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.

So Scott had Jean and Madeline, and couldn't arrange a threesome? That boy really has his priorties screwed up.

For a couple of days now I've wanted to comment but haven't been able to (stupid work, stupid power outage).

I got my lot of Gotham Central PD that I won on ebay. I also got the second set of comics I bought. I thought I was buying Teen Titans. And despite the fact that I looked at this a bunch of times, once I got the mail open I see I actually bought 1-4 of The Titans. Which is really annoying but I kind of like it and Lian is in this.

I have major holes to fill in with GCPD but I was reading what I have and in several issues the whole Batman is real but we can't acknowledge him comes up. At least in this title the police know about Batman and the bat signal is on the roof of their building. But they

And I bought Bruce Wayne: Murderer, which I liked, until I got to the end and my reach was the hell???

Is there another book? Something that continues this?

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.

Yeah, this makes sense.

And I agree that Dick wouldn't have turned out nuts like Bruce had Bruce not taken a hand in things. Dick's an extrovert whose life up until the death of his parents wasn't exactly marked by its stability (not that it was a bad life, but a circus kid on the road has a vastly different experience of the world than a rich kid in the manor). He'd have adapted.

Is there another book? Something that continues this?

Fugitive 1-3.

I didn't know this until relatively recently so I'll ask if you've seen it: Has anybody here read Dreamwave's TRANSFORMERS series? I had major '80s memories flashbacks when I saw these at the comics store last weekend...

...and the Devil's Due GI Joe series too?

I've got two beaten-up issues of the old Transformers series tucked away somewhere; I got given them at random and they're not even consecutive. Weird to see the Transformer universe filtered through a comic book drama scheme, with all the turnabouts, psychological conflicts, and switching sides.

The whole Madelyn Pryor thing was before my time, reading-wise, so I can sort of ignore it, the way the writers mostly have. Oh, but just to further confuse the issue: Let's not forget Nate Grey, aka X-Man, the test tube son of Scott and Jean from the Age of Apocalypse universe who is genetically identical to Cable, except he's 1) younger 2) not infected with a techno-organic virus and 3) ridiculously powerful. And when he first appeared in the regular Marvel universe, he encountered a reincarnation of Madelyn Pryor. ...that he'd somehow created whole cloth with his powers. ...unbeknownst even to himself. ...even though there was no such person in his universe and he couldn't have known who she was otherwise.

That series was just weird.