Rabioso

I think Joker is a more entertaining villain, but Luthor is better at the job. While both men are very selfish in a way, Luthor's is smart selfishness, while the Joker is just insane. Joker requires that others suffer for him to be happy. Barring those he bears a grudge against, Luthor doesn't care either way, so long as he gains himself. Joker is a smart man within his means, but he doesn't really care at all that the world sees him as a monster--if he even is sane enough to understand that they do--so he's rarely a force much greater than himself. Luthor does care about his image, so he can seduce many well-meaning people into working for him. Even Superman has been forced to ally with Luthor many times.

I am planning to start a DC Universe Online League dedicated to those characters that time forgot, underrated and mistreated. My avatars will reflect this philosophy, but I'd like others that would, too. The idea would be to recreate a not-so-popular hero of your choice in the game, and then pitch into something of a supergroup of lost legends. Anyone interested?

@ChernobylCow: The Beast Boys and Girls arc of Teen Titans is a good one to read to get an idea of when Bette was supposed to graduate from a joke to a good heroine, but there is also the Titans/JLA crossover, Technis Imperative, which maybe did more to establish Flamebird's abilities--she fought Huntress!

@batshrine: That's not accurate. Most of the people at the school aren't named; Bette is and they could easily have given her any name.

I wonder if Bette became a superhero and then died in between the first and second seasons. They promised us that not everyone would survive, then said that the person who died would die in the video game, which was set in the interim period. All of the main characters are still present in the main series, though, so it could be Bette. I really hope not, though.

@Oberon0: Yeah; maybe this Bette is a Skrull. Oh; wait.

My personal thoughts on this is it's just the latest in a long evolution of callous douche-baggery by DC writers towards unpopular young heroes. As I said before, I think it's disgusting but it isn't exactly unprecedented in DC comics. This shit ball started with the Teen Titans series, and the shit ball has been rolling ever since, even with a different beetle behind it. Yeah; at least they didn't actually kill Bette in this new Batwoman series, but you know what, no; they kind of did. They killed the more mature and more likeable Bette that George Perez and Geoff Johns made her into; the Bette who actually put enough effort into her heroism that she did things successfully, despite blonde stereotypes and past baggage, and replaced her with a stereotypical blonde excuse-character just so they could advance a dark plot about the evil that men do.

Say what you all will about whether it's a good idea to write a sidekick dying as a turning point in Kate's career, but they didn't need it to be Bette Kane at all. She should have stayed the course in a more lighthearted (but existant) series, and to be technical, this isn't redshirting, because they didn't create a character just to be killed. Bette had potential; she even demonstrated she was learning, and she deserved her a spot in a more lighthearted book. (Although lighthearted doesn't mean weak). If they wanted to kill a character to develop another, it should have been a character written to be killed. This is what I detest about the current Teen Titans comics and now it's happening here; characters that are popular don't get killed, or at least get brought back if they are, while everyone who sells less books is fodder just to add cheap drama. It's a disgustingly cynical, money-hungry attitude, it's why I stopped buying comics, and if anything is more disgusting, it's the fact that people are actually applauding this sort of thing.

Several threads exist about images, but they don't seem to mention the problem I'm having. It seems whenever I click on a thumbnail image in the gallery (which don't always display themselves), the bigger image only appears for a split second and then vanishes. It also appears that this only effects Firefox; Internet Explorer displays them just fine, but I prefer Firefox for this site, as it seems Explorer has trouble posting blogs.

Can anyone tell me what's up/fix it?

@Ladyspider said:

Yeah but if Kate didn't at least get Bette need to be a hero again she wouldn't even bother training her in the first place. And don't Kate comes from a military background and has had even further training to become Batwoman. While Bette has had a history of flighty behavior and has quit being Flamebird at least twice. You think Batman didn't train Tim Drake the same? In story it took Tim a year in story to become Robin. And as I recall the finally test for Tim to become a Robin was to survive a night in Gotham without any help from Bruce. I'm just saying that Kate is training her for a reason, the DCU isn't like it was when I was a kid back in the mid to late 90's when it wasn't as dark. She just wants Bette to take the job seriously further shown be the fact that she apparently burned her Flamebird costume and gave her a simple gray uniform. To Kate the suit you wear isn't a costume it's a uniform.

