![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwenfrankenstien(Here is the promised Slightly Ridiculous Essay! Watch me use Death of the Author to talk about Batman fanfic. Note that this is written for a non-comics-reading, non-fandom-literate audience.)
Introduction: Fanfiction as Feminist Response
Fanfiction-- unofficial, fan-created stories which expand upon an already-existing media text-- is a community-driven activity not unlike the creation of zines. In fact, prior to the internet becoming widespread, fanfiction was primarily distributed in zine form. Fanfiction blurs the line between creator and audience, as the majority of fanfiction authors are also readers. In this way, stories become influenced not only by the source text (“canon”) but by other fanfiction stories (“fanon”).
This essay deals primarily with the DC Comics and Batman fandoms as they appear on Livejournal.com. This segment of DC fandom is largely distinct from the majority of comic book fandom. For example, unlike comics fandom as a whole, the online fanfiction community skews predominately female. For many female fans, fanfiction provides a space to talk about issues of representation that are not explored in the canon. Fan communities have sprung up that can celebrate or problematise portrayals of sexuality, gender, and race as depicted both in the canon and within the fandom itself.
The alternate universe posed in Mary Borsellino's “Jabberwock”, a Batman story in which Bruce Wayne has a younger sister, is an example of this. “Jabberwock” revolves around Alice Wayne, a.k.a The Bat, and her Robins, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, and Ariana Dzerchenko. This takes three supporting characters who were treated poorly in DC's published Batman stories, and makes them into the heroes. “Jabberwock” is not simply a happily-ever-after fix-it story, however. The same terrible things happen to the Girl Wonders as their male counterparts in the canonical stories. In “Jabberwock”, though, the women are allowed to own their tragedies.
The Dark Night Returns, Watchmen, and the Darkening of Batman
In 1986, the superhero genre was changed forever. In that year, DC comics published two of the most influential superhero graphic novels of all time, Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Both of these books treated superheroes as a legitimate genre for adult readers, telling some of the genre's first serious, mature stories. Dark Knight in particular has shaped all Batman stories since its publication, although the story itself is not in Batman continuity.
Dark Knight was written at a time when the dominant perception of Batman came from the notoriously-camp 1966 TV series starring Adam West. The version of Gotham City presented in The Dark Knight Returns is filled with a level of sex and violence that had not been seen in Batman stories up to that point. It is set in a near-future dystopian Gotham, in which a terrifying, hyperviolent gang called the Mutants are running the city. Over the course of the story, the Mutant Leader rips out the Mayor's throat with his teeth; the Joker beats Catwoman, now an aging madam, and dresses her as Wonder Woman; and Batman breaks the Joker's spine (Miller and Jansen, 1986).
The influence of The Dark Knight Returns on future Batman stories cannot be overstated. Within the five years following its publication, Robin was shot in the shoulder by the Joker and subsequently fired and replaced by a street kid with criminal parents (Collins et al, 1987); the Joker shot and permanently disabled Batgirl, in her civilian identity as the daughter of Commissioner Gordon (Moore and Bolland, 1988); the second Robin was beaten half to death with a crowbar and then blown up, also by the Joker (Starlin et al, 1988-89); and a third Robin was introduced, with a new, darker costume and a personality and attitude more like Batman's own than like either of the previous Robins (Wolfman et al, 1989-90).
Barbara Gordon: The Killing Joke and Women In Refrigerators
The term “Women in Refrigerators Syndrome” (WiR) was coined by comics writer Gail Simone in 1999 in response to a Green Lantern story in which the title character's girlfriend was found murdered, dismembered, and left in the fridge for him to find (Marz et al, 1994). The original WiR website contained a list of female superheroes, with the following introduction:
WiR has come to refer to situations where female characters are killed or victimised in order to provide motivation for male characters. Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 Batman story The Killing Joke is a classic example of this kind of storytelling. The story centres on both the psychopathic Joker and Gotham's Commissioner of Police, James Gordon. The Joker is attempting to push Gordon to his breaking point and drive him mad, and one of the key elements in his plan is an attack on Gordon's daughter. Barbara is shot through the spine and to this day uses a wheelchair.
