So, I’m reading all of this hoopla online about the Titans crossover event and how terribly I handled Damian and OG Wally and why didn’t I know this thing happened on page 6 of Obscure Comics #12 back in 2004. Okay, I heard you.

And now what? So, Damian is (apparently) no longer a little shit. He is thoughtful and more mature and less impulsive, less self-centered. Great. I got it wrong. And now what? What do we do with a character after we’ve smoothed out all of the rough edges and rounded off all the corners?

Wally *doesn’t* have a heart problem. Gotcha. And now what? How do we make OG Wally relevant or even interesting? I’m not trying to pick a fight or insult anybody, I’m really asking: and now what? What do the fans actually want? They seem to want their heroes to be perfect and problem-free.

They also seem to want the writers, or at least me, to have read a decade worth of comics before putting their favorite characters into a story. I don’t have time to read 100 comics. I don’t know any working writer who does. I can read, maybe, ten. And I will portray the character the way he or she is being portrayed now, today, currently, not what was done years or even months before.

It’s entirely possible that I’m missing the point fans are trying to make. I *am* listening, but this is a mystery to me. The impression I am forming is fans want their characters to evolve into flat, lifeless droids who, I guess, have adventures wherein their decisions are always spot-on, they are always portrayed in a heroic light, and nobody ever gets damaged. I don’t intend that to be mean-spirited. That literally is my takeaway from all the crosstalk I am seeing.

The extreme distortions– calling my and my colleagues’ work “garbage” –doesn’t help. Arguably, some fans reacted strongly to the stresses we put their favorite characters through. But to suggest that no part, not one scene or one page of the Titans crossover was any good– is just silly. This is the sad byproduct of our zero-sum society, wherein everybody has to be polarized to the extreme of everyone else. Disagreeing with how I portray Potato Man does not, in fact, make me an actual Nazi.

So, somebody help me out. I’m sure many fans gripe about DC or Marvel not listening to them. Well, I’m listening. It’s important to me, to my job, to figure out what fans want and do my best to provide that while not boring them to death by actually giving them exactly what they want.

But is no-drama Wally really what they want? If so, then what? Is well-balanced, non-tempestuous Damian what they want? If so, then what? What do we do? What stories do we write about these characters once they’ve shed the very characteristics that made us love them in the first place?

With all possible respect to my friend Tim Seely, my former mentor Marv Wolfman, Devin Grayson, Geoff Johns and others, I find Dick Grayson to be the most boring Wonder Bread boilerplate character ever to pull on spandex. That’s just me. Tens of thousands of fans are *rabid* Dick Grayson fans. For the life of me, I couldn’t explain why. Grayson, in his various iterations, seems, to me, the ultimate expression of what I’m being harangued about around the web: the flattened-out character whose dealt with all of his shortcomings and character flaws. I see Grayson and I wonder, “And now what?”

Is that what fans want– Damian to be indistinguishable from Grayson? Wally to have no challenges to overcome? And, if so, then what?

I’m not trying to be sarcastic or even defensive. I’m trying to understand because, obviously, I’m missing something.