Blue Beetle in a sliding timeline
Nov. 28th, 2005 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI read someone in passing refer to Blue Beetle as 'middle aged'. And also fat. Both of which he is, these days.
But it occured to me that might be part of why they got rid of him. Not just that he is middle aged and the DCU hates that. But that we've seen him go from college student through young inventor to middle aged businessman, in roughly the time it took Nightwing to go from disco wing to his cop incarnation. That is, Ted changed decades. He used to be a Nightwing age guy, not teen but the kind of age N and Arsenal and that lot are now. And now he's older. And yet he still has to be younger than Batman. Unless he's going to overtake B, which rather puts a squish in the timeline.
The exact stuff I love best about Beetle - the growth and change and maturation - makes him problematic in the never-aging DCU, because its happened in an amount of time currently retconned to about three years, and that just isn't possible.
Which is also why Booster is being played as less mature these days - Beetle overtook him.
I realise Batman can't get to be an old man in main continuity. But he can age without aging right out of the story. And if he is allowed to, that gives everyone else room to breathe.
The sliding timelines make all kinds of un-sense anyway. A lot of stories were very much of their time. Rocket Red, all of them, were a USSR superpower soviet thing. Which is probably why he went boom - if the entire DCU since crisis happened in a squished timeline that fits into this millenium, the Reds plain don't work.
From where I'm standing that isn't a problem with the Reds. Just the timeline compression.
Booster gets progressively more embarrassing too. He was a very 80s guy. Capitalist superhero! Greed is good! But it all looks rather different from here.
I think trying to retcon the attitudes is what is screwing over the DCU. I mean it isn't just the whole Grim!Gritty!Real! thing, its applying it retroactively. You cannot grim and gritty the boxing glove arrow. Just as an example. But it isn't just trying to apply current ideas of 'realistic' to old issues, or old Issues for that matter, its trying to apply current values and patterns and... I don't know, I'm trying to explain a thing I'm also trying to think of.
Every time Jason's story gets rewritten it gets more creepy, and needs more explaining. I mean the whole part where he boosted the tyres on the batmobile needed a page of explanation to make it even physically possible, in the most recent retelling. And the bit where Batman borrows him and sticks him in the Robin suit, well that was always dodgy, but whenever it gets retold it gets darker. I don't like that. Its like... telling us what our memories ought to mean. Telling us what stories *used* to mean, and still must mean, within this new framework someone else has decided on. I don't like it. Why not just build stories forward?
Because they keep dragging them forward, trying to keep it all having happened just now.
It just doesn't work.
But it occured to me that might be part of why they got rid of him. Not just that he is middle aged and the DCU hates that. But that we've seen him go from college student through young inventor to middle aged businessman, in roughly the time it took Nightwing to go from disco wing to his cop incarnation. That is, Ted changed decades. He used to be a Nightwing age guy, not teen but the kind of age N and Arsenal and that lot are now. And now he's older. And yet he still has to be younger than Batman. Unless he's going to overtake B, which rather puts a squish in the timeline.
The exact stuff I love best about Beetle - the growth and change and maturation - makes him problematic in the never-aging DCU, because its happened in an amount of time currently retconned to about three years, and that just isn't possible.
Which is also why Booster is being played as less mature these days - Beetle overtook him.
I realise Batman can't get to be an old man in main continuity. But he can age without aging right out of the story. And if he is allowed to, that gives everyone else room to breathe.
The sliding timelines make all kinds of un-sense anyway. A lot of stories were very much of their time. Rocket Red, all of them, were a USSR superpower soviet thing. Which is probably why he went boom - if the entire DCU since crisis happened in a squished timeline that fits into this millenium, the Reds plain don't work.
From where I'm standing that isn't a problem with the Reds. Just the timeline compression.
Booster gets progressively more embarrassing too. He was a very 80s guy. Capitalist superhero! Greed is good! But it all looks rather different from here.
I think trying to retcon the attitudes is what is screwing over the DCU. I mean it isn't just the whole Grim!Gritty!Real! thing, its applying it retroactively. You cannot grim and gritty the boxing glove arrow. Just as an example. But it isn't just trying to apply current ideas of 'realistic' to old issues, or old Issues for that matter, its trying to apply current values and patterns and... I don't know, I'm trying to explain a thing I'm also trying to think of.
Every time Jason's story gets rewritten it gets more creepy, and needs more explaining. I mean the whole part where he boosted the tyres on the batmobile needed a page of explanation to make it even physically possible, in the most recent retelling. And the bit where Batman borrows him and sticks him in the Robin suit, well that was always dodgy, but whenever it gets retold it gets darker. I don't like that. Its like... telling us what our memories ought to mean. Telling us what stories *used* to mean, and still must mean, within this new framework someone else has decided on. I don't like it. Why not just build stories forward?
Because they keep dragging them forward, trying to keep it all having happened just now.
It just doesn't work.