The Killing Joke is clearly not Barbara Gordon's story. The attack, which included the Joker stripping off her clothes and photographing her naked, had nothing to do with her. She exists only as a device with which to torture Jim Gordon and Batman. The Joker is not even aware that the woman he is attacking is Batgirl, although he would no doubt find that hilarious. In DC canon after Killing Joke, Barbara Gordon has rebuilt herself as the computer hacker Oracle, on whom other superheroes rely for information (Ostrander et al, 1989).
In “Jabberwock”, Barbara Gordon has no reason to become Batgirl in the first place. Instead, she becomes that universe's first Robin, in a story that exactly parallels her Batgirl origin story. Barbara Gordon's Robin, like Dick Grayson's Robin in canon, was shot in the shoulder by a crazed supervillain. Barbara subsequently retires from superheroics in order to have a stable, normal life (Borsellino, 2007). There is not really a parallel to Killing Joke in the “Jabberwock” universe, but that does not mean there is not an Oracle.
Stephanie Brown: War Games and A Death In The Family
“Jabberwock”'s Oracle is a girl named Stephanie Brown, who was also the second Robin. In the canonical Batman stories, Stephanie was a vigilante known as the Spoiler and, briefly, the fourth and only female Robin. Stephanie's tenure as Robin lasted only six issues before she was fired for disobeying Batman's orders (Willingham and Scott, 2004). Stephanie then stole one of Batman's contingency plans and accidentally set off a gang war. During this war she was brutally tortured with a power drill, which was depicted on-panel as akin to a snuff film. She managed to free herself and bested her torturer at hand to hand combat. She refused to kill him, however, and he shot her in the chest (Willingham and Proctor, 2004). For four years after that storyline, it appeared that these injuries were fatal, although Stephanie's death was recently revealed to have been faked (Dixon and Batista, 2008).
Stephanie Brown was often compared to the second Robin, Jason Todd, both in canon and by fans. Both Steph and Jason had criminal fathers and drug-addicted mothers (Collins et al, 1987; Dixon and Grummet, 1994). They were both violent to the extent that Batman worried about their use of lethal force in bringing down criminals (Starlin et al, 1988; Willingham and Scott, 2004). They were known to treat crime-fighting as if it were a game, telling other characters to lighten up. And they were both reckless and did not follow orders, which in both cases lead to their violent deaths, although both have since returned from the grave. Batman fired Stephanie several times because her recklessness reminded him of Jason and he did not want to have her death on his conscience (Gabrych and Woods, 2004).
Ironically, once Stephanie actually did die in 2004's War Games storyline, it seemed like she was largely forgotten by the characters and the creators alike. There was a huge backlash against this storyline by feminist comics fans, resulting in the creation of the feminist comic book website Girl-Wonder.org (GW.org), founded by Mary Borsellino herself. GW.org's original mission statement was to get Stephanie a memorial in the Batcave like the one for Jason Todd, since they were similar characters who died in similar circumstances where the major difference was gender. As the Project Girl Wonder website says: “It's a very clear, neat, clean example of sexism in superhero comic books. Jason Todd got a memorial; Stephanie Brown didn't. It sends a message that Boy Wonders matter, but Girl Wonders don't.” (Borsellino, 2006)
“Jabberwock” takes the comparison between the two characters a step further, by allowing Stephanie to literally take on Jason's role in the story. For the majority of the story the reader is led to believe that Stephanie died in Ethiopia fighting the Joker, in exactly the circumstances of Jason's death in 1988's Death in the Family storyline. In the original story, Jason is looking for his birth-mother and learns in the end that she has been working for the Joker all along (Starlin et al, 1988). In “Jabberwock”, Jason finds Stephanie's body. The resulting paragraph references the canon story, while twisting it to serve the new narrative:
Because of the inherently intertextual nature of fanfiction, the reader is expected to recognise the reference and understand that what Jason assumes is not true. The audience knows that if Jason Todd went in to confront his mother and the Joker, he would have died, because they have seen that happen already in canon.
