CBR: THE BAT SIGNAL: Judd Winick

[CBR News]

With back-to-back Red Hood projects hitting in comics and animation, the writer who returned Jason Todd from the grave digs into his Batman writing methods, his opinions on animation and a new "Superman/Batman" story.


Full article here.

[Botch the Crab]

I really liked how Winick handled Jason Todd's return when it first debuted. And then... the long-awaited answer of how he came back... was the now infamous "Superboy punch". What a let-down.

At that point I officially regretted buying all those books and decided not to read any more Winick. :(

[whitesycamore]

I really liked how Winick handled Jason Todd's return when it first debuted. And then... the long-awaited answer of how he came back... was the now infamous "Superboy punch". What a let-down.

At that point I officially regretted buying all those books and decided not to read any more Winick. :(

Winick actually has the power to retcon your enjoyment of that arc out of existence? Freaky.

Seriously though, I get that the superboy punch was lame. I don't get why people are so hung up on a plot point that didn't really have any impact on the story that followed and has never been mentioned since.

[Godlike13]

I don't get why people are so hung up on a plot point that didn't really have any impact on the story that followed and has never been mentioned since.

Because when ur telling the a story where ur retconing a character to be alive, the revel of how they became not dead is an important moment. Every one was waiting for it, wanting to know how it all came to be, and Winick dropped the ball.

[Botch the Crab]

A story typically has introduction, development, and conclusion. If that conclusion is really distasteful, it colors the entire story distastefully. I can't possibly re-read any of those Jason Todd comics because I know the ultimate resolution to the mystery of Todd's resurrection is "Superboy punch". It sullies the story as a whole.

If this were a straight-up mystery novel, and the mystery's resolution was bad, no one would fault people who discounted the novel as a whole. Why? Because the mystery is the whole point!

So yes, I feel now that if I were to invest in a Winick-penned book, I risk being severely disappointed again.

[taintedshimmer]

Once again, Winick showing good form and showing how much he gets what I tend to think of as his signature dish in Jason. I can't wait for more from him in Lost Days and the film. Even the S/B looks interesting and I'm not normally into that.

[benicio127]

Winick actually has the power to retcon your enjoyment of that arc out of existence? Freaky.

Seriously though, I get that the superboy punch was lame. I don't get why people are so hung up on a plot point that didn't really have any impact on the story that followed and has never been mentioned since.

Oh God, this. THIS. Like I've seen posts by people who admit they haven't even read the story, but somehow have formed an opinion on the Superboy punch. Maybe because I read the story four years after it came out that I'm just not jaded enough to actually care. There was no mystery to the story at all to me when I went in to read it.

I think they are hung up on it because it's not organic; it's not grounded in the "Batverse," but in the multiverse. Which is a moot point now, but I mean Bruce's "death"/sent back in the timestream was in a multiverse story and he was shot by an omega beam/"killed"/sent back in time by Darkseid, a villain that's not even in his own Rogues' Gallery. So if you're gonna get hung up on a small point about the retconpunch!, you should probably recognize it's not the first time the multiverse has been used.

Just from the interview...
And also something the readers picked up again – where again I might not be giving them enough credit though it's kind of wonderful – is that to me this really laid the seeds of what happens between her and Damian. Jason represents her time with what would be her son. Her motherly instincts sort of kicked in. But starting with the next chapter, we're back with Jason running and seeing what happens next to him. And Talia will be floating in and out as that motherly influence.

OH YES. SJDLKFJSKDJF YAAAAAAAAYYY.

[JohnnyHorror92182]

Oh God, this. THIS. Like I've seen posts by people who admit they haven't even read the story, but somehow have formed an opinion on the Superboy punch. Maybe because I read the story four years after it came out that I'm just not jaded enough to actually care. There was no mystery to the story at all to me when I went in to read it.

I think they are hung up on it because it's not organic; it's not grounded in the "Batverse," but in the multiverse. Which is a moot point now, but I mean Bruce's "death"/sent back in the timestream was in a multiverse story and he was shot by an omega beam/"killed"/sent back in time by Darkseid, a villain that's not even in his own Rogues' Gallery. So if you're gonna get hung up on a small point about the retconpunch!, you should probably recognize it's not the first time the multiverse has been used.

Just from the interview...
And also something the readers picked up again – where again I might not be giving them enough credit though it's kind of wonderful – is that to me this really laid the seeds of what happens between her and Damian. Jason represents her time with what would be her son. Her motherly instincts sort of kicked in. But starting with the next chapter, we're back with Jason running and seeing what happens next to him. And Talia will be floating in and out as that motherly influence.

OH YES. SJDLKFJSKDJF YAAAAAAAAYYY.

I agree with you. Readers get so hung up on that one point...
I don't think a majority of fans today enjoy fantasy, heavy science fiction, surealism or cosmic phenominon as they did many years ago. Sure, we have gems like R.E.B.E.L.S and NOVA and LEGION OF SUPER HEROES and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, but those, while pretty popular, don't appeal to all readers, whatever those readers reasons may be.

