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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Waffles For Stephanie (REPOST) (Also a few days late)

Not too long ago, David Willis over at Shortpacked! drew a particularly powerful and popular comic featuring Bruce Wayne and his multiple adopted sons. In this comic, Bruce Wayne calls all of his “tiny clones” to him; his Robins approach him one by one and they are scrutinized by their mentor. Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian are all approved, with Bruce applauding each boy’s black hair and blue eyes—even pointing out that he approves of Jason altering his appearance to look the same as his fellows.

 And then Stephanie Brown shows up. The lone female Robin in the former main DC Universe. She’s bright and smiling when she meets Bruce; he frowns as he surveys her—she doesn’t have black hair and blue eyes. Her eyes are green. Her hair’s blonde. And she is not a man.

Willis doesn’t write any dialogue. He just draws Bruce pointing Stephanie towards the door.

 In a few panels, Willis illustrated DC’s treatment of Stephanie Brown, a female character with no shortage of fan support and a loyal following. But, more than that—and this may not have been Willis’s intent—it illustrates DC’s treatment of their female readers.

 The saga of Stephanie Brown, particularly the recent issues with the New 52, really is an excellent parallel for the struggles of female comic book fans.

 Stephanie was Robin. It was a brief tenure, but she wore the suit. She worked with Batman. She trained with the other members of the Batfamily. The mantle was taken away from her—which doesn’t erase the face that she once held it. She died, came back, and kept fighting as an ally of the Bat. And through all this, she received no respect from her fellow heroes.

 And then she became Batgirl. There was an outcry of rage from Cassandra Cain fans, and rightfully so—Cass is another great female character that’s been horribly treated by DC. But the book went on, and it introduced new readers to Stephanie Brown and convinced skeptics that a character introduced mainly as a tool for incorporating after school special-type teen issues and a character that had been sloppily handled for years could lead a successful and delightful Batgirl book.

 In spite of this success, the coming of the New 52 ended her book and, it seems, removed her entirely from the DC Universe so that she could be replaced by Barbara Gordon, a fine character in her own right, but that’s neither here nor there.

 The point is Stephanie was something different. Different and good, and her book, thanks in no small part to Bryan Q. Miller’s spot on writing, could have done a great deal for broadening DC’s readership.

 But DC didn’t want her. They wanted to return to the classic Batgirl, the classic Batman, so on, so forth.

There’s no way to guess what DC’s true motivations were for the New 52. Theories abound on the whys, and there are plenty of official reasons. But one thing is clear: things that are new, things that are not what is expected, are not cherished or nourished at DC.

 And, it certainly seems, female readers are among those things that are not welcomed. We’re shouted down on the internet. We’re openly mocked at panels. We’re berated and pushed aside and told that, because of our sex, we shouldn’t even like comic books to begin with.

 We’re different from the expected male readers, so they don’t want us.

 Change is scary; no one can argue that. But for an industry that claims it wants to adapt to new technologies, branch into other media, and reach more readers, it’s necessary.

 When DC embraced Stephanie Brown, they had a trade paperback that made it onto a USA Today list of Essential Reading in Graphic Novels. They had an on ramp for new readers. Good things came from it.

 This is not to say that there hasn’t been success with the New 52, or that there haven’t been some books or issues of books that have been both appealing to female readers and successful in that demographic. But there’s definitely some food for thought here.

 DC embraced something different, and there were positive results. Maybe, then, they should try to embrace different readers.

 Maybe good things could come from that as well.