#(right as i say that i literally forget starline sorry starline fans)
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hey so like.. if sheila really is jason's mom... why does he still say that his mom was a good person? he always talks about his horrible dad but he only ever mentions his mom's drug addiction, never the fact that she was complicit in his murder? she's highkey worse that willis, no?
So for starters (and this is actually the last thing I’m writing in this response because below this I went on a whole rant about how much I hate Sheila and then I reread your ask and realized there might be a little confusion) when Jason mentions his mom, he’s definitely referring to Catherine. Because she is the woman he knows, the woman who ‘raised’ him, the woman who was there during his childhood. She’s the only mother he knows. Sheila is just the egg donor who gave him life only to murder him when he finds her later.
Sheila is 100%, HIGH KEY, the absolute worst. I can’t possibly overstate how much I hate Sheila. She is despicable. Because, imagine you read A Death in the Family for the first time. Maybe you know that Jason dies in the end. Maybe you’ve heard on the interwebz, or 90′s comics, that he gets himself killed, that he’s reckless and he disobeys Bruce’s orders. But you don’t know the story.
That was me. I knew nothing about Jason’s search for his bio-mom and Sheila when I went into that book. And maybe, like me, this is your introduction to Robin!Jason.
So it opens with Jason going half-cocked on some child pornographers and Bruce is understandably worried because Jason almost died but at the same time you’re like... child pornographers are the scum that grows on scum and Jason is a child so like... we feel where you’re coming from Robin, no big deal that’s not really reckless, you’re just a passionate kid (because you don’t know anything about Jason’s past on the streets, hinted at in issues leading up to this one and you don’t know that Jason may have a personal reason for having a grudge against sex offenders and child abuses but it doesn’t really matter because, like, child pornographers!).
So Bruce benches Jason for dumb reasons I won’t go into (and maybe you’re not a total newb like I was, maybe you’ve read a little of Jason’s Robin run before this in Batman and Detective Comics so you think it’s pretty ooc for Bruce and Jason to not discuss things).
Then Jason finds his birth certificate and the name is smudged but it definitely can’t be Catherine’s. So Jason does some research and since he and Bruce are still on the outs, and Bruce is busy tracking down the Joker, Jason, who has been trained as a detective and crime fighter, tracks down three possibilities for his bio-mom.
Skipping ahead, after they fight off Lady Shiva and ask if she’s ever had a kid, because she’s option #2 (option #1 was an Israeli spy and like... how did low level henchman Willis Todd end up with these deadly, badass women?) they walk away and Bruce asks Jason if he really would have wanted a woman like Shiva to be his mother and I BET THE ANSWER IS DIFFERENT NOW!
Because then they get to Sheila and I can finally say that what makes her awful is that she sells her story. I’m reading this for the first time, and I have no idea what happens, just that somehow Jason gets from meeting his birth mother to dead in a blown up building.
And if you’re reading it like that, you’re right there with Jason. You understand why she left him, she’s sympathetic and you feel for her and you think “That is so sad, at least they can have a relationship now”.
So then the Joker shows up and surprise, surprise, comic book worlds are small and he and Sheila have a past.
Joker wants drugs and he threatens to expose Sheila’s past doing abortions, which, in the 80′s may have been meant to make her slightly less sympathetic but now just kind of makes her a victim of a dumb system. Anyway, one of those went bad and she accidentally killed someone and fled the country.
So Sheila takes Joker to the warehouse and you’re thinking, that sucks but Bruce Wayne is there and maybe he can replace the drugs Joker stole, Sheila is in a tough place.
Then she stands by when Joker replaces a shipment of life-saving drugs with his deadly Joker gas and you go ‘uh... ok... not... not really much she can do I guess...”
Jason is watching this go down, recognizes that this is too much for him, and runs off to get Bruce.
That’s when Bruce and Jason split up. Someone has to stop the shipment from being delivered or a bunch of people will die. Their Land Rover isn’t fast enough to catch the cargo trucks and all they have is a one-man, fold-up helicopter! (It’s exactly as contrived as it sounds but hey, comics. 80′s. Whatever.)
Bruce pleads with Jason to wait for him. Jason agrees but as soon as Bruce speeds off, Jason makes the comment “Sorry Bruce, but that’s my mother in there with that lunatic.”
And here’s where I’d like to take a minute and say... I know a lot of Jason fans hate Starlin and ok, I get it. But I... don’t really. Because here’s the thing, he set it up, he could have had Jason barge in, guns blazing (as the saying goes), and while it may have been ‘reckless’ it would STILL would have been understandable. Because Jason is a kid who has been trained in combat, who has just found his mom after both his other parents left him to fend for himself on the streets. Whether he meant to or not, Starlin set this up for Jason to be beyond reproach regardless of how he ended up in that warehouse.
But, and this is important, he didn’t have Jason do that at all. Jason tells his mom, who has, until this moment, seemed to be a humanitarian thrilled to be reunited with the son she never thought she’d see again. He tells her he’s Robin and tries to stop her from going back into the warehouse.
She fucking lures a child, her child, who she was genuinely happy to see an hour ago, into the hands of the Joker because he’s Robin and that means Batman is around and she’s been embezzling funds from the relief organization. She points a gun at her child, asks the Joker what he wants to do with him, gives one pained expression to steel herself, and smokes a fucking cigarette while the the Joker beats her child to death.
Then, when the Joker predictably betrays Sheila, and Jason turns out to not be beaten to death, he drags his broken, bleeding body across the floor and unties her. When they can’t get out because the Joker had the foresight to lock the door, Jason throws his broken, bleeding body in front of hers in a last ditch effort to save a woman who very literally sent him to his death.
So. Now that I’ve covered my undying rage for Sheila and explained why, yes, she is inarguably the worst of Jason’s shitty parental figures, I can get to the rest of you’re ask.
In Universe reason why Jason doesn’t talk about Sheila: Because she murdered him. Because she’s an egg donor and nothing more. Catherine may have been too drugged up to really raise Jason, but she’s the closest thing he has to a caregiver. My adopted cousins call my aunt mom. She’s the only ‘mom’ they talk about. I don’t know if they know who their bio-moms are, but they wouldn’t stop calling my aunt ‘mom’ just because they met them. My aunt is the one who provided for them and raised them. She’ll never stop being they’re mother. Catherine will always be who Jason considers his mother.
Real life reason why Jason doesn’t talk about Sheila: Option 1 - Lobdell hasn’t read “A Death in the Family”. Option 2 - Lobdell forgets the details of “A Death in the Family”. Option 3 - Lobdell has his own headcanon for Jason’s past that he desperately wants to make canon but DC won’t let him because “A Death in the Family” hasn’t been out of print since it dropped, so he just writes RH like his headcanon is canon and as long as he doesn’t explicitly contradict one of DC’s most popular books he can do what he wants.
#dc comics#scandal's wild rambles#A Death in the Family#Sheila deserved WORSE#Jason Todd#shop talk#kinda
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