10 Biggest Comic Book Bait And Switches

The Batman: War Games crossover event was planned to conclude with the death of Spoiler.

At this point, Spoiler had already been through a whole lot. She discovered her father was the villain Cluemaster, which had propelled her into fighting crime. Later, she found out she was pregnant, and gave the child up for adoption. She was also on-and-off again with the third Robin (not the father of her child).

Stephanie Brown becoming Batman's new Robin was a big deal for readers. Steph had been trained for a while by Batman, and reconnecting with him to prove her worth as his new prodigy looked like a story with some teeth to it. In actuality, the handful of issues with her as Robin were just a setup for Spoiler to be tortured and killed. In true comic book fashion, she does eventually come back, retconned to have only been fake dead.

Dylan Horrocks, one of the writers for the event said, "It was one of the most depressing weeks of my life, because we basically spent the whole week in this horrible office planning how to kill this poor teenage girl who I really liked," he continued, "the whole thing about her being Robin... it was planned purely as a trick to play on the readers "