OK, I don’t have the issue of Robin in which Stephanie Brown snares the job of Robin. I do have the preceding two, in which Jack Drake finds out Tim is Robin and, after being unable to persuade Bruce to fire him, convinces Tim to quit.
Stephanie seems uniquely unsuited to the job. I haven’t seen her much as Spoiler (she did make an appearance in Green Arrow: quiver, and another in Bruce Wayne: Murderer?) but she strikes me as an immature brat with some fighting skills and maybe some detective skills. She obviously can’t handle herself in any kind of real crisis situation. She seems more than a little manipulitive. Hell, Batman doesn’t even trust her eonugh to tell her his “true” identity.
So, she can’t cut it and is fired, and in attempt to get her job back, she decides to organize an All-Gotham Uber-Criminal Peace Party. Yeah, that ought to work, especially when the supposed prime mover doesn’t show up because, as it turns out, he’s actually one of Batman’s alter egoes. Um, yeah. She was fired for disobeying a direct order in the field, so she thinks it’s a good idea to go behind his back and do something this dicey. So, she ends up causing a multi-organizational gang war and basically turns Gotham into one big battlefield. That ought to get her the job back, sure.
So, would somebody please explain to me why Batman would hire an irresponsible flake like Stephanie to be Robin? Didn’t he learn his lesson with Jason Todd?
Stephanie’s had a lot more character development than what you’ve apparently read, but it all boils down to this:
Bruce allowed her to become Robin in an effort to make Tim jealous enough to come back. He fired her pretty quickly too, the first time she didn’t follow his orders exactly. He wasn’t going to carry it far enough to allow her to Jason Todd herself, and he’s never been enthusiastic about her career as Spoiler. The problem is, he can’t exactly stop her.
Ya’ know, that strikes me as a really, really bad reason to hire anybody as Robin, especially since the events that precipitated Tim hanging up the cape involved his father threatening Bruce at gunpoint, and apparently a very long, and harsh, confrontation between father and son immediately afterwards. It’s not like Tim just up and got mad and quit.
Of course, we all know the real reason is that the writers of the assorted Batman titles needed a plot device to set up for the events in War Games.
I disagree. It felt it was very interesting for Tim to go through that , and they’d milked the “Tim hides his secret from his dad” angle enough over the past 10 years. Time to let him grow up a little too. And I like the idea that despite being good at everything else, Bruce downright sucks at handling his personal relationships with people. Alfred called him on it immediately, and Bruce simply refused to acknowledge it.
Stephanie wasn’t going to stop being Spoiler no matter what Batman told her. What’s he supposed do? Break her leg? The moment he saw that she wasn’t going to do what he told her to do as Robin, he fired her **and **told her to stop being Spoiler. Not sure how he’s going to stop her, but maybe he’ll come up ith something. Or maybe she’ll finally quit herself now that she sees hat a screw-up she is. Her father is dead, and therefore so is her original reason for suiting up. Maybe she can finally move on.