Harper Rowe is the kick-ass creation of Scott Snyder. The tough teen from The Narrows saved the Dark Knight during Snyder’s The Court of Owls epic. Rowe is back in this week’s Batman #18 in the aftermath of Damian’s death. Will Harper be the next Robin?
“(Laughs)No! I feel badly that everybody is assuming that just because she’s there right afterwards, we were trying to position her as the new Robin. But I can tell you honestly, everybody reading this…she’s not designed to be Robin. I’m not going to give away what happens…whether she would BE Robin or not. But, what the creation of Harper Row was really about was creating a lens for me personally that I could relate to in Gotham, that would be like, a kid, or somebody struggling, as a young person, you’re trying to make ends meet, you’re in this place that’s really tough, nobody believes in you and you have this incredible superhero in town that’s doing these things that inspire you,” Snyder tells MTV Geek.
“So, the genesis of that character has nothing to do with the mythology of Robin, it really is, the reason that we use her in this issue — I just want to be clear — is to give Pete Tomasi room to deal with Bruce’s grief over Damian. Because, for me, this isn’t about let’s use Harper to sort of hint that she’s going to be Robin or something like that. This really is about trying to move from Bruce’s personal experience with Damian’s death so that Pete can handle it, because he’s done that book so beautifully and masterfully and worked so well in terms of the richness of the relationship between Bruce and Damian, that we wanted to give him all the pieces on the playing board to be able to tell his story to show what I wanted to do with Harper was to show how when Batman is in pain, the whole city is in pain, and that’s it.”
Don’t miss the return of Harper this week in Batman #18 and in Year Zero Snyder explores the early days of when Bruce became the Bat starting in Batman #21.
By Editor