This was delayed a lot longer than I planned.
There wasn't a lot of stand outs this year and honestly it has me seriously reconsidering my pull list. I did plan on dropping all comics in 2021 but I have a few things to read coming up. Though I might shift to Star Wars comics and/or Manga entirely depending on what direction DC is headed. I'm not buying any of their events so I'm already saving some money.
This will be different from previous years.
I'm only going to have a few categories that I filled out a while ago and talk about why this was such a frustrating year in comics for me. There really weren't a lot of great moments for 2020, at least not in my pull list. The damage from previous stories still lingered heavily on character(s) like Wally West even with attempts to soft the blow of HIC since DC refused to entirely retcon it. The personality shifts with the TT acting like Damian forced them to behave the way they did and agree with his bad choices, which definitely wasn't the case. He didn't even face any real consequence for his actions and another writer had to retcon it being his response to what happened to family members (Dick, Alfred.) Which isn't why he took the team into a dark direction in the first place.
The era of the Dark Trinity ending just like all Red Hood team up books do, and partly because DC has to keep dragging the bat characters back into (Imho) subpar stories. The bat family act out of character in Alfred Pennyworth RIP, ignoring the real issues between them and pin the blame on someone/something else. Plot lines that really should be confronted, the actual conflicts between Jason and Bruce/Damian and Bruce, aren't addressed at all. For some reason everyone still thinks Jason is to blame for the friction when Bruce beat him for something he didn't even do. I have zero faith in this ever being brought up even with Roy, who knows exactly what happened, being back from the dead.
There was just so much wasted potential, good storylines being cut off for far less interesting ones. There were a lot of retcons that: 1) made no sense, 2) weren't enough to salvage the damage that was previously done, or 3) made the character(s) look worse.
I'm going to be honest, a big reason for the delay in writing this was because apathy finally set in. I mentioned this a few times when I spoke about quitting Marvel comics due to too many bad writing choices making me not care anymore. It started slowly but I think Three Jokers made me start to drop DC. I made myself read the beginning of issue #2 and never picked it back up again. I still haven't read some comics I had preordered after. So if some of the things I mentioned might of changed in a later issue I haven't gotten around to reading it. I still haven't decided if I'll finish it.
Most WTF Moment:
Joker (one of them) claiming that Jason not only begged for his life but was desperate enough to offer to be his sidekick if he was spared. That just completely misses the point of Jason's character. Yes, Jason was a kid at the time but his defining part in Death in the Family was his defiance and how protective he was of his mom, even though she betrayed him. This is a kid that was literally close to death since he was a baby (not just because of his illness) because of where he lived. Someone that Bruce feared was never scared enough (UTH) that in the actual issue of the beating (DITF) fought back. Who was so loving and was so courageous that his mom (who sold him out) told Batman what a good kid he was with her dying breath.
That's why it's tragic, Jason was a hero and that still didn't save him. The retcon underlines why Jason is so off in Three Jokers. It acts like he's a scared little boy when that's not the character we've been following. Yes, he has PSTD but he's never been written like this. It also doesn't make sense. If it was true why would Joker wait until now to reveal it and not a) when Jason was dead to taunt the family or b) to get under Jason's skin when he returned?
Jason Todd doesn't open up to many people and even with his friends there are some things he prefers to deal with alone. When his best friend Roy Harper died Jason bottled everything up and no one that mentioned the death was able to get him to deal with it. After Bizarro and Artemis returned Jason mentions Roys' death in passing to Artemis and tells her the whole story. Pretty much everyone knew Jason was upset but only Artemis understood how to help him grieve. If you've read Artemis in other titles you know that she's not usually depicted as the most tactful of people nor the person you'd go for a shoulder to cry on.
Yet she just gets Jason, she knows what he needs and doesn't let him ignore his pain. She just holds him while he mourns and while providing him with enough privacy to do so. His façade slowly by surely collapses as the panels go on until he starts to let it all out. It speaks of a deep connection, far deeper than we've been shown from the bat family when it comes to Jason.
While Damian and his Titans did tick me off a lot another bat character took the crown this year. Writers and editors seem to find it difficult to write a consistent Barbara Gordon. Does she like certain members of the bat clan or does she hate them? She will blame Dick and Jason for not being around despite both of them having perfectly good reasons for being absent. She'll be incredibly dismissive to Dick then get together with him. (Sure the world was apparently ending but when is it not in the DCU?) She acts high and mighty to her dad for his actions while mind controlled but was fine dating the guy that previously framed Jim.
That fact that Three Jokers had Batman having to explain to a furious Barbara that Jason was traumatized by Joker still gets me. The fact that Bruce's character that is notorious for having trouble communicating with others when it comes to emotions, especially Jason, had to spell it out despite Barbara witnessing Joker triggering Jason is frustrating.
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