But “Jabberwock”'s Stephanie did not die in that warehouse in Ethiopia. She has been left in a wheelchair and has rebuilt herself as Oracle, like Barbara Gordon in canon before her. This provides a sharp contrast with Stephanie's canonical death in War Games. Post-“death”, Steph is still allowed her own voice. She comes in towards the end of the story and reclaims her tragedy from Alice, criticising the way Alice dealt with the tragedy:
Steph is here speaking for all the dead or maimed sidekicks in canonical Batman stories who do not have their own voices in canon.
Ariana Dzerchenko: A Lonely Place Of Dying
The third Robin in “Jabberwock” is Ariana Dzerchenko. She is the only character who is a superhero in “Jabberwock” and not in canon, where she was the girlfriend of the third Robin, Tim Drake. As Stephanie became a more important character, Ariana's role in Robin stories was minimised, until finally her family moved back to Russia in a 1999 issue of Robin (Dixon and Johnson, 1999).
Ariana's role in “Jabberwock” parallels the 1990 story that introduced Tim Drake, A Lonely Place of Dying. The story is set not long after Jason's death, and Batman has been increasingly violent and reckless himself since then. Tim Drake, a twelve year old boy who has been watching and photographing Batman and Robin since he was a small child and has figured out their secret identities, originally goes to plead to Dick Grayson to give up his new Nightwing identity and return to the Robin role. Dick refuses, and Tim ends up putting on the Robin costume himself in order to rescue Batman and Nightwing (Wolfman et al, 1989).
That Ariana's story in “Jabberwock” mirrors this is obvious. She arrives in a Robin costume and saves Alice's life, although she has not been authorised as Robin, and Alice then agrees to train her (Borsellino, 2007). Ariana is not simply a female version of Tim, however: “Jabberwock” also pays homage to some of Ariana's appearances in canon. For example, Ariana dyes her dark hair blonde in order to look like Stephanie. In “Jabberwock” this is because she wants to be as much like the previous Robin as she can; in canon it is because she catches her boyfriend staring at Stephanie out-of-costume (Dixon and Wieringo, 1996). Ariana's role is therefore based off of Tim's in canon, but the subtle differences are unique to her character.
Conclusions: The Importance of Oppositional Readings
Fanfiction is an inherently postmodern medium, in that it relies on intertextuality to function. It is the logical conclusion of Barthes' 1967 essay “Death of the Author”: not only do the intentions of the original authors not matter, the authors themselves are no longer relevant, since anyone can continue the story. Stories like “Jabberwock” involve a deliberate misreading of the canon. That is to say, “Jabberwock” scrambles the codes of the original stories to produce an oppositional reading that nevertheless relies on an understanding of the dominant way of decoding the text (Hall, 2008).
Since Batman comics have been published continually since the late 1930's, it can in fact be argued that all modern Batman stories are fanfiction. The comics industry, like fanfiction, includes many creators building off of other people's stories, like how The Dark Knight Returns inspired A Death in the Family and how Oracle was created in response to The Killing Joke. Batman writers are always expanding upon the media construct of the Batman mythos. In fact, the only difference between current Batman canon and this essay's definition of fanfiction is the canon stories' official status.
In this way, “Jabberwock”'s interpretations of the characters are no less valid than the versions present in the stories it reappropriates. “Jabberwock” provides a critique and deconstruction of gender as represented in the Batman mythos. It brings the reader to question the necessity of the sexist and misogynist elements in many Batman stories, and troubles the stories legitimised through publication. The reader is left wondering why DC Comics chooses to privilege certain patriarchal narratives over stories with a more feminist message.
Sources:
Barthes, Roland. "Death of the Author." Aspen vol. 1, no. 5+6 (1967). Link (accessed May, 2009).
Borsellino, Mary. "Project Girl Wonder." Girl-Wonder.org. 2006. Link (accessed May, 2009).
Borsellino, Mary. Jabberwock. in True Stories For Fictional Children To Tell In The Dark, Independently Published. 2007.
