Tim Drake: Robin #10 Preview (Final Issue)

[godisawesome]

Kinda seems like DC may not know what to do with Tim post-Robin? Like they haven't found his Nightwing?

They had pre-flashpoint but botched it.

Yeah, Red Robin with the cowl and written by Chris Yost and Fabian Nicieza, traveling the world and chess mastering his way through anything he can, was working pretty well.

[Konja7]

Yeah, Red Robin with the cowl and written by Chris Yost and Fabian Nicieza, traveling the world and chess mastering his way through anything he can, was working pretty well.

Yeah. Unfortunately, they can't even return to that.

In itself, the concept of Red Robin was lost with the New52, since Dick becomes Nightwing again and Jason gets his Oultaws solo. Tim being an ex Robin getting his new identity turns a little redundant in that situation (Jason could also take the idea of the dark ex Robin further).

Not to mention that Red Robin also worked because Tim still has a lot of popularity at that time. Currently, Tim lacks he popularity to mantain a solo even with a similar concept.

[NOCTPHOENIX]

The Marina 'cast' were really underdeveloped. We never see or get a good explanation why Tim would want to move there or even likes them or feels he belongs there. We never see a moment of meaningful interactions between him and them at all. Not to mention their designs and personalities make them feel very....cartoony. And the whole "oppressed" people angle they are going for them fell flat as we never really see it (e.g. cops don't care about them but wasn't the detective investigating the murder there in issue 1 and working with Robin to do it?) aside from being told it via the whole worry of them being evicted (which goes no where or explained) through letters or something. The most was in issue 4 of someone getting fired and a mention of how the others were, but we don't see why he was fired or explained aside from being "Marina scum" (which again is trying to push the oppresed angle but no explanation as to why they are viewed that way or why the councilman is against them. It seems to be using their status as living in the Marina as why but again to treat them like an oppressed minority when we haven't seen why that is the case and when they are all just a bunch of quirky white people...well see my next point). Not to mention that whole plot was dropped after issue 4 and never comes back again and everything then seems fine. They feel like quirky white people who chose to live on a boat and act like they were forced to live there via gentrifcation or something which feels eh.

[WebLurker]

They had pre-flashpoint but botched it.

So, what do you do with a character you can't find a place for?

[NOCTPHOENIX]

So, what do you do with a character you can't find a place for?

Limbo or kill him/j

I'd just restore his pre-flashpoint status quo

[agentofthebat]

This just doesnt feel like Tim to me.

[Digifiend]

That ending sucked. He can't save Batwoman, so he offers to sacrifice himself if the villain lets Kate go - and the two end up being rescued by the Bat Family and the "marina family" - implying that Bernard has outed Tim's identity as Robin to them! And Darcy/Sparrow was with them, even though she was seriously injured in the previous issue and should've still been in hospital.

Was Stephanie in season 2 young Justice ? I don’t recall that at all. She isn’t special we have 100s of characters who have never seen life outside comic pages. Cassandra never appeared until birds of prey/YJ.

Mrs Marvel is about to be reborn as a mutant with the power set of her live action counterpart

I wonder if Superman and Lois family would have changed if Jon’s sexuality had come out before the show . Rather then twins just have teen jon

Steph first appeared in YJ in season 2 episode 10. https://youngjustice.fandom.com/wiki/Spoiler

Yeah, it's obvious Kamala's getting an immediate resurrection, though the part about her getting her MCU powers and being a mutant for synergy is just fan speculation and not confirmed.

I reckon Jon just wouldn't have dated girls if he was already revealed as bi in the comics when the show started. There's no reason for Jordan to not exist. I've always thought Jordan was a better adaptation of Jon actually, and the show's Jon is more like Conner.

[Triniking1234]

That ending sucked. He can't save Batwoman, so he offers to sacrifice himself if the villain lets Kate go - and the two end up being rescued by the Bat Family and the "marina family" - implying that Bernard has outed Tim's identity as Robin to them! And Darcy/Sparrow was with them, even though she was seriously injured in the previous issue and should've still been in hospital..

Saved me $5.

[Frontier]

A reddit review illustrated why this series just did not work.

I'm going to preface this by saying I've never had anything against FM as a person. I did my best to focus my reviews purely on her skills as a writer while acknowledging her personal statements/comments/backstory which influenced her story decisions for her tenure with Tim.

Now that her time with Tim is over, I can comfortably describe her time as "well intentioned, but terribly executed." Her canonizing Tim to be bisexual was her strongest contribution to Tim's mythos, but beyond that, her execution of Tim's journey lacked narrative cohesion, conflicted with her stated intentions for her series, and did not feel like it was a natural arc that Tim needed to undergo.

FM's main focus of this series boils down to a coming of age story for Tim. The problem is that Tim