What's Sup Forums's opinion on Batman and Robin Eternal...

What's Sup Forums's opinion on Batman and Robin Eternal? I decided to give it a shot since I heard cassandra finally made a comeback, but I'm having some serious reservations about it so far.

Other urls found in this thread:

web.archive.org/web/20161023095834/http://io9.gizmodo.com/scott-snyder-explains-why-all-star-batman-needs-a-less-1786698776
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

It's fucking bad.

Yeah, I kinda tolerated it until they showed the massive pit of dead children in mother's hideout. At that point I just totally checked out of the story.

The whole thing made me depressed. This series did to David what Beechan did to Cassandra. Worst thing is, this backstory is what's going to stay canon for the next few years. We're probably never getting the fucked up yet endearing relationship these two had.

It could have been good but it was really just shoving the other characters under the bus (especially cassandra) for the real MC Ron Harper. She's the perfectest most special robin of all time.

I've heard her mentioned around here now and again, what's so bad about her?

Basically just reread what I said.
She's a an OC Mary Sue in the actual proper context of the words. She is literally written as the best possible (perfect) Robin candidate to ever exist as manufactured for Batman.
She also was getting pushed at the time and heralded as "fan favorite."

You wanted Cassandra back and DC has been saying that to prove it then go vote with your wallet/interest when she does show up.
Ron Harper (not sure if my mind actually remembers the name right since it's been trying to erase her existence) is the one that DC turned around and claimed the interest in the issues is caused by. They will loudly proclaim the success of Ron Harper on this basis when you never gave half a crap.
Almost all of her acclaim and popularity is a series of manufactured lies that use baiting and switching upon the audience to justify their claims.

This panel pissed every otherr fan of a Batfamily member off mightily.

lmao how did you get Harper Row confused with a former Clipper/Bull/3 time NBA champion?

It starts off okay then goes full fucking retard towards the end. I think there are some decent Cassandra-centric issues in the middle (around 13?).

I thought it sucked, but not the worst thing.

I mean standing next to Batman Eternal? Not as good
Standing next to Robin War? Looking not too bad.

They pushed Bluebird too hard, revealing she was meant to be the perfect sidekick picked out by Mrs Hitler.

She's not worth remembering and I did say that my brain is actively trying to erase her existence from it.

Is Batman Eternal before or after B&R eternal? (chronologically)

Before, but you don't need to read Batman Eternal to understand B&R Eternal.

I need someone to settle the tie.

Both were me, I misread your question initially.

Thanks!

>Clipper/Bull/3 time NBA champion

Well shit can any other Robin compete with that?

I'm planning on reading Tec Comics Rebirth. Is Harper in it a lot? I haven't seen her on any of the covers so I'm assumed she's not.

Well I don't think anyone was expecting Damian or Jason.

She's shown up in the most recent arc, and I believe Tynion's planning on having her join the team.

I haven't read Batman and Robin Eternal or really anything yet I already feel like I don't like her after spending time on this board and now I feel a little less excited about reading Tec now.

I haven't read Batman and Robin Eternal or really anything with Harper yet I already feel like I don't like her after spending time on this board and now I feel less excited about reading Tec now.

Probably, since Tynion has already gotten rid of Steph and Tim.

Steph and Tim are two different situations. Steph is just MAD at Batman at the moment and she'll probably eventually get over it and realize she was wrong and stupid and go back to him, probably after an arc or two. Tim though? Tim is fucking dead, at least to Batman, his team, and the world.

Regardless, they are both off the team and it is supposed to be a team book.

>What's Sup Forums's opinion on Batman and Robin Eternal?

Absolute worst comic ever made, especially if you are a fan of Cass or Tim or Jason or Dick or Damian or any of the characters the comic was supposed to be about.

But if you want to see Harper fucking Row, boy do we have a treat for you!

>now I feel a little less excited about reading Tec now

You're welcome. 'Tec has been fucking horrible.

They made a team book based on late 90's-early-00's nostalgia, and then gave it to a writer that doesn't have that nostalgia and wants to just rewrite all the characters as he pleases. It's like they think anybody can write a comic about anything and it'll turn out equally well. You want to use these characters, you have to give them to someone who knows about them and appreciates them. You give them to a random like Tynion, he'll just do random things, since he has no clue how to use them properly or what makes them work.

You're kind of leaving out some important context here, it's Batman wrestling whether to mentor this girl, thus make himself an accomplice to Mother's killing, or leaving her to live an ordinary, and really awful life.

>Absolute worst comic ever made, especially if you are a fan of Cass or Tim or Jason or Dick or Damian
Each of those characters get some good moments in the comic, don't front.