Collins, Max A. and Chris Warner and Ross Andru. "Did Robin Die Tonight?." Batman vol. 1, no. 408-409 (1987): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Chris Batista. "The Three." Robin vol. 2, no. 174 (2008): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Mike Wieringo. "Bitter Dregs." Robin vol. 2, no. 28 (1996): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Staz Johnson. "Goners." Robin vol. 2, no. 66 (1999): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Tom Grummett. "Last Gasps." Robin vol. 2, no. 5 (1994): DC Comics.
Gabrych, Anderson and Pete Woods. "Scarification." Detective Comics vol. 1, no. 790 (2004): DC Comics.
Hall, Stuart. Encoding/Decoding. in The Cultural Studies Reader: 3rd Edition, edited by Simon During, New York City: Routledge. 2008.
Marz, Ron, and Steve Carr and Darryl Banks and Derec Auc. "Forced Entry." Green Lantern vol. 3, no. 54 (1994): DC Comics.
Miller, Frank and Klaus Jansen. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. New York City: DC Comics. 1986.
Moore, Alan and Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (1988). New York City: DC Comics. 1988.
Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York. 1986.
Ostrander, John and Kim Yale and Luke McDonnell. "Weird War Tales." Suicide Squad vol. 1, no. 23 (1989): DC Comics.
Simone, Gail. "Women in Refrigerators." Mar 1999. Link (accessed May, 2009).
Starlin, Jim and Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. Batman: A Death in the Family. New York. 1988: DC Comics.
Starlin, Jim and Doc Bright. "The Diplomat's Son." Batman vol. 1, no. 424 (1988): DC Comics.
Willingham, Bill and Damion Scott. "The Girl Wonder." Robin vol. 2, no. 126-128 (2004): DC Comics.
Willingham, Bill and John Proctor. "War Games Act 2: Part 5." Robin vol. 2, no. 130 (2004): DC Comics.
Wolfman, Marv and George Perez and Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying. New York. 1989: DC Comics.
Fanfiction-- unofficial, fan-created stories which expand upon an already-existing media text-- is a community-driven activity not unlike the creation of zines. In fact, prior to the internet becoming widespread, fanfiction was primarily distributed in zine form. Fanfiction blurs the line between creator and audience, as the majority of fanfiction authors are also readers. In this way, stories become influenced not only by the source text (“canon”) but by other fanfiction stories (“fanon”).
This essay deals primarily with the DC Comics and Batman fandoms as they appear on Livejournal.com. This segment of DC fandom is largely distinct from the majority of comic book fandom. For example, unlike comics fandom as a whole, the online fanfiction community skews predominately female. For many female fans, fanfiction provides a space to talk about issues of representation that are not explored in the canon. Fan communities have sprung up that can celebrate or problematise portrayals of sexuality, gender, and race as depicted both in the canon and within the fandom itself.
The alternate universe posed in Mary Borsellino's “Jabberwock”, a Batman story in which Bruce Wayne has a younger sister, is an example of this. “Jabberwock” revolves around Alice Wayne, a.k.a The Bat, and her Robins, Barbara Gordon, Stephanie Brown, and Ariana Dzerchenko. This takes three supporting characters who were treated poorly in DC's published Batman stories, and makes them into the heroes. “Jabberwock” is not simply a happily-ever-after fix-it story, however. The same terrible things happen to the Girl Wonders as their male counterparts in the canonical stories. In “Jabberwock”, though, the women are allowed to own their tragedies.
In 1986, the superhero genre was changed forever. In that year, DC comics published two of the most influential superhero graphic novels of all time, Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Both of these books treated superheroes as a legitimate genre for adult readers, telling some of the genre's first serious, mature stories. Dark Knight in particular has shaped all Batman stories since its publication, although the story itself is not in Batman continuity.
Dark Knight was written at a time when the dominant perception of Batman came from the notoriously-camp 1966 TV series starring Adam West. The version of Gotham City presented in The Dark Knight Returns is filled with a level of sex and violence that had not been seen in Batman stories up to that point. It is set in a near-future dystopian Gotham, in which a terrifying, hyperviolent gang called the Mutants are running the city. Over the course of the story, the Mutant Leader rips out the Mayor's throat with his teeth; the Joker beats Catwoman, now an aging madam, and dresses her as Wonder Woman; and Batman breaks the Joker's spine (Miller and Jansen, 1986).
