It's Another Of Those Things I Have To Get Out Of My System

So Smallville Season 11 is going to have Batman and Superman finally meet, and Batman's partner/sidekick is going to be Nightwing. Except in this case, Nightwing turns out to be Stephanie Brown. Now, I'm not buying the comic myself, because I don't particularly care about Smallville, but as someone who likes Stephanie Brown, it's nice to see the character being used. By Bryan Q. Miller no less, someone with a pretty good track record with Steph*. And there are certainly some people excited about it, who will probably buy the comic because of this, and that's good.

Anyway, I did see this tumblr post with the complaint that Steph keeps stealing other character's identities, and when is she gonna create a legacy of her own? I know I should just ignore it, it's people on the Internet shooting their mouths off, but obviously it's too late for that or I wouldn't be typing this.

So, first point. This is Smallville continuity, so we have no idea as of yet about this Batman's history of sidekicks. For all we know, Steph is the first partner he's ever had, maybe just the first to call herself Nightwing. Or maybe not. There may have been one, or three, or seven partners before her, but we don't know. It's entirely possible there's no one in that universe for her to steal that identity from. Unless you're going to argue she's stealing it because there's a preexisting character in a completely separate fictional universe (which she's never seen, again, to our knowledge) that used the name first. In which case, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ray Palmer, cyborg Red Tornado, to name a few, they're all thieves.

Second, this is DC we're talking about. This may have changed with the relaunch, but for what, 10, 15, 20 years prior to the "New 52", DC was pretty into legacies. The Flashes, the Green Lanterns, the Atoms, Superman and the Legion of Superheroes, the Legion of Superheroes and L.E.G.I.O.N.**, Starman, the Arrow family, the Blue Beetles, on and on. You couldn't swing a dead cat (which Roy Harper would mistakenly believe was his deceased daughter) without hitting a legacy hero in the DCU. Wasn't DC One Million about how the heroes had created something that would endure for centuries past their deaths? It wasn't considered stealing someone's thunder, it was honoring what they stood for and adding to it. In the old DCU, Jay Garrick might have been the first Flash, but the name grew beyond just him. It became a title, held by many people across time, each doing their best to uphold what they think it represents, and in the process adding to the cachet the title carries.

While it isn't unusual to see a hero get annoyed initially when someone else co-opts one of their costumed identities, what usually happens is the newcomer proves themselves, and the two form a general acceptance of each other, if not a friendship. It seems like the "stealing" only really applies when a villain does it as a way to tarnish the hero's name.

OK, but maybe the Batfamily is different. Not so much. I mean, if Steph "stole" the Batgirl identity, then so did Cassandra Cain, so did Helena Bertinelli, and pre-Crisis on the Infinite Earths, so did Barbara Gordon (though she was the first to spell it without a hyphen). If Steph "stole" the identity of Robin, then so has that little snot Damien Wayne, and so did Tim Drake and Jason Todd. Heck, if you follow Untold Legend of Batman continuity, even Dick Grayson stole the Robin I.D., because that story says a young Bruce Wayne donned the costume first to disguise himself while he learned from the world's greatest detective, Harvey Harris, who gave him the name "Robin". And "Nightwing" was an identity that either Batman or Superman used when they fought crime together in the bottle city of Kandor (the other was Flamebird, I forget which was which). Tim Drake wasn't the first Red Robin, Jason Todd wasn't the first Red Hood, on and on.

Honestly, the women characters in the Batverse seem better about picking out unique identities. Barbara Gordon was Oracle, obviously. Came up with that on her own, no input from the Bat (I think they may have changed that somewhere along the way, but I prefer to go with the interpretation she took that path all on her own). Cass Cain was Black Bat, which I don't think any other DC heroes have used. There hadn't been a Huntress in post-Crisis on Infinite Earths before Helena Bertinelli, what with Helena Wayne having lived in a different universe that was wiped out/merged with a bunch of other universes.

And, of course, Stephanie Brown was Spoiler. That's the identity she started with, it's the one she stuck with for the first 12 or so years the character existed. It's the one she went back to when Batsy fired her as Robin (under questionable circumstances), and the one she stuck to when she returned to Gotham after she recovered from her torture at the hands of Black Mask. Stephanie was Batgirl for about 2 years (our time), Robin for maybe 6 months, but she was Spoiler for close to 15 years. She's had her own identity, that she came up with on her own, not only independent of the Bat's input, but which she maintained for years in spite of his disapproval.

Seriously, if Stephanie Brown is stealing other people's identities/thunder, then so has practically every other character in the Batverse at some time or another. So have most of the character's in the DCU, period, at some point. Which makes it kind of strange to single her out for it.

* That's actually been my biggest concern since the relaunch with characters I like that I haven't seen. That they'll finally show up, and it'll be a disaster, because they handed Cass Cain to Beechen or Winick or whoever.


** I'm not sure how to count that one. Vril Dox' group came first, but Bedard set it up so the most recent iteration was built upon Vril having access to Brainiac 5's complete files on his Legion, sent from the future. I guess it goes Superman - Legion - L.E.G.I.O.N.?