#superhero comics are a clusterfuck (affectionate) (derogatory)

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

Konrad Curze is yeeted to Gotham instead of Nostromo

A child mysteriously appears on the streets of Gotham and beats the living daylights out of whichever lunatic tries to kill him before Batman finds him. Batman, perennial foster failure of orphans, promptly adopts him. Motivated by a thirst for justice and violence, Konrad sets out to become the best Robin there is, and succeeds with flying colors because he’s a super powered transhuman. Damien is pissed about being outdone. Tim nicknames him Konny. Dick steps in as the Angsty Child Whisperer to get him to calm the fuck down. Steph and Cass are too busy getting screwed by editorial to make an appearance. Batman realizes immediately that Konrad’s physiology is hella op and embarks on an epic, years-long storyline to figure out what the hell is going on. At least three origins are introduced and then retconned. Konrad angsts about how he’s a monster who doesn’t belong anywhere. Much drama is wrung from this.

The writers keep using Konrad’s visions to foreshadow that Konrad is destined to be A Baddie. This goes on long enough that you start to suspect that the writers will never actually follow through on all that foreshadowing. Finally the DCU magicians are called in for a crossover, and this fixes all of Konrad’s problems for a few years. Unfortunately the spoopy visions are too good a story hook and eventually they come back just in time for Konrad’s other Primarch capabilities to properly manifest. More angst ensues. Someone travels from a bad future where Konrad became the totalitarian dictator of Earth after he snapped and killed the Joker for doing a genocide (or nuking New York, or starting the Fourth Plague Pandemic, etc.). All of the visions suddenly start focusing on Evil Future Konrad and how he'll murder people for jaywalking and it’s all very tragic.

Konrad flips the fuck out over his evil destiny just in time for the annual giant crossover event where Trigon or Darkseid or some other extradimensional monster invades. It might actually be good but the damn thing is spread out over multiple books and you don’t want to buy them all, so you ignore the missing chunks and just focus on the cooler splash pages of kickass fights. Konrad is nearly tempted to do An Evil but at the last second he is pulled back from the brink by the teachings of Batman, and possibly by the baddie gratuitously killing a popular B-list character. Instead he strikes the decisive blow and saves the day. Much rejoicing is had, and Konrad finally bids farewell to his evil destiny in a heartwarming scene where he is surrounded by the Batfamily. All is well in the DCU.

Five years later all of his character development is thoroughly destroyed when a writer decides he needs a shocking new villain.

Konrad fans lose their goddamn minds. Think pieces are written on all of the geek websites, Tumblr churns out discourse, Reddit churns out circlejerks, 4chan churns out gross memes, but somehow the worst takes all come from Twitter X. It’s chaos, absolute chaos, and honestly you’re kind of tired of it all, and the latest Batman cartoon looks pretty good, so you take a break from comics and just get your fix that way. Much later, you run across a drama write-up, which makes you wonder, whatever happened to Konrad Curze? You look him up on the DC wiki…but he’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared, just as mysteriously as he first appeared. It’s almost as if some mysterious entity whisked him away. A million theories circulate, but no one ever knows for sure.

The grim darkness of the far future may only contain war, but hey, at least it’s simple.

#warhammer 40k #konrad curze #batman #dc universe #batfamily #Did I mention that he becomes a Tumblr sexyman at some point? #Because he definitely becomes a Tumbler sexyman at some point #40k continuity is a clusterfuck but I think superhero comics might actually be worse #I say that from a place of love #superhero comics are a clusterfuck (affectionate) (derogatory)