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There's a female fan I used to know, many moons ago, who absolutely hated superheroines in high heels. She maintained that the kinds of moves our gals regularly make while perched atop stilettos would be a quick route to a couple of broken ankles.

In response (and this will tell you how long ago this was!) I offered the SOLID GOLD dancers, who whirled and twirled and generally cavorted while wearing heels that would probably give most people a nose bleed.

But, the female fan protested, those were all REHEARSED moves. The dancers were not jumping about spontaneously, in an uncontrolled environment (like a fight).

The same could be said of Robin, I suppose. Dick's circus background might have prepared him for the training Batman would give him, but it wouldn't result in the nearly instant turnaround.

(And this is way to much analysis of a fictional character, I grant. But we DO have to be careful. "It's comics" is an acceptable justification for somet things we do, but it's not a Get Out of Jail Free card!)

Dick Grayson went from 10 to around 18 (almost overnight), and then the years just started piling up. How many Robins have there been since Dick (O honestly don't know!), but unless their careers have been very, very short, they are really piling the years on Batman, aren't they? AND underlining the biggest traditional complaint about Robin: that it's incredibly irresponsible for Batman to take a kid "to work" with him!!

But Robin wasn't just any ordinary kid. 

As for the multiple Robins and Batman's age dispute, it's possible the people at DC want Batman older to honor Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.  Since that series inspired the current take on the character for close to 30 years. 

Sam Karns wrote: "Why was Jason Todd so hated? He was a noble and courageous character to me."

I can think of a couple of reasons. One: He was the first "pretender to the throne." All of the objections to replacement Robins were made way back when, and have more or less come true. Once you start replacing characters, it becomes all too easy to do it again, and again... Dick Grayson had his fans, and they did not take kindly to someone else putting on the green slippers.

Two: There were two distinctly different Jason Todds. The first was a fair-haired acrobat whose parents were killed by a criminal, in this case, Killer Croc. This iteration was held by fandom at the time to be too boring and too similar to Dick. A pale copy. Once Crisis hit the "reset" button on everyone's backstory and origins, he became a street kid whom Batman caught boosting the tires off the Batmobile. This origin was generally held by vocal fans at the time to be absolutely ludicrous*. At least the other Jason Todd had acrobatic skills, the argument went. This kid's got nothing but mouth and attitude! What's that going to get him, besides dead? Every time he smarted off to Batman or went off on a personal vendetta was one more call waiting to happen on the 1-800 number that was in his future...

Myself, I kind of liked the original Jason. I enjoyed those stories and the Don Newton art at the time. I was well over the Crisis and all of the nonsense attached when the second origin rolled around. I frankly didn't much care at that point, although I did have a friend at the time who was invested in the story. Later, when Tim Drake came into the picture, she became a fan of his. She enjoyed the solo series, the background, all of it...

Every character out there truly is somebody's favorite character. Mine is Zody, the Mod Rob. Okay, no, not really... But he is on the list...

* Also, another point made was, seriously? You can boost the tires off the Batmobile? No one has ever done this before? There are no specially-engineered lugs in place or anything? You can just... take the tires off? Really? Many readers felt the writer at the time was a little too set in the world of basic kid-level mystery fiction rather than someone who knew how to write, y'know... Batman.

One of the most frightening "sound bites" that I know of came from Mark Waid, the editor who had participated on some level or another in two Legion reboots already, and shepherded the book through some of the most mishmashed, incomprehensible multiversal nonsense in their history.

He was apparently on a convention panel about the Legion, being bombarded with questions about the upcoming "Threeboot" version wherein he intended to start the whole rigamorale over again, (this time with jokes and a "Wild in the Streets" theme of youth in rebellion,) and he had to leave to attend another panel. As he got up, he assured the fans not to worry. "No one loves the Legion more than I do!"

Having now survived the deservedly short-lived Threeboot, such sentiments inspire dread rather than hope in my hardened heart whenever I hear them... "Fan" conceptions of characters rarely if ever capture what actually makes them tick, and almost never allow for the full spectrum to come into play. It's usually a process of removal. "This doesn't work. That never made any sense to me, so it doesn't fit..."

Such reworkings may gain their own fans, (There are probably LSH fans who swear by the Threeboot,) but the original character or concept is almost always lost, often deliberately so, in the rush to put forth what this fan thinks makes them cooler than cool... Or worse, what they've now given the character that he never had before, which will make him cooler than cool...

Then there's the opposite tack... "I have always hated so-and-so..."

Fans with grudges and crushes are far too easily and often indulged in these wacky times in which we live...

That being said, give me a Green Lantern book and I will bring back the original Stel of Grenda and mercilessly kill Dexstarr. Stel was clunky and cool, back before the "Robocop" style "reimaginings" and whatnot. And Dexstarr? Seriously. It's a feral cat from outer space with a name that sounds like an oil company. He is so dead, first chance I get...

Which is why it probably would not be a good idea to give me a Green Lantern book... Or at least not until I get some counselling... :-)