War Crimes Question

[saintsaucey]

Okay I know that people hate winick with the passion of a thousand firey hemroids and i seem to remember one of the things they blame on him is lesley letting stephanie die to prove a point. except winick didn't write this story it was written by willingham and gabrych. so am i mistaken that people blame winick for this or is it a confusion about who was behind the story

[dancj]

I think in the big bat-crossovers, big plot points like that get decided by committee, so regardless of who wrote the story we'll probably never know for sure who's idea it was.

(and whether it's a bad idea or not depends on whether Spoiler's really dead or Lesley just faked it)

[carabas]

while that is true, Winnick wasn't part of that committee, and wrote no issues at all of War Games/Crimes.

[Captain Jim]

Okay I know that people hate winick with the passion of a thousand firey hemroids and i seem to remember one of the things they blame on him is lesley letting stephanie die to prove a point. except winick didn't write this story it was written by willingham and gabrych. so am i mistaken that people blame winick for this or is it a confusion about who was behind the story

I never heard that accusation before. If somebody's blaming Winick for this, I think they're off base. What he gets blamed for relative to Batman (and justifiably so) is bringing back Jason Todd. :mad:

[saintsaucey]

i could be mistaken i thought they blamed him maybe not. i like that he brought back jason todd and i don't nesicarily think it was just him, if you beleave the rumors loeb attempted it and they said no change the ending of your story. why would they deny him but not winick. i think they were planning it but loeb tryed to do it too early

[Violently Apathetic]

i could be mistaken i thought they blamed him maybe not.

Just remember, if the sun failed to rise tomorrow certain fanboys would somehow blame it on Judd Winick. In any case War Crimes was written by the completely unapologetic Bill 'Quit yer whining, fanboys!' Willingham, but because he's not the soft target Winick is he seldom gets blame.

i like that he brought back jason todd and i don't nesicarily think it was just him, if you beleave the rumors loeb attempted it and they said no change the ending of your story. why would they deny him but not winick. i think they were planning it but loeb tryed to do it too early

I don't think Loeb actually said he planned to bring Todd back, the most I ever saw was in a book collecting Jim Lee art either Loeb or Lee wrote something acknowledging that Todd's appearance in Hush was cool and it may be neat to bring him back. Personally I think it would have made a Hell of a lot more sense for Jason to be behind Hush than Tommy Elliot's 'Hey, I'm a new character with a past related to Bruce Wayne...but I'm not the mysterious new badguy, cuz I died, see? Wait, that was just a red herring, I'm really alive and evil. Surprised you, didn't I? No? Well, screw you then!'

[saintsaucey]

don't get me wrong i don't believe for a second that loeb intended to bring back todd, it was obvious from the beginning that it was tommy elliot and not todd, but he certainly planted seeds that it might have been todd. hush standing on the roof of robinson bank (I think it was a bank) but blocking the son part so it just said robin the chief among them

[matthewaos]

For me, "Hush" was the warm up for Jason Todd. They may said to Loeb to mess with him, even if he is not back from the dead at the time, to remember to the fans who he is and create interest about him.

[Captain Jim]

i could be mistaken i thought they blamed him maybe not. i like that he brought back jason todd and i don't nesicarily think it was just him, if you beleave the rumors loeb attempted it and they said no change the ending of your story. why would they deny him but not winick. i think they were planning it but loeb tryed to do it too early

What Loeb may or may not have intended is anybody's guess. But the return we got was definitely the result of a proposal that Winick made to Didio. (Winick explained all this in an interview a few months before it happened.)

[dancj]

Just remember, if the sun failed to rise tomorrow certain fanboys would somehow blame it on Judd Winick.
That would SO be Chuck Austen's fault!

[The Xenos]

I hate War Games / War Crimes. I also hate Winick's work on Batman. Though they are definately two separate piles of dung. Also along there is Identity Crisis. It was just a terrible time to be a Batman fan.

At the same time this got some people back into these books or got new readers. Coming in new, they may have thought this is the regular character. Yet most following Batman knew something was off and the stories left a bad taste in their mouth.

Funny enough, wasn't Bill Willingham the one who wrote the terrible War Crimes follow up? Ugh. I love love love his work on Fables, but that was awful. Then again, he was kinda just tossed to the wolves and told to write the story with little to know experience writing Batman.

[Choppa]

There is some evidence that Todd was supposed to be HUSH. Apart from teh fact that the story makes more sense that way, there's even an alternate page of the Todd reveal with Tommy instead of Jason.

[carabas]

There is some evidence that Todd was supposed to be HUSH. Apart from teh fact that the story makes more sense that way, there's even an alternate page of the Todd reveal with Tommy instead of Jason.
Hush was a weird little story.
Apparently it suffered from some rewrites halfway through.

Hush was going to be Jason Todd, until either Loeb or editorial got cold feet about bringing him back (or were just plain annoyed at everybody and his dog getting all the clues right). But in the first half of the story, every single clue leads to Jason Todd, so either they switched horses, or it's a really, really bad mystery story.

So that leaves us with the Riddler having a brainfart and Tommy with the worst villain motivation ever.

Biggest clue that this is the correct version: if Clayface really were in the story (as opposed to later added in in the dialogue), don't you think Jim Lee would have gone crazy on redesigning him? This is one of the most art-centric books I know of, and one of the visually most intersting villains doesn't appear on panel? Please.