I think trying to draw comparisons to Batman and Robin might be a bad idea. The first problem there is that Batman's been portrayed so many ways, it's not easy to say what his definitive attitude towards Robin was. Based on the portrayal, it runs all the way from him being a very nurturing figure whose only initial goal is to cheer his adopted ward up and initially doesn't want to get him involved in vigilantism (Batman the Animated Series) to a brute who basically enslaves him and tells him to survive by hunting rats in order to get tough. (All-Star Batman and Robin; I know it's an extreme case and not in the main continuity, but there's been canon portrayals approaching that standard.) The second problem, though, is that once again, unlike various Robins under Batman, Flamebird is not just starting out. She already managed to become a competent heroine, in the present continuity, without the help of any mentor, and yes; she may have quit being Flamebird at least twice, but is that really because of her lack of passion, or because everyone shunned her? Based on everything I've read, it's the latter.

Maybe you're right that Kate's behavior makes sense given her military background, but I won't buy that Bette actually needs to be treated like this just because she originated in a version of the DCU that wasn't as dark--that's exact sort of prejudice that's been going on too long, and it needs to be done away with; not just in the DKU but throughout the media. Macabre fiction is not always good fiction. Why do you think critics are pouring heaps of scorn onto the Twilight series and praising My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? Likewise, macabre heroes are not necessarily tougher than bright and uplifting ones. The DCU needs bright and fun heroes at this point to drag it away from that in its entirety. The Batman stories and their close relatives can stay dark, but the rest of the universe could stand to lighten up so those books stand out for being dark.

Given that, maybe Flamebird shouldn't be in Gotham City to begin with; I'd really say that she belongs with the Teen Titans, but again, with the direction that book's been taken in lately (sooo much redshirting and quasi-satanism), I think that rules her out. However, now she is in Gotham, and what I am really worried about is that when she emerges from her training, she'll put on a new costume that's just as dark and creepy-looking as every other Gotham vigilante's, and spends her time lurking in the shadows, monologuing about the evil that lurks in the scum of the city and worrying about whether she'll succumb to those base instincts herself. Essentially, I'm worried that they're attempting to do away with everything that made her likable to her original fanbase, and force her into a mold that fits fans of the immediate Bat-Family more. I'd say that's a fate almost as bad as being in the Teen Titans and getting killed off. I'd love to be wrong here, but even if I am, even if Bette takes her training in stride but vehemently continues going the route she was going, recreating her costume and eventually moving on to a niche that suits her personality more, the question then becomes "How will they do that without putting her at extreme odds with her mentor?" I just don't see how that will be accomplished.

@cowtron_2000: Yeah, but you'd think that after all this time, she should be getting her reward for all her strife. The only reason I could see for retreading plot-points that already occurred would be that many people might not have seen them the first time, but I'm not sure Batwoman is really more popular than Teen Titans. Beast Boys and Girls came out during a spike in the Teen Titans' popularity, courtesy of the TV show, and although the comic has many differences from the cartoon (especially given how dark it's gotten lately), Beast Boy is a character who has the same basic appeal in either medium, so it's likely that many people read that book; it may even have been many people's first Titans comic. So I'd wager a lot of fans know who Bettte Kane is and even got a fairly positive view of her from that graphic novel.

Also, I'd argue that it's one thing when she's just struggling to be accepted against a vaguely-defined societal prejudice, but quite another when she seems to have an antagonistic relationship with the heroine. Batwoman shouldn't come off as antagonistic in her own book. I say this especially because when she was first introduced, Kate really struck me as the sort of person who would understand Flamebird. Just like Bette, she aspired to take her life in a rugged, heroic direction (joining the Marines) but got turned down because of what she was (gay), so in a way it also feels like an injustice done to Batwoman by making her treat Bette like this. How much time is this book going to waste with its team butting heads while it could be showing them being genuinely heroic? Will they ultimately part hating each other when they should be kindred spirits? Also, putting Bette in the sidekick position and acting as though she's weak because of it reinforces her association with Robin, and that association has never done her any good because it reminds people she she started out as a fangirl and distracts from the fact that she got over that.