The Odd Things I Fixate On

When I was reading the Robin/Spoiler Special. there was something that I noticed. Robin and Spoiler are trying to deal with the kidnappers and are currently in a hole full of waste paper. The villains feel they've got our erstwhile heroes trapped, but the duo tosses some of those Batarangs with rope out and latch onto large stacks of paper, which they pull on top of the baddies, trapping them underneath. Hurrah!

The thing I noticed was that while Robin's position suggested he'd thrown the 'rang like a football, Spoiler's looked like she was practicing her backhand. I figure it's likely that Albuquerque went with those postures to distinguish between the two a bit, but it started me thinking about whether different characters that do similar things do them differently. For an example in our world, there are many different batting stances, and hitters can be equally successful (or successful in different ways) with very different batting stances. Likewise, characters in the DC Universe could throw Batarangs in different fashions, adjusting for their personal size, strength, handedness, etc. Batman probably knows the most efficient method of doing that, since he has the most practice, but the most efficient for him might not necessarily work for Tim Drake, and what works best for Tim might not work as well for Cassandra Cain, and so on. I would think Connor Hawke might practice a different form of archery (are there different forms?) since he probably learned from different people than Ollie or Roy.

Over at Marvel, Colleen Wing and Echo probably wouldn't have the same style of swordfighting, due to differences in where they learned and who they learned from. And so on. I don't know whether those kinds of things get discussed very often in the comics (I recall Batman in Kevin Smith's Green Arrow commenting on the difference in the angle an arrow was shot into the hull of a sub compared to how Connor would have done it, plus the apparent strength of the person firing), and I wouldn't want editors or whomever to be hassled with trying to keep track of how such and such performs this specific action, since editors seem to have enough trouble handling things as it is these days, but it was something I thought was interesting.

One thing, real quick, on the layout of that panel. Normally, I wouldn't be too enamored of a panel where it draws the eye back to the previous panel (Spoiler and Robin are throwing their 'rangs in that direction), especially since it's the last panel on that page, so ideally it'd be pulling your eye to the next page. However, it works well because the previous panel is two of the criminals looking down into the pit at them, and they're throwing the Batarangs over those chumps' heads. So the Batarangs are going towards the hoods in the previous panel, but also towards us, since we're viewing Robin and Spoiler from where the criminals were. It didn't occur to me the first 4 times through, but this last time it caught my eye, and I thought that was worth mentioning.