They've seen a lot of each other.

They have now. But Corsair was absent for childhood, adolescence, and the start of Scott's superheroing.

Abso-freakin-lutely true. I was just trying to say it wasn't the last he'd seen of his kids.

Do you suppose the odds of having a superhero lifestyle are proportionately larger if your parents are kidnapped by aliens?

Do you suppose the odds of having a superhero lifestyle are proportionately larger if your parents are kidnapped by aliens?

That, and if your home planet blows up.

I just ended a conversation with a huge geek co-worker who's never read comics. "But they don't go into that sort of depth in the comics, surely?" he asked after I gave him my take on the Bat-psychosis, and how it helps explain Robin.

Der.

Now I have a compulsion to start buying trades for the express purpose of converting his sceptical ass.

"But they don't go into that sort of depth in the comics, surely?"

Oh, ita. If you were all healed, I'm sure you would have kicked his ass good.

after I gave him my take on the Bat-psychosis, and how it helps explain Robin.

So, share it with the rest of us, or Nilly where you did so previously (because I wanna know, damn it).

"But they don't go into that sort of depth in the comics, surely?"

(Looks at Transference issues. Laughs and laughs and laughs.)

I am not nice. In addition to the Outsiders issues Pete requested, I threw in the Arsenal mini and a couple more trades (Evolution and Officer Down). Had I had more time, I'd have probably snuck some Young Justice in there as well.

Of course, Jilli is also evil. She passed over the Black Kiss series.

Heh.

Searching to see if Transference was ever collected as a trade got me this link on Batman and Post-Modernism.

because I wanna know, damn it

Hee. It sounds perfectly plausible when aimed at someone who wonders why Batman keeps fighting crime after he finds the person that killed his parents? Here? A very harsh light indeed.

His POV was that it was odd that Bruce would force another kid into a life of crime fighting. I saw it more that Batman was sharing the psychopathy that drove him to do what he does, providing an external discipline to rescue a kid who was something, but not all like him.

So, in a way, he's rescuing Dick from having to go through the same hell he had. Except Dick wasn't going to do that -- he'd probably have gone through a hell of his own -- he had lost his parents to foul play, after all. But I don't think he was going to be bugfuck nuts like Bats.

So, in the name of "saving," Bruce imposes the fruit of his own insanity onto the kid.

Who handles it with quite a bit of aplomb, considering the dual trauma of the loss and the entry into caped crusading.

Later the craziness blooms.

So, in a way, he's rescuing Dick from having to go through the same hell he had.

So are you saying he wanted to keep Dick from becoming what he'd become? He assumed (incorrectly, you believe) Dick would let his thirst for vengeance turn him into a vigilante, so he...turns him into a vigilante himself? So he won't have to go through it alone? It seems like a counterintuitive, self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't think I understand what you're trying to say.

Powers Vol IV: Supergroup.

Dude.

Just...dude.

Dude.

Hee! GF's work here is done.

So are you saying he wanted to keep Dick from becoming what he'd become?

No, I think he's rescuing Dick from having to be alone with his pain, the way Bruce effectively had been. However, for Bruce, the alone (and a tendency towards sociopathy) is what turned him to crimefighting. So in rescuing Dick from the lost and alone, he still makes Dick what those things made him.