10 Most Tragic Deaths In The History Of DC Comics

5. Stephanie Brown

Can you believe that it took 73 years for a woman to draw a Batman comic? That's pretty crazy, especially when you consider it's only this year that the character's celebrating his 75th anniversary. As bad as the people making the comics are at the whole equal opportunities thing, it's not like the Dark Knight himself is smashing any glass ceilings. We mean, figuratively.

Batman always seems to be jumping through windows without getting hurt. Maybe he actually does have a superpower? Anyway, that's besides the point. The point is that finally, in the early noughties, we got the first ever female Robin. We guess Bruce Wayne had just never checked that wing of the orphanage when scoping for new wards before. Stephanie Brown wasn't like previous Robins in other ways, besides the differing number of X chromosomes.

Originally appearing in 1992 under the guise of the Spoiler, Stephanie didn't wait to be asked by Batman to fight crime - she did it of her own volition, creating a secret identity mainly in order to ruin the plans of her villainous father the Cluemaster. Hence the name Spoiler. She didn't, like, sit on Twitter and tell people the ending to Game Of Thrones episodes.

That would just barely constitute a one-off gag comic, not an ongoing series. Which Stephanie eventually earned, becoming a recurring character and love interest in the Robin solo book. Eventually she even took Tim Drake's place as Batman's sidekick. For, like, a fortnight, before she was killed off unceremoniously during the course of the War Games crossover.

Which kicked off a massive hoo-ha as the character's many fans thought that was an entirely ignoble death for one of the best female characters DC had ever published, and she never really got chance to make the Robin title her own. Eventually this all got retconned out of existence, but we were pretty cut up about it at the time.