The influence of The Dark Knight Returns on future Batman stories cannot be overstated. Within the five years following its publication, Robin was shot in the shoulder by the Joker and subsequently fired and replaced by a street kid with criminal parents (Collins et al, 1987); the Joker shot and permanently disabled Batgirl, in her civilian identity as the daughter of Commissioner Gordon (Moore and Bolland, 1988); the second Robin was beaten half to death with a crowbar and then blown up, also by the Joker (Starlin et al, 1988-89); and a third Robin was introduced, with a new, darker costume and a personality and attitude more like Batman's own than like either of the previous Robins (Wolfman et al, 1989-90).
The term “Women in Refrigerators Syndrome” (WiR) was coined by comics writer Gail Simone in 1999 in response to a Green Lantern story in which the title character's girlfriend was found murdered, dismembered, and left in the fridge for him to find (Marz et al, 1994). The original WiR website contained a list of female superheroes, with the following introduction:
This is a list I made when it occurred to me that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics. I'm curious to find out if this list seems somewhat disproportionate, and if so, what it means, really.
These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. I know I missed a bunch. Some have been revived, even improved -- although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place. (Simone, 1999)
WiR has come to refer to situations where female characters are killed or victimised in order to provide motivation for male characters. Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's 1988 Batman story The Killing Joke is a classic example of this kind of storytelling. The story centres on both the psychopathic Joker and Gotham's Commissioner of Police, James Gordon. The Joker is attempting to push Gordon to his breaking point and drive him mad, and one of the key elements in his plan is an attack on Gordon's daughter. Barbara is shot through the spine and to this day uses a wheelchair.
The Killing Joke is clearly not Barbara Gordon's story. The attack, which included the Joker stripping off her clothes and photographing her naked, had nothing to do with her. She exists only as a device with which to torture Jim Gordon and Batman. The Joker is not even aware that the woman he is attacking is Batgirl, although he would no doubt find that hilarious. In DC canon after Killing Joke, Barbara Gordon has rebuilt herself as the computer hacker Oracle, on whom other superheroes rely for information (Ostrander et al, 1989).
In “Jabberwock”, Barbara Gordon has no reason to become Batgirl in the first place. Instead, she becomes that universe's first Robin, in a story that exactly parallels her Batgirl origin story. Barbara Gordon's Robin, like Dick Grayson's Robin in canon, was shot in the shoulder by a crazed supervillain. Barbara subsequently retires from superheroics in order to have a stable, normal life (Borsellino, 2007). There is not really a parallel to Killing Joke in the “Jabberwock” universe, but that does not mean there is not an Oracle.
“Jabberwock”'s Oracle is a girl named Stephanie Brown, who was also the second Robin. In the canonical Batman stories, Stephanie was a vigilante known as the Spoiler and, briefly, the fourth and only female Robin. Stephanie's tenure as Robin lasted only six issues before she was fired for disobeying Batman's orders (Willingham and Scott, 2004). Stephanie then stole one of Batman's contingency plans and accidentally set off a gang war. During this war she was brutally tortured with a power drill, which was depicted on-panel as akin to a snuff film. She managed to free herself and bested her torturer at hand to hand combat. She refused to kill him, however, and he shot her in the chest (Willingham and Proctor, 2004). For four years after that storyline, it appeared that these injuries were fatal, although Stephanie's death was recently revealed to have been faked (Dixon and Batista, 2008).
Stephanie Brown was often compared to the second Robin, Jason Todd, both in canon and by fans. Both Steph and Jason had criminal fathers and drug-addicted mothers (Collins et al, 1987; Dixon and Grummet, 1994). They were both violent to the extent that Batman worried about their use of lethal force in bringing down criminals (Starlin et al, 1988; Willingham and Scott, 2004). They were known to treat crime-fighting as if it were a game, telling other characters to lighten up. And they were both reckless and did not follow orders, which in both cases lead to their violent deaths, although both have since returned from the grave. Batman fired Stephanie several times because her recklessness reminded him of Jason and he did not want to have her death on his conscience (Gabrych and Woods, 2004).
