Reflections -interview with Beechen

[elias_A]

I don't know if there is already a thread for this somewhere else, if yes, can this one please be moved?

http://www.comicbookresources.com/ne...em.cgi?id=8802

Here at CBR is a new interview with Beechen. But the interesting thing is that the interviewer says he is the guy who wrote the "10 Reasons Why 'Robin' Rocks." article on Wizard online. I was one of the people who was outraged by this article, and now he says he was totally suprised by the similar reaction he got from other Batgirl fans and feels like the victim of a witch hunt.

Now, I admit some Batgirl fans have expressed their feelings in an unpolite, even threatening way, and I certainly did not like this, although I share their views.
But I resent that Mr. Taylor gives the impression that all Batgirl fans are a mob with flaming torches.
If he reads this, I am more than happy to explain why I was rather insulted by his "10 Reasons Why 'Robin' Rocks."
I don't blame him if he likes Robin OYL, although I certainly disagree. But he wrote something like "also Cassandra Cain now gets an incredibly complex and great characterization" (I am paraphrazing from memory).

Mr. Taylor, I don't know if you ever read the Batgirl series. But It looks that you were not impressed by the character before. That's OK, that is your right.
But if the title character is turned evil in a way that a lot, if not most of her fans regarded as rediculous and history-contradicting, please don't call it "great character development". At least admit that this is a retconned, totally different character. Otherwise you sound like either you don't know what you are talking about or intentionally want to insult us Batgirl fans, like someone laughing at a funeral "Great! I'm so happy this guy is dead now!"

If you still consider Cassandra OYL was well-characterized, I recommend you to read the threads here dealing with the matter where we discussed this extensively.

Here only a short version: Mr. Beechen again claims Cass was fighting against her upbringing her whole life. That is just not true. The first time she was supposed to kill, as a child, she was so shocked by the dying man's body language, that she ran away from her father and lived on the streets for ten years until she became Batgirl to seek redemption. So you see, she was never "struggling for so long for her entire existence to overcome the way she was brought up" - the decision not to kill was an inevitable, natural reaction for her.

You call the character change "surprising yet inevitable, and excellently handled". Well, introducing an as yet unknown sister so that Cass is suddenly so jealous that she is not "special" anymore so that she starts killing although she knew perfectly well before (and did not care) her father had trained other children - that does not sound "inevitable" to me, sorry.

I know that if Alan Moore had used the "real" Question and the other original characters their fans would probably also have been outraged. But Robin OYL is not Watchmen, and evil Cass looks to me like a cheap, melodramatic villain, even ignoring her previous history. Some people might find it interesting to read stories of an alcoholic Superman who beats his wife. But please don't call something like that "inevitable".

[Drink]

*Sigh* Again, they entirely miss the point of the anger. It's not the change itself we hate, it's how it was executed. There were things that were pathetically out of character, and just plain out impossible for Cass to do in this story.

[Allen T]

In total argeement with the above posts. It was was the execution. I have no problem if Batgirl went rogue if handled well. If she had slipped up and went back to her old habits, hell that would be acceptable (if not debatable). However we are given Cassandra turn into evil because she is a whiny spoiled brat that didn't get enough Daddy's love because there was another (never mind that she already knew this and it didn't hurt her one bit). This was the fault of Beechman and editoral for not realizing that explanation wasn't going to fly and totally contradicted issues that had only come out months before.

Maybe if Cassandra turned but it wasn't explained it would create an interest in what happened to her in that missing year and had fans clamouring for that knowledge. Hell they would even give theories (which DC could have cherrypicked). No rather than get a character that belongs to Batman we get a character from MTV's "Sweet Sixteen"

[Drink]

Also, I'm think that most any revision or elaboration on the current motives for her change would come off as "Too little too late".

To make it believeable as is, they'd have to factor something like mind-control or possession into it.

*EDIT* And there's also the confusing factor that Talia is apparently in control of the League of Assassins over in Batman, yet Cass supposedly has claim to this too.

[Damo]

On the one hand, I really hope Taylor hasn't been made the subject of a Witch hunt himself.

On the other hand his original article was pretty crummy, and this was worse. * I think you pretty much summed it up there Drink. If the man can't tell the difference between disliking an idea and really hating the execution, then, well, seriously, maybe professional writing isn't for him?

In the original article he praised Beechen for doing... several of the things that people were angry Beechen didn't do.

From his "Ten things you should like about Robin" list


1. "He's a character you care about". Fair enough.
2. He praises Beechen for keeping fans on their toes and surprising them with a "rollercoaster ride of thrills and revelations that even the most jaded comic fan would never have seen coming."

I think the poll here at CBR still speaks for itself. About 75% saw the "twist" coming and hated it. We saw everything coming but the shoddy execution. THAT was a surprise.

3. "AN EXTRA DEPTH IS BROUGHT TO BAT-UNIVERSE CHARACTERS"
"The twist could have come off as cheap, but Beechen wrote the character’s motivations with extra depth and logic."