"Some good moments" in a comic that was supposed to be ENTIRELY about them? While Harper, a character that shouldn't even have been in the comic at all, hogs the stage and has the plot revolve entirely around her for no sane reason?

>Damian
1 scan.At the end of the book.

Harper is just a fucking random civilian girl. There is and has never been anything special about her. Yet BRE treats her as some kind of a Chosen One, to the point that the main villain risks her entire operation to try and convert her to her cause. Every single one of her henchmen is better and stronger than Harper, but for some reason it's really important to recruit this one random blue-haired bitch that has no special skills or powers or abilities or training at all.

Cassandra was given a Tim Drake level retcon to her origin story to make Harper Row look more important, and then she was turned into a damsel in distress in Harper's story. If you're planning to check on BRE because you heard she was coming back, don't - it will make you angrier than anything in a long fucking time.

I've heard King's Batman is worse. Do you think that's true or do you think that's just a case of it not living up to the hype?

They both suck. Snyderverse (of which both King and Tynion are disciples) is what is bringing the whole line down.
Compare it to Superman which is the true successor of Morrisonverse.

#13 was the last time the series had a good artist. Then it started dropping in quality art wise too until we had the Bat kids look like seniors.

I have no opinion on CIA Man. I was never much into Batman himself, always preferred the people around him.

Okay guys I've been reading through this thread and I think got a solution to this Harper Row problem. Two words: Prime, baby. Superboy-Prime is from a world that's meant to represent ours. We've seen him read DC comics. He probably knows about Harper and probably doesn't like her either. So have Superboy-Prime kill her. It would fit with the sort of meta vibe Rebirth has going on. Also what's better than having a fan-favorite character kill off an utterly hated one?

Fan favorites can't win against author favorites.

Don't listen to Sup Forums, everything is always bad to them. Read the first arc of tec, it's decent and there's little to no Harper row

>Don't listen to Sup Forums
Go back to whatever shitstain board you came from.
Sup Forums is ALWAYS right, especially about the cancerous state all comic books are in right now. The entire industry needs to fucking die already.

K champ

Superboy-Prime is a favorite of Geoff Johns. All he has to do is get Harper appear in one of the titles or events he's working on and have Prime kill her. And there's probably nothing Tynion could do about it because Johns outranks him.

Would it be worth annoying Snyder? Harper is Snyder's creation, not Tynion. Though I'm not sure if he still cares about Harper since he considers her a failure.

>Though I'm not sure if he still cares about Harper since he considers her a failure.

You know it's actually pretty rare to see a writer admit that. Do you mind telling me why he considers her a failure?

It started well, but then central plot was sooo long that I quit in the middle of it.

It wasn't quite as I remembered it (outright calling her a failure), but he wasn't happy with how she developed as a character, which is partially why he's the one handling Duke's development.

>[IO9]:You mentioned Harper, a character I like, as not hitting the mark. At what point do you make that distinction? Is it because other creators don’t want to play with her? How do you come to that point where you realize something was flawed in the construction?

>[Snyder]: [...]The problem comes [in thinking] how you give a character like that as a superhero her own book and create a path for them where they’re going to be able to stand on their own...For me, I had hopes of her landing in a couple of places. To be really frank, there was talk of her in certain books and then there were changes—for the better, probably—that precluded that possibility."

web.archive.org/web/20161023095834/http://io9.gizmodo.com/scott-snyder-explains-why-all-star-batman-needs-a-less-1786698776

>there was talk of her in certain books and then there were changes—for the better, probably—that precluded that possibility."
Translation: Snyder was told, "Fuck no, I don't want your Mary Sue waifu to guest star in my book."

Okay here's the thing about Batman & Robin Eternal. It starts off descent for the most part (Jim Gordon jobs to Harper hard in the first issue), but there's a heart to it in the first fourteen issues.

You have Dick looking after Cassandra and Harper. While you have Cassandra being this loner, and Harper who's still new to the vigilante game. Then you have Tim and Jason doing their own thing and broing out on a wacky adventure that involves Bane and the Church of St. Dumas (most of that goes nowhere save to introduce Azrael).

While this is all going on we are given flashbacks to Dick's first year as Robin and encounter with Scarecrow.

The first thirteen issues are them trying to figure out just how deep this double agent organization is. There are a few moments here and there that are descent and actually entertaining.

It's just that after #14 when you learn the extent of Mother's agenda. Not only that but it just takes goddamn forever for them to reach a final confrontation. Even then Mother wasn't built up to be this Sensei-level threat. 1/2

I really hate how they keep talking Cassandra up as this super badass fighter whose nearly unbeatable, then have her get knocked out every other issue for plot convenience. Hell, they don't even show why she's such a good fighter. In her original series her body-reading abilities were explored in great detail and a lot of her character interactions revolved around it. In this one we're just supposed to believe she's a badass because they tell us she is. Based on what we've seen in the course of the story, she's no stronger than dick, jason, or that army of assassins mother employed.