Ironically, once Stephanie actually did die in 2004's War Games storyline, it seemed like she was largely forgotten by the characters and the creators alike. There was a huge backlash against this storyline by feminist comics fans, resulting in the creation of the feminist comic book website Girl-Wonder.org (GW.org), founded by Mary Borsellino herself. GW.org's original mission statement was to get Stephanie a memorial in the Batcave like the one for Jason Todd, since they were similar characters who died in similar circumstances where the major difference was gender. As the Project Girl Wonder website says: “It's a very clear, neat, clean example of sexism in superhero comic books. Jason Todd got a memorial; Stephanie Brown didn't. It sends a message that Boy Wonders matter, but Girl Wonders don't.” (Borsellino, 2006)
“Jabberwock” takes the comparison between the two characters a step further, by allowing Stephanie to literally take on Jason's role in the story. For the majority of the story the reader is led to believe that Stephanie died in Ethiopia fighting the Joker, in exactly the circumstances of Jason's death in 1988's Death in the Family storyline. In the original story, Jason is looking for his birth-mother and learns in the end that she has been working for the Joker all along (Starlin et al, 1988). In “Jabberwock”, Jason finds Stephanie's body. The resulting paragraph references the canon story, while twisting it to serve the new narrative:
Jason's face is streaked with dirt and ash. "I... I should have gone in," he
stammers to Alice, his arms still clutched around Stephanie. "Sheila... my mother... she was working with him... if I had gone in, she wouldn't have told him... I should have gone in... should have been me... she wouldn't have told him, if it had been her son... we just wanted to help her... " (Borsellino, 2007)
Because of the inherently intertextual nature of fanfiction, the reader is expected to recognise the reference and understand that what Jason assumes is not true. The audience knows that if Jason Todd went in to confront his mother and the Joker, he would have died, because they have seen that happen already in canon.
But “Jabberwock”'s Stephanie did not die in that warehouse in Ethiopia. She has been left in a wheelchair and has rebuilt herself as Oracle, like Barbara Gordon in canon before her. This provides a sharp contrast with Stephanie's canonical death in War Games. Post-“death”, Steph is still allowed her own voice. She comes in towards the end of the story and reclaims her tragedy from Alice, criticising the way Alice dealt with the tragedy:
“This is like when Bruce gave little Helena the new baby talk, huh? Only in my case, Mommy really doesn't love the old kid anymore."
"Never say that. You know it isn't true." Alice swallows back the tightness in her throat and blinks hard.
"Forgive me if I'm not comforted by knowing that you care." Stephanie pauses, waiting for a retort, but Alice can't speak. (Borsellino, 2007)
Steph is here speaking for all the dead or maimed sidekicks in canonical Batman stories who do not have their own voices in canon.
The third Robin in “Jabberwock” is Ariana Dzerchenko. She is the only character who is a superhero in “Jabberwock” and not in canon, where she was the girlfriend of the third Robin, Tim Drake. As Stephanie became a more important character, Ariana's role in Robin stories was minimised, until finally her family moved back to Russia in a 1999 issue of Robin (Dixon and Johnson, 1999).
Ariana's role in “Jabberwock” parallels the 1990 story that introduced Tim Drake, A Lonely Place of Dying. The story is set not long after Jason's death, and Batman has been increasingly violent and reckless himself since then. Tim Drake, a twelve year old boy who has been watching and photographing Batman and Robin since he was a small child and has figured out their secret identities, originally goes to plead to Dick Grayson to give up his new Nightwing identity and return to the Robin role. Dick refuses, and Tim ends up putting on the Robin costume himself in order to rescue Batman and Nightwing (Wolfman et al, 1989).
That Ariana's story in “Jabberwock” mirrors this is obvious. She arrives in a Robin costume and saves Alice's life, although she has not been authorised as Robin, and Alice then agrees to train her (Borsellino, 2007). Ariana is not simply a female version of Tim, however: “Jabberwock” also pays homage to some of Ariana's appearances in canon. For example, Ariana dyes her dark hair blonde in order to look like Stephanie. In “Jabberwock” this is because she wants to be as much like the previous Robin as she can; in canon it is because she catches her boyfriend staring at Stephanie out-of-costume (Dixon and Wieringo, 1996). Ariana's role is therefore based off of Tim's in canon, but the subtle differences are unique to her character.
