat ppl who do not agree with them.

G99 giving someone crap because they say something offensive (to the crap giver) doesn’t in any way shape or form violate free speech. So far as I know, nobody’s tried preventing Miller from speaking, they’ve just told him he’s full of shit.
Writing columns and letters to the editor where I used to live, I’ve had conservatives tell me I’m treasonous, anti-god, non-white (because no white person could write anything that stupid) and that I ought to commit suicide. I have absolutely no sympathy for conservatives who whine about how persecuted they are because someone told them their views were full of crap.

To clarify the above, my point was that I’ve never felt any of the stuff said about me constituted an attempt to repress my free speech. As Harry Truman said, if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

The real mistake is Stephanie Brown still being alive.

What an awful character. At least she hasn’t appeared in New 52.

I recently read an account that the reason there was no memorial to stephanie was because she wasn’t really a Robin.

Make of THAT what you will.