Suddenly in the second half instead of this semi-descent juggling of this flashback and all the characters it becomes the Harper Row show.

The art is beyond awful and rushed. The plot become's too predictable.Then all the Robins save Dick job the hell out (that is Jason and Tim's jobs then also Damian'sin the final 13 issues to just job the fuck out) to an 80-year old who suddenly now knows kung fu. Then Cassandra is the final one to beat her only for David Cain to turn into Darth Vader and reveal he did love his daughter and kills both himself and Mother.

In the end it just feels like the writers got sidetracked and lost it's heart of the story aka Dick being the focus and instead Harper becomes it cause she and Cassandra are the only two to change.

Cassandra just doesn't get flushed out near the end either. We only see her "unleashed" only at the near end. The story tells us more then actually showing us. 2/2.

My guess is Tynion half-assed it at this point since he was more interested in Batman/TMNT which he had going on at the same time.

What really bugs me is that this had all the potential of being a good story but got way too big for its britches. I think what it really lacks is heart and character. It started off nice with Dick's flashbacks to being robin and his uneasy relationship with bruce, but fell apart when it started focusing on harper. Nobody really had any fun or sweet moments, nobody really grew or learned. The worse offender is cassandra who started off bland, got no development, then ended bland.

She had an inkling in #13 when there was an artist who understood her type of character and used expressions to convey what she was thinking/feeling.

There is some heart in it. Cass has a good moment with Bruce in a flashback and then Damian has another moment with Bruce in another one. But-- that's it. There should have been more. Instead that's all cast aside because hey Cass is in Tec. Go read that and we have to wait till next month for the actual focus to get her.

Again, we get little moments with her in Tec, but I guess that's the point? Given she's distancing herself from everyone probably more so given Stephanie just betrayed the fuck out of her and everyone else.

>glorious rebirth.jpg

Batman & Robin Eternal was New 52 not Rebirth though.

I hate how most of the shit that Cass does in TEC happens off-screen. Would it kill Tynion to just tell the artist to just go nuts with the fight scene for a few pages every once in a while?

Decompression to save on page space and issue more than likely. He did the same to Tim and Jean Paul. The man can let an artist stage a fight. Pic related.

Well thanks for that. Helped me understand a bit more why this story is considered so bad. There is something a bit strange: the focus on Harper in the second half of the story. 9 writers worked on this story. See I'd understand if one writer was working on the story and shifted focus towards Harper. But 9? That's kind of weird. You're telling me 9 writers liked Harper that much, out of all the characters in the story? Was there like a head writer who decided to focus more on Harper and all the other writers had to follow suit?

Some of the covers for BRE were hilarious. From the amount of names listed, you would have thought the comic was an anthology instead of a normal 18 page floppy.

I found the fights in Eternal incredibly fucking boring. They felt like placeholders for the dialogue. Like, rather than just have two people stand in a room and talk about what to do next they do it while fighting random goons. No effort is put into making the fight interesting, no stakes or real threats during the fight either. What's even worse is that one of these pointless fights happens every other issue. I got so tired of it so quickly.

Tynion and Snyder(?) were in charge of the overarching story if I'm not mistaken.

Well it's just like Eternal. While there was 9 writers to handle the script, the plot was written by Snyder and Tynion IV. How much of Snyder we don't really know. Other that this probably was a settlement with those who've been blocking him from putting her back into the family. Cause having her around taints, MUH PRECIOUS BARBARA.

My "favorite" part there was how Harper Row got affected by the mind control thingy in the Spyral base and the only way Cassandra and Jason TOGETHER could subdue a completely normal civilian girl with a taser was some retarded self-sacrificing bullshit that left all of them unconscious, ready to be picked up by the villains. 'Cause apparently fighting Harper fucking Row is like fighting Doomsday or something, only way to win is mutual annihilation.

Oh, and when Cass was affected by the same thing, she was easily subdued by Helena, cause, you know, she's not remotely dangerous or good at fighting. Hell, definitely not Harper Row level amirite?

What the fuck, DC. Seriously.

> easily subdued by Helena.

Um... she wasn't. Dick only stopped them from having a brawl from erupting in the room. It took Helena getting her nose broken. Cass only got the "cure" put on her like Tim did.

Cass was acting all masochistic and wanted to be punished for murdering Harper's mum when Harper went all rage animal on her.

Jason you got me.

You can argue the "easily" part, but not the "subdued" part. Helena Bertinelli took a berserk Cass to the mat by herself and kept her there for multiple panels. Only way to read those scenes is that Cass is way weaker than Harper.