Oh Taylor. No. He wrote the character's motivations like someone that had never read her book. Shallowness and illogic.

4. "Adam Beechen". ...

5) "DRAMATIS PERSONAE" There are important and interesting characters showing up. Yeah, fair enough.

6) "FREDDIE WILLIAMS II" Okay, fair enough. Good art.


7) "HIGH-STAKES ACTION" "Each issue of Robin has at least one great action sequence (we can’t decide if our favorite is Robin’s escape from GCPD or his face-off with Cassandra)."

I still wince at Tim going into the Police Station dressed in a costume they were under orders to shoot at when he could apparently pass himself off as a police officer well enough to use that disguise to escape (yes, I've heard the reasoning that he needed tools and weapons handy. I'm not sure I buy it, and there had to be a way that didn't make him look so stupid).

And that fight with Cassandra had him doing feats Batman has never pulled off, treating the League of Assassins as a joke, and whailing on Cassandra by "fighting without a style".

And don't get me started on the David Cain non-fight.

8) "USING THE CHARACTER’S HISTORY"

Aside from managing to make a complete mess of Cassandra's history...

I don't consider War Games or Identity Crisis to be "history". More like "current events" really, we're still feeling the ramifications. And Beechen flubbed both. He's got Robin shocked at the idea that Batman might be using him as a pawn, something that Robin's considered in the past, most recently after Games. And nobody bats an eye that Boomerang knows that his dad killed Robin's dad, when all he should know is that Boomerang killed Jack Drake.

9) "THE BOY WONDER HAS GOT BAGGAGE" "Before Tim’s personal life was simple, there wasn’t really a reason for him to suit up at night." Murdered mothers don't count. BOTH parents must die at the hands of criminals! Also: nobody has never become a hero unless they have tragedy in their background.

10) "IT’S ABOUT FAMILY" So far this is the only book to show Batman's reaction to Batgirl's shift, and he didn't give a hoot. That is one lousy family.

It was my very first encounter with hate mail while working for Wizard.

One would think it would be because of a factual error

Kinda was Robert. Kinda still is.

Incidentally, who are the two fans that offered to sit down with him and never showed? Bad form.

They didn't present me with a rationale as to why Cassandra was going to change, or a motivating factor. That was left for me to come up with and them to approve. And we did that.

I've been assuming this one all along, but it's nice to get confirmation.

They gave the orders to have her switch sides. He came up with the reasons all by himself. His editors honestly failed to do their jobs by not spotting how very off he was, but he's pretty much entirely responsible for the execution.

I went through and picked up a number of months' worth of issues prior to One-Year-Later. So I was around for the last major storyarc, and I got the trades of the first few storyarcs, all of which were excellent.

It's wonderful to hear him say that, and I hope one day he reads them.

*EDIT* And there's also the confusing factor that Talia is apparently in control of the League of Assassins over in Batman, yet Cass supposedly has claim to this too.

That's only confusing if the people Talia is leading are specifically stated to be the LOA. The League of Assassins is a small but elite part of Ra's al Ghul's organization. He's the Demon's head, his organization is The Demon, the League is the Demon's Fang (or as they called it in Batgirl "the fang that protects the head").

[Drink]

That's only confusing if the people Talia is leading are specifically stated to be the LOA. The League of Assassins is a small but elite part of Ra's al Ghul's organization. He's the Demon's head, his organization is The Demon, the League is the Demon's Fang (or as they called it in Batgirl "the fang that protects the head").

I suppose. In the solicits they referred to Talia's group as LoA, I thought to ask this to Ben Morse over on comic bloc, and he figures Cass is running LA proper, while Talia has a faction loyal to her, but of course that's only his opinion.

You know, I really wish that someone would just ask Beechen about the damn plotholes already. So far, anyone who's mentioned Batgirl has dodged asking that question, which happens to be the one that the Cass fans want to know about. He claims to have read parts of her series, so I cannot see how he could miss such a glaring concept like her dyslexia. That along with her general inability to talk was as much a character trait as her ability to fight.

All I can say is that if Johns is going to try and explain this, whether having her as good or bad, he's got his hands full.

[Constantine Drakon]

I hope that Robert Taylor doesn't recieve any more "hate mail". But I do hope that people use that email link at the top of the interview and politely express their displeasur. And if they do I hope they make sure to explain both what they feel he did wrong and what they feel Adam Beechen did wrong. It was dissapointing in the original article (which was, to be fair, basically meant to be a fun little fluff piece) that he didn't seem to know what the fans were thinking, but understandable. He was just going in having read Robin and asked some friends their opinions, not having checked for fan reactions. However, that he went into a followup interview now aware of fans' anger but still unlcear as to the reasons for that anger speaks extremely poorly of him as a journalist. He presents himself as an innocent victim of crazy fans for "daring" to say "that the character shift was 'surprising yet inevitable, and excellently handled.'" He can't understand the hostility, and that's embarassing, because all he has to do is log onto these forums or any number of others and just ask some people. Instead he tells us about two fans that promised to talk to him and didn't. So he's the martyr, and the people that disagree with him are undependable loony-toons. The article is all pretty positive. He acknowledges that there were negative reactions but doesn't try to find out their context and present those opinions fairly in the interview. I didn't expect unbiased journalism in the original piece, and I didn't expect him to go for Adam's throat in the followup. But if I was in his shoes I would have felt mortified still pleading ignorance to what's got people angry and unable to ask Adam the questions actually on people's minds.