Fanfiction is an inherently postmodern medium, in that it relies on intertextuality to function. It is the logical conclusion of Barthes' 1967 essay “Death of the Author”: not only do the intentions of the original authors not matter, the authors themselves are no longer relevant, since anyone can continue the story. Stories like “Jabberwock” involve a deliberate misreading of the canon. That is to say, “Jabberwock” scrambles the codes of the original stories to produce an oppositional reading that nevertheless relies on an understanding of the dominant way of decoding the text (Hall, 2008).
Since Batman comics have been published continually since the late 1930's, it can in fact be argued that all modern Batman stories are fanfiction. The comics industry, like fanfiction, includes many creators building off of other people's stories, like how The Dark Knight Returns inspired A Death in the Family and how Oracle was created in response to The Killing Joke. Batman writers are always expanding upon the media construct of the Batman mythos. In fact, the only difference between current Batman canon and this essay's definition of fanfiction is the canon stories' official status.
In this way, “Jabberwock”'s interpretations of the characters are no less valid than the versions present in the stories it reappropriates. “Jabberwock” provides a critique and deconstruction of gender as represented in the Batman mythos. It brings the reader to question the necessity of the sexist and misogynist elements in many Batman stories, and troubles the stories legitimised through publication. The reader is left wondering why DC Comics chooses to privilege certain patriarchal narratives over stories with a more feminist message.
Barthes, Roland. "Death of the Author." Aspen vol. 1, no. 5+6 (1967). Link (accessed May, 2009).
Borsellino, Mary. "Project Girl Wonder." Girl-Wonder.org. 2006. Link (accessed May, 2009).
Borsellino, Mary. Jabberwock. in True Stories For Fictional Children To Tell In The Dark, Independently Published. 2007.
Collins, Max A. and Chris Warner and Ross Andru. "Did Robin Die Tonight?." Batman vol. 1, no. 408-409 (1987): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Chris Batista. "The Three." Robin vol. 2, no. 174 (2008): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Mike Wieringo. "Bitter Dregs." Robin vol. 2, no. 28 (1996): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Staz Johnson. "Goners." Robin vol. 2, no. 66 (1999): DC Comics.
Dixon, Chuck and Tom Grummett. "Last Gasps." Robin vol. 2, no. 5 (1994): DC Comics.
Gabrych, Anderson and Pete Woods. "Scarification." Detective Comics vol. 1, no. 790 (2004): DC Comics.
Hall, Stuart. Encoding/Decoding. in The Cultural Studies Reader: 3rd Edition, edited by Simon During, New York City: Routledge. 2008.
Marz, Ron, and Steve Carr and Darryl Banks and Derec Auc. "Forced Entry." Green Lantern vol. 3, no. 54 (1994): DC Comics.
Miller, Frank and Klaus Jansen. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. New York City: DC Comics. 1986.
Moore, Alan and Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (1988). New York City: DC Comics. 1988.
Moore, Alan and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. New York. 1986.
Ostrander, John and Kim Yale and Luke McDonnell. "Weird War Tales." Suicide Squad vol. 1, no. 23 (1989): DC Comics.
Simone, Gail. "Women in Refrigerators." Mar 1999. Link (accessed May, 2009).
Starlin, Jim and Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. Batman: A Death in the Family. New York. 1988: DC Comics.
Starlin, Jim and Doc Bright. "The Diplomat's Son." Batman vol. 1, no. 424 (1988): DC Comics.
Willingham, Bill and Damion Scott. "The Girl Wonder." Robin vol. 2, no. 126-128 (2004): DC Comics.
Willingham, Bill and John Proctor. "War Games Act 2: Part 5." Robin vol. 2, no. 130 (2004): DC Comics.
Wolfman, Marv and George Perez and Jim Aparo and Mike DeCarlo. Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying. New York. 1989: DC Comics.