[Teth-Diego]

nice interview.

I started reading Green Lantern just before #150 while winnick was writing it and liked it enough to pick it up regularly until he went off the book. (had to drop it since the other guy sucked hard)

his batman stuff was awesome, and the Red Hood is a good character.


His Green Arrow... not so much

[kalorama]

Winick actually has the power to retcon your enjoyment of that arc out of existence? Freaky.

Seriously though, I get that the superboy punch was lame. I don't get why people are so hung up on a plot point that didn't really have any impact on the story that followed and has never been mentioned since.

Because the very mention of Winick's name inspires people to heights (or depths, depending on your POV) of irrationality that are defy common logic. Why that is is a matter for debate.

[earl]

The thing I was wondered is if how much of the idea for the current Red Hood mini-series was split apart from his original Battle for the Cowl story.

I've said before on the site, but I think you have to really wonder about the point of view of the Batman Annual with the infamous Superboy punch. It appears that Jason Todd believes this to be what happened, but did it? The point of view is the reader gets this is what happened, but who else knows.

It definitely would have been better to just left it unsolved.

Why did 'The Detective' not pursue this information? Not really resolved to my mind and I figure that if this movie and mini-series do OK, there will be a third act (and maybe get the punch) right where Jason Todd faces Bruce Wayne and possibly The Joker again.

I think it would be cool to do a Rashomon kind of of thing, where there is a couple of different angles on what actually happened. I think a killer twist would have it be the Joker that actually did the deed and somehow brought Todd back.

Really, I think how DC brought back Ollie Queen and Hal Jordan was really just as goofy, but people don't get hung up on it as much.

Thing is with these kind of resurrection stories, some characters kind of have the reset button built into the character like say Jean Grey/The Phoenix or even Barry Allen/The Flash, but when you are dealing with something like Batman unless you play the Lazarus Pit/Nanda Parbat angle, it just doesn't fit well.

[Retro315]

The Superboy Prime punch, to me ... well, apart from understanding why Superboy Prime did it (Jason was the Robin he remembered from Crisis On Infinite Earths) and liking that a little bit ...

I just sort of lump it into "He came back in the Crisis".

Hell, people "DIE" in these Crises all the freaking time. Why can't somebody use one as an excuse to "come back"?

And since it was Crisis On Infinite Earths that doomed Jason Todd to his death sentence in the first place - by rewriting his history into that of a grim & gritty 80's failed experiment who could never live up to the Robin standards - it's only natural that the Infinite Crisis came along and that Jason's altered history was "repaired". Although in this case, repaired doesn't mean "gone back to Pre-Crisis history and brought back to life". It just brought him back.

Although we could argue that Grant's Final Crisis ultimately brought back his Pre-Crisis stuff - fusing them together the same way the original Crisis fused Earth-1 and Earth-2 into two generations of heroes instead of two parallel universes.

Final Crisis was sort of "Final" in the way that it just permits writers to "mine the hell out of continuity, and retcon it ... it'll all change again eventually anyway!"

[kalorama]

Really, I think how DC brought back Ollie Queen and Hal Jordan was really just as goofy, but people don't get hung up on it as much.

Great example.

[earl]

The thing about continuity is really it is just using these fragments to make other comics. If they make good comics, then you can wash over about anything.

Really they kind of copped out on the end of the Hush story, as THAT seemed to be when Jason Todd was coming back. The follow up Hush Returns story was a total trainwreck, but hey Paul Dini had lemons and made lemonade with his follow up after that with the Heart of Hush, which I thought was pretty good and really did expand the character out in some interesting ways.

I think the thing that made the Superboy punch a bit more sour was the follow up stories in Nightwing and whatever they did with Jason Todd in Countdown to Final Crisis were pretty dumb. That Nightwing story made not a lick of sense, can't say on the Countdown stuff, as I didn't follow that one but boy people griped about that series, so it couldn't have been that good.

I thought Battle for the Cowl wasn't perfect, but it was better than I expected. I think going in 3 issues, there really wasn't time to play out some of the ideas that were there and they came out later on in the Daniels/Hine stories. (I think those will all maybe read a bit better as a trade than issue to issue really.)

Then the next Red Hood story by Morrison I thought was really clever sequel to both the original return and Battle for the Cowl and kind of tied it up pretty well.

First issue of this Red Hood story was pretty good, so I'm game to see if Winick can make it work. If it does, I think it will be act 2 and there will be some kind of follow up.

In hindsight, I'm over the Superboy punch now, but I still think it would be cool to make it a bit more oblique.

Hal Jordan killing the entire Green Lantern Corps destroying his town then becoming the Spectre and bringing back Ollie after he gets blown up on a plane with Superman around is always going to be one of those that will be weird. I think if you tried to jack with that one, it would just get more weird and goofy.

[Godlike13]

Really, I think how DC brought back Ollie Queen and Hal Jordan was really just as goofy, but people don't get hung up on it as much.

Because with them wasn't a mystery. Todd being back was a mystery in UTH, and part of its allure. With Ollie Queen and Hal Jordan that wasn't the case.