“See Batman has shown Gotham your true colors. Unfortunately, Dent… He’s just the beginning. And as for the television’s, so-called, plan, Batman has no jurisdiction. He’ll find him and make him SQUEAL! I know the squealers when I see them, and…”
You weren’t at the funeral. People asked about you.
Dick really fucked up with Jason. Both Bruce and Dick did, in a sense. I think that’s why he was such a good brother for Tim.
Uh, how did Dick fuck up again? For one thing, he was on another planet when Jason died, and for another, Bruce even didn’t tell him about Jason’s death.
They’re from New Titans #55. (The issue where Dick finds out about Jason’s death. Also the infamous Bruce-punches-Dick issue.)
And thank you! I was going to comment on this myself, but it’s nice to see that my work has been done for me. :-)
Frankly, I’ve always been amazed that Bruce actually had the nerve to try and turn this around on Dick, when he was the one who, y’know, couldn’t be bothered to tell Dick that his little brother had died, let alone when the funeral was. (Not that this was an isolated incident - in this time period, Bruce seemed to love trying to blame Dick for situations that he himself had created, which tends to make me distinctly uncomfortable when you consider that transferring blame is one of the key signs of an emotional abuser. And when you add in the fact that this scene ends with Bruce punching Dick in the face and throwing him out, the abusive undertones here become… well, not really undertones anymore. I could go on for quite a while about how disturbing I find all of this, but, uh, I should probably stop here.)
I mean, I get that Bruce was grieving, but the way he acts throughout this entire issue just makes me cringe. (Which is the point, of course… but that doesn’t make it less painful to watch.)
I think we have to attribute this to poor writing and a HORRIBLE editor who let something like this get past him/her (I don’t know who the editor on this title was at the time and I don’t care to look it up). The whole point of a comic editor, in my opinion, is to make certain that a) continuity is maintained, and b) characters are written in a consistent manner, with the same development throughout various titles, within arcs, etc.
If that is the case, then the editor is DEFINITELY at fault for allowing such an outlandish plotline. Dick was OFF-PLANET - and, even if Bruce didn’t know that, how could he have expected Dick to know if he didn’t bother to leave a message?!
…Maybe I am giving too much power/responsibility to editors, though!
Unfortunately, this one can’t be put down to a simple continuity error/editing gaffe, as not only did this all occur within one series (New Titans), in the same issue we see Dick at Jason’s grave, talking about how Bruce never even tried to call him (he didn’t know Dick was off-planet, but nevertheless didn’t try getting in touch), before flashing back to how he found out about Jason’s death when he returned from Tamaran. And then, still in this same issue, we have this scene with Dick and Bruce. So this isn’t a continuity problem, or a problem of different writers being fed different versions of the story. It all happens within one issue, and it was clearly written as Bruce knowing full well that Dick hadn’t known about Jason’s death.
Now, you could argue that within the story it’s out-of-character for Bruce to act quite this horrible, and I personally do prefer when Bruce is written as less full-on jerk than he is here. But it’s not an issue of bad continuity or a negligent editor. For better or worse, this is the story that was intentionally written.
.jpg){kind=link}