If you're a classic character from the DC universe, you can expect to be treated with reverence and respect; if you were introduced any time after that, you can expect to be treated pretty shabbily indeed. Such has been the sad history of Stephanie Brown, the first female Robin to appear in official DC comics continuity. She had originally been introduced as her own original costumed hero, The Spoiler, a role she adopted to "spoil" the plans of her father, the villainous Cluemaster. Spoiler got a positive enough response that she ended up sticking around in the Robin monthly, becoming an ongoing love interest for/foil to Tim Drake. Eventually, Stephanie was "promoted" into the role of Robin, following in the footsteps of her old boyfriend... but in what turned out to be rather a crass move, DC writers cut her stint as Robin incredibly short, made her pretty much responsible for igniting a massive gang war that left numerous in Gotham dead, and made Stephanie bite the dust, mortally wounded by Black Mask and left to die by Leslie Thompkins as a warning to Gotham youth not to take up vigilante activity. It's not so much the fact that Stephanie's stint was short hat rankles, as that her ascension to Robin and subsequent death were patently designed to mislead and shock readers. (A hint of how little respect the writers had for both Stephanie and Robin can perhaps be glimpsed in the fact that Stephanie initially had no memorial in the Batcave.)
C.B. Jacobson pops up at What Culture every once in a while, and almost without fail manages to embarrass the site with his clumsy writing. When he's not here, he's making movies, or writing about them at http://buddypuddle.blogspot.com.