Oh, and Adam Beechen says he read the last Batgirl arc. You would think that might make him look like a better author, but it does just the opposite.

[kel25]

They gave the orders to have her switch sides. He came up with the reasons all by himself. His editors honestly failed to do their jobs by not spotting how very off he was, but he's pretty much entirely responsible for the execution.

I honestly don’t think it was that the editors failed to do their job, but more that they didn’t care. I feel that Batgirl was removed to prevent any confusion with Batwoman coming out. DC really was trying to hype her character in hopes that she would become the next major comic character. In order to do so they needed to keep confusion to a minimal. So to help promote Batwoman to the general public they had to do something about the lesser known Batgirl.

From interviews with Didio, I got the impression that he really doesn’t understand or really care for Batgirl. Although, I get that feeling about a lot of other characters when he talks about them. Because he knew that she was trained to be an assassin and he is trying to get characters back to their roots. He probably thought that her becoming an assassin again was logical. I have a feeling that the editor(s) who oked the story where about the same mind. They new what was expected of her and as long as it sounded semi-plausible it was going to get the OK.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part based on various interviews I’ve read.

It sickens me that no interviewer has called the writer on all of his plotholes.

I like Cass as a good guy a lot but with a very good reason and character development I’d have little problem with her becoming a villain.

[carabas]

I honestly don’t think it was that the editors failed to do their job, but more that they didn’t care. I feel that Batgirl was removed to prevent any confusion with Batwoman coming out. DC really was trying to hype her character in hopes that she would become the next major comic character. In order to do so they needed to keep confusion to a minimal. So to help promote Batwoman to the general public they had to do something about the lesser known Batgirl.

Mission accomplished ages before Beechen went near the book.
Her own book left with her quitting as Batgirl, rejecting both her father and mother's path for her as well as Batman's, and going off to find her own identity.
I had expected her to become a miniature Richard Dragon or Shan Chi type of character.

[OverMaster]

I don't know why people was shocked and outraged about a Wizard Online article being full of bullcrap.

I mean, when was the last time Wizard had something resembling true professionalism and respect for the comic characters? 1999?

[Drink]

I don't know why people was shocked and outraged about a Wizard Online article being full of bullcrap.

I mean, when was the last time Wizard had something resembling true professionalism and respect for the comic characters? 1999?

I get what you mean, but here's my reasoning;

That article was really the first real take on Cassandra's turn that anyone seemed to have in the major comic news articles. One of the things I've argued about it since the beginning of this whole thing was that the change made no sense and that it was out of character. So to see Wizard, which like it or not is the most mainstream of comic news, not only seem oblivious to this, but actually condoning it by saying it made sense really set me off. Yeah it was a fluff piece, but it was the first time they even mentioned EvilCass at all, and it turned my stomach to read.

More recently, they mentioned the changed was 'one of the most controversial aspects of OYL'. That I can respect. It's not really saying it's good or bad, but that it explains what the fan reaction is, which is what the journalism should be more like.

[Damo]

Mission accomplished ages before Beechen went near the book.
Her own book left with her quitting as Batgirl, rejecting both her father and mother's path for her as well as Batman's, and going off to find her own identity.
I had expected her to become a miniature Richard Dragon or Shan Chi type of character.

See, I'm increasingly becoming convinced that the real reason all of this was ordered was because DC has this idea of having Bruce and Tim bond, father and son style. Cassandra would have gotten in the way of the close relationship DC's trying to make between the two, and so it wasn't enough for her to give up the Bat Mantle. They had to completely nuke the idea of her being like Batman's "daughter", salt the earth, and make sure the idea could never grow again.

[kel25]

See, I'm increasingly becoming convinced that the real reason all of this was ordered was because DC has this idea of having Bruce and Tim bond, father and son style. Cassandra would have gotten in the way of the close relationship DC's trying to make between the two, and so it wasn't enough for her to give up the Bat Mantle. They had to completely nuke the idea of her being like Batman's "daughter", salt the earth, and make sure the idea could never grow again.

I’ve thought along similar lines when it comes to Nightwing and Robin.

[Jmacq1]

Don't forget that they apparently needed a space for "Lipstick Lesbian" Batwoman, too!

I mean, of course comic readers would be too stupid to tell them apart, despite looking vastly different in both their identities.

And once again, killing people was never Cassandra's "old habits". She killed someone once (technically twice if you count her final issue). That does not a "habit" make.

[Starba]

Has anybody here written up a response to the interview? Because if you haven't, I will...