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Originally Posted by
godisawesome
I loved Red Robin... until the New 52 came in.
Red Robin was initially just what happens when talented writers simply write a well-defined character reacting in an emotionally logical way to the insane events that are occurring to him caused by other books. Willingham, Dixon, Yost, and Nicieza basically just had to take the endearing, sometimes neurotic “golden boy” Robin in Tim and have him take the hits caused by the death of Steph in War Games, his father’s death in Identity Crisis, his stepmother’s death, his two best friends’ death, and eventually Batman’s own death, and react accordingly, even when those characters came back.
The result was a Tim who was more paranoid, more manipulative, and more morose... but still recognizable as coming from the original Tim. People could complain about the conceptual value of the character becoming darker, but by and large Tim’s writers all managed to maneuver him to that area in a sensible manner that maintained the character’s unique personality traits and “voice.” The exceptions were Adam Beechen, who kind of lost all credibility with his handling of Cassandra Cain, and to a lesser extent Geoff Johns, who I think lost track of the more mundane traits that other writers managed to keep so that Tim stayed believable.
So when you got to Red Robin pre-New 52, it was a characterization, setting, and status quo that was still exceedingly competent, and had some weight and momentum behind it. People could debate whether having Tim’s paranoia go to full Tower-of-Babel-levels of paranoid and acting more ruthlessly manipulative was the right move for the character, but they didn’t really have to ask why he’d gone down that path, and he still had a pretty huge and respectable readership who still found him enjoyable, and some who even liked him a little bit more now (I’m one of them.)
Then New 52 hit, and showed just how important competently handling and understanding the character was, and how integral that momentum in his previous serieses and the slow build towards his Red Robin status quo was. Scott Lobdell didn’t understand Tim’s voice at all, since it was too restrained and subtle for him, and generally just tried to write him as a bland and broad Robin-archetype. DC also seemed to decide that Tim “graduating” to Red Robin was the wrong move, and tried to modify him to some weird Robin-but-not-Robin creation that only seemed marginally in character whenever someone else from the Bat Books was writing him.
And one of the biggest issues was the attempt to follow Lobdell’s lead in eliminating Tim’s more humble and mundane aspects and trying to reinvent him as the “tech” Robin. Lobdell’s resurrection fo his family should, in theory, have allowed for that more grounded aspect to be reintroduced and reinforced... except that Lobdell’s clearly didn’t get that and never intended to use that grounded aspect of the character at all, so they never appeared. And the Eternal maxi-serieses just kept on trying to find a way to make the tech-guy Schtick stick when really Tim thrives far more when he can be feature does in his civvies and using simple but creative cunning.