Robin 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 (Discussion)

[Dataweaver]

Easy, Tim was a stalker.

How does someone who is between 5 and 10 stalk Batman and Robin? And why? Remember: by definition, this was before Tim uncovered Batman and Robin's secret identities, in a setting where the general public has serious doubts that Batman even exists. (That's what that “urban legend” bit was all about.)

[Jackalope89]

How does someone who is between 5 and 10 stalk Batman and Robin? And why? Remember: by definition, this was before Tim uncovered Batman and Robin's secret identities, in a setting where the general public has serious doubts that Batman even exists. (That's what that “urban legend” bit was all about.)

Being a stalker is not defined by age.

[Dataweaver]

Being a stalker is not defined by age.

I mention agree in terms of capability. Remember, this is also before Tim got any training. At that point in his life, I just don't think he would have been able to stalk Batman and Robin.

[nhienphan2808]

The thing about Tim being “best detective, best Robin” and “sleuthed out Batman and Robin’s identity” is usually cited around the 2000s, where Bruce was Batgod, with mad technology, mad security and tactics on hiding his identity, surrounded by a MUCH darker Gotham with all these dangerous villains . At the same time, you have “bad and angry Robin” Jason, and “needy, very vulnerable orphan Robin Dick Grayson” on series such as Nightwing. So OF COURSE after reading wikis people would think “What made Tim Drake so special” and make up in their head that he’s this genius detective - and sometimes goal oriented to be the best no less - even before he got training from Bruce, because Batman, this Batfgod as they wrote him, apparently needed a better Robin.

Until you actually read his origins and you see a number of things :

- It was the 80s. Tim came with only a camera. Like him, Batman has no tech and acted out in broad daylight. Also was human and not Batgod.

- He was obsessed with Dick Grayson and remembered a move Robin made even before he learned to speak full words. The Flying Graysons’ deaths left him traumalised and somewhat nerotic. *

- Bruce and Dick were mourning Jason and Tim paid no mind to this, just Robin, but said he had nightmares about the incident from 10 odd years ago, thus showing signs of some mental illness and abandonment issues.

- He didn’t even want to be Robin and Bruce didn’t want to take him in.

- Has potential to learn, is smart, but this do not translate to actual detective skills. He just has good memories.

[Scott Taylor]

Its all kind of ridiculous, though, isn't it? Gordon and the entire detective force have never really sleuthed out who Batman really is in secret. Tim had one bog advantage Gordeon never had - the writers.

[Zaresh]

"bad and angry Robin" Jason

...
...

Sigh.
You know what? Whatever. This is accurate at that time.
He definitely was pictured like that in thw 2000 .

[Dataweaver]

No no, speak up. “Bad and angry Robin” was a retcon of Jason, mostly after the fact. The post-Crisis retcon of the character have him more of an edge than he had had pre-Crisis, and that rubbed many of the comics readers at the time the wrong way — and that lead directly to Death in the Family. But “bad and angry”? That was primarily a post-mortem edit, not really in keeping with how Jason had been portrayed while he was alive. I'm a fan of Tim; but I agree that that treatment of Jason was wrong.

[Zaresh]

No no, speak up. “Bad and angry Robin” was a retcon of Jason, mostly after the fact. The post-Crisis retcon of the character have him more of an edge than he had had pre-Crisis, and that rubbed many of the comics readers at the time the wrong way — and that lead directly to Death in the Family. But “bad and angry”? That was primarily a post-mortem edit, not really in keeping with how Jason had been portrayed while he was alive. I'm a fan of Tim; but I agree that that treatment of Jason was wrong.

Exactly. At the time of the early 2000s, he was already retconned into that place and role. It was awful.
But @nhienphan2808 doesn't deserve me mad-ranting about it again .

[Dataweaver]

Its all kind of ridiculous, though, isn't it? Gordon and the entire detective force have never really sleuthed out who Batman really is in secret. Tim had one bog advantage Gordeon never had - the writers.

The thing about comics — all comics — is that it never pays to examine them too closely. Invariably, you will encounter something that doesn't make sense.

If you read between the lines, a case could be made that the GCPD hasn't uncovered Batman's identity because Jim Gordon runs interference for him: basically, there isn't a task force looking into who Batman is. It's also implied several times that Gordon himself knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne, but doesn't act on that knowledge.

But yes, Tim did sleuth out Batman and Robin's identities on his own.

[Dataweaver]

Exactly. At the time of the early 2000s, he was already retconned into that place and role. It was awful.
But @nhienphan2808 doesn't deserve me mad-ranting about it again .

To be fair, I think nhienphan2808 was saying the same thing: that Jason the “bad and angry Robin” was a “Batgod-era” thing (the implication being that that's not what he was actually like before how death). I don't agree with his characterization of Tim (and it's not because I'm a latecomer who only knows about Tim from websites: I was reading DC Comics at the time that A Lonely Place of Dying first came out, and I was a proud owner of the trade collections featuring Tim's origin for the longest time until I gifted them to my “Robin fangirl” niece a few years ago); but his point that the Bat-verse got exaggerated to caricature proportions (and arguably still is) starting some time in the late 90s is a valid one. From day one, Tim was the sleuth, not just figuring out Batman's and Robin's identities, but cracking several cases on his own right from the get-go (I believe he was taking down a hacker while Batman was overseas trying to save his parents); but it wasn't until somewhere around 2003 or so (with Bill Willingham's run) that Tim started being characterized as a super-genius — much to his detriment, IMHO: before that, he was clever and insightful; after that, he tended to be devious and cocky.

[Zaresh]

To be fair, I think nhienphan2808 was saying the same thing: that Jason the “bad and angry Robin” was a “Batgod-era” thing (the implication being that that's not what he was actually like before how death). I don't agree with his characterization of Tim (and it's not because I'm a latecomer who only knows about Tim from websites: I was reading DC Comics at the time that A Lonely Place of Dying first came out, and I was a proud owner of the trade collections featuring Tim's origin for the longest time until I gifted them to my “Robin fangirl” niece a few years ago); but his point that the Bat-verse got exaggerated to caricature proportions (and arguably still is) starting some time in the late 90s is a valid one. From day one, Tim was the sleuth, not just figuring out Batman's and Robin's identities, but cracking several cases on his own right from the get-go (I believe he was taking down a hacker while Batman was overseas trying to save his parents); but it wasn't until somewhere around 2003 or so (with Bill Willingham's run) that Tim started being characterized as a super-genius — much to his detriment, IMHO: before that, he was clever and insightful; after that, he tended to be devious and cocky.

I may be wrong, but, as much as I think it's a fun book, YJ probably helped into turning Tim how he was by that point in the 2000s.

[Dataweaver]

I may be wrong, but, as much as I think it's a fun book, YJ probably helped into turning Tim how he was by that point in the 2000s.

No; there was an abrupt change in 2003, coinciding with the cancellation of Young Justice and the launch of Geoff Johns' Teen Titans on the one hand, and the aforementioned start of Bill Willingham's run on Robin on the other. In both cases, the differences between the “before” and “after” were jarring.

[dietrich]

DC painting Jason as the Bad, angry Robin since the 90's even going as far as having say Jason say the following





"I killed myself"
What a disgusting thing to write.

[Scott Taylor]

A lazarus pit makes people crazy.

[dietrich]

Well, yes. At the time when Tim was conceived, the DKR universe was so separate that it made sense to bring the same concept into the live line. And at the time the Batman line needed the assist. That DC kind of mailed the story in is an artifact of them forcing Tim onto the scene.

Also, iirc, Jason Robin dying wasn't quite in the original plans.

Or was it?

The inspiration idea to kill Jason is often blamed on Jim Starlin but according to this writer. DC may have been convinced by the popularity of Miller's DKR which was released 2 years before Jason's Death:

but the most likely origin can be attributed to a combination of sources. Denny OÂ’Neil, the editor of the books, had long been aware of JasonÂ’s lack of popularity with the fans. He looked to the oblique reference of a dead Robin in The Dark Knight Returns as source material for the subsequent mood of the storylines following JasonÂ’s murder.

While The Dark Knight Returns did make use of the concept of Robin with a new character, a scrappy teenage girl named Carrie Kelley, it took care to remove the idea as far from the baggage of itÂ’s canon incarnations as possible. CarrieÂ’s updated character for a new, updated world. This made her cool to new fans, edgy and yet safe from the baggage of the ghosts of Robins past, a luxury that Jason Todd was never afforded.

The call-in poll was a concept borrowed from a 1982 episode of Saturday Night Live where the audience was encouraged to call in and vote on the fate of a lobster: Whether it would be cooked and eaten or spared by the end of the episode.

O’Neil thought it was a new and exciting way to engage with fans and readers and something to be used on an event with real stakes—“life or death stuff.”