Girl Wonder

Carrie Kelly’s been getting a lot of attention lately.

Websites like Super Hero Hype and Toon Zone have run interviews with Ariel Winters, the actress who provides Carrie’s voice in the latest DC direct-to-DVD feature. Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress wrote a short piece about how exciting it is to see this” self-made superhero in glasses and with moxie to burn.” And artist Noelle Stevenson, better known as Ginger Haze is clearly a fan, too. She’s everywhere.

With The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 hitting stores a couple weeks ago, it’s really not surprising that so many people are talking about Carrie Kelly. I mean, Robin is an undeniably important part of the Batman mythos, and Carrie is the first female Robin to get airtime in any film incarnation, animated or otherwise, of Batman.

Female Robins are hardly ever met by cheering crowds and sparkling praise, but the response to Carrie has been, from what I can tell, at best, optimism and enthusiasm and, at worst, apathy.

Helena Wayne, too, only recently retconned into holding the Robin mantel, hasn’t inspired the fury with which some comic book fans are quick to meet continuity changes and new heroes in old identities.

The same cannot be said for the third Girl Wonder.

Stephanie Brown may be one of the most polarizing characters in comics. She inspires a lot of fan love and fan action on her behalf, especially after Bryan Q. Miller’s take on her.

But, boy, do people hate her—fans, creators, and executives alike.

Why, though? Objectively, she’s not that different from the other two ladies who’ve donned the red and green. Like both of the others, she was Robin briefly before moving on to another identity. Like Carrie, she was selected to take the place of a Robin that could no longer perform his duties, and, like Carrie, she’s the child of neglectful parents. And she and Helena were both removed abruptly from the role of Robin, though the circumstances were certainly different.

What is it, then, about Stephanie that gets people so worked up? There are a few things that I can think of.

First, Stephanie took the place of an active Robin. Tim Drake didn’t get killed, he just retired, and he only did that because his father forced him. And Batman appointed Stephanie to the job in the hopes of getting Tim to return. Tim Drake is a popular character—I got into comics in the first place through the Robin and Young Justice books; Tim was the first character I cared about, so I get the attachment people have to him. Whoever replaced him was bound to meet with some resentment; Damian was met with his fair share of hate when he was introduced to take the Robin mantle from Tim (and in a much more literal sense than Stephanie). And Stephanie, who was Tim’s girlfriend at that time in comics, went behind his back to take up the role. It didn’t go over well.

Then, there’s the fact that Stephanie got fired. Stephanie was not the best hero before— as Spoiler, she was reckless and sloppy and frequently got into more trouble than she could handle-- and her appointment as Robin didn’t really improve her all that much. The deal from the beginning was that she’d only be Robin as long as she followed all of Batman’s orders. She doesn’t, though she’s hardly the only Robin to disobey (rebellion was Jason’s M.O., and Carrie was known to go against the Bat more than once, Dick and Tim both struck out on their own after a while, and Damian…well, is Damian), and she gets canned pretty quickly; the mantle is taken away from her, and the way is paved to restore the status quo—it surprises no one when Tim becomes Robin again.

So, Stephanie takes the mantle from someone else, and she gets it taken away from her by the Bat himself.  Neither of the other female Robins share those characteristics—Carrie becomes Robin years after Jason’s death and chooses to move on to her Catgirl identity, and Helena is raised to be Robin and only abandons that title after being tossed from her world. But I think there’s a third factor that plays into the harsh reactions to Stephanie as Robin.

Carrie and Helena are both Robins on alternate Earths. The two of them can have as many adventures as they want for as long as they want, and it will have no effect on Dick, Jason, Tim, or Damian. Stephanie, however, was Robin on the main Earth. Paired with the way that she became Robin, the fact that every issue in which she appears as Robin means that one of the guys is booted from the role, Stephanie had a lot working against her. It would’ve taken time and some pretty fantastic writers to allow her to win over fans that were (a) devoted to the Robin(s) already in place and/or (b) not used to a girl in the Robin suit.

And Stephanie wasn’t given that time. She only spends about three issues of Robin as the Girl Wonder—seventy-one days in Gotham-time, according to her narration. And while there may be nothing wrong with Bill Willingham as a writer, his writing of Stephanie didn’t endear her to the longtime fans of Tim Drake who had been reading the series for years. Then Stephanie was seemingly killed off and disappeared from comics for years.

There’s a lot working against Stephanie getting respect as a Robin—and, really, against her getting respect as a character, in some cases, though her fanbase is a loyal one, and if they have anything to say about it, we haven’t seen the last of her.

But at least it can be said that the vehement dislike for Stephanie-as-Robin is not a case of “people hate all girl Robins.” It is nice to see Carrie Kelly getting attention in a positive way. Not many women of the Bat Family have made it to the screen—big or small—and while Steph fans will probably be fighting the “was she a real Robin” battle forever, the popularity that Carrie seems to be gaining proves that there is room in the DC Universe for a female Robin.

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