I don't think you're cracked, Micole -- one of the tensions of the Batfamily in particular has always been the fact that the standards for defining good vs. bad vigilantes are very much there, but unspoken. Learning lots of martial arts and wanting to fight crime isn't enough. Tarantula is a wildly fucked up case, but from a certain angle (hers) you could say that she's a better vigilante by the family's own definitions than Huntress (in it for herself) or Robin II (saw it all as a big game and got killed for it), not to mention a pathetic character like Nitewing (bugfuck crazy and just doesn't get it, but somehow well-meaning underneath it all). In other hero myths in the comic verse, it's easier -- if you're a metahuman or alien with wacky powers, what you do with your powers may be questionable or even evil, but the fact that you get to do anything with them at all is pretty clear .
Olaf the Troll ,'Showtime'
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Micole, I think your analysis is spot-on.
One thing I may have missed in my hasty reading of back issues: Why did Tarantula become a vigilante?
I don't know -- because she trained to be an FBI agent and then wound up in social work. Meanwhile her brother becomes a D.A. -- it's like there was this v. strong thread of doing service to the community but I don't remember any sort of backstory as to why they followed those paths.
IIRC, it wasn't any big traumatic event so much as a general growing up in a shitty neighborhood and wanting to make things better path.
Why the hell does Tarantula suddenly remind me of Dizzy from 100 Bullets? That's weird.
More unrecognizable than in the scenes that weren't deleted?
In the deleted scenes it's obvious she's trying for some kind of accent, it's just unclear what. In the rest of the movie she just sounds a little odd. At least to me.
Question - is Identity Crisis a stand-alone series, is it a part of the (an?) ongoing continuity, or is it the setup of one?
Frank, this week's Identity Crisis was the first issue of a standalone miniseries -- IIRC it'll go to either 7 or 8 issues altogether. As far as I know it is in continuity with other DC titles.
Yep, it's in continuity with other titles, but--while it will directly effect many titles--it's not crossing over much. The exception, evidently, is with the Flash.
it's not crossing over much. The exception, evidently, is with the Flash.
Well, duh. Who else could zip back and forth between two titles?