A Rant Much Belated

So anyway, still doing the reading Batman comics and not hating Nightwing thing...it's a strange novelty for me still. I mean, the guy's still pretty much a tool, but somehow the gratuitous angst has become endearing. I'm all "Aw, you think you're a failure! Izznt that cute?"

Weird.

Anyway though, this has had the added advantage of getting me to read stuff I haven't read in years for a new perspective. One of the things I read was the trade paperback of Contagion. I liked Contagion overall, despite the crappiness of Dick's mullet and Selina's Balent-era costume. I liked the plot and the way the characters were utilized in finding the cure and so on. And I always like the "OMG! ONE OF THE TEAM IS NOW AT RISK!!" type development.

I do have an issue with the storyline though, pun unintended.

At the end of the story, after the cure's been found/turned in. Nightwing (who I still don't hate, terrible mullet and physics defying ponytail aside. Have they ever explained how a shoulder-length mullet becomes an ass-length ninja ponytail? Because I kind of think the fact that he wore that the first few times I'd encountered the character might have been a factor in how I hated him) comes back to the Batcave. Robin, who had gotten sick earlier is suddenly gone from the sick bed and Alfred's looking sad and grave.





Fortunately, he doesn't have time to go into "Oh my god! I WASN'T IN TIME! I FAILED!" angst (aw!) before "Gotcha! :D" Tim appears, and is all better to boot. Dick is pissed off for all of ten seconds and then gets over it:



Now, I'm not really against inappropriate or dark pranks. I'm not necessarily against the idea of Alfred as a prankster (since well, you gotta find someway to keep your humor in that job) but JESUS CHRIST man. Alfred is the SANE person in the Batclan. The sane person who is probably closest to Dick. Saw a frantic Dick carry Tim into the cave. Spent all that time at Tim's bedside to worry.

And somehow ALFRED thinks it's okay to make the guy think his spiritual kid brother is dead?! REALLY?! I could buy the prank from Tim, who doesn't necessarily understand how scared they were, or Bruce, who has the emotional sensitivity of my left nutsack. Which is especially impressive as I'm a girl. But ALFRED?!

I honestly think this is an out of character moment worse than Dick either wondering what the point in saving Damian is in Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul, Leslie Thompkins (since retconned) letting a kid die to prove a point, or Hal Jordan not being an egotistical fuck-up.

It's ALFRED man. Jeez.

That's it, I'm officially slotting Dick in my Scott Summers category of "So um, you never had a CHANCE to be not-fucked up, did you?" Poor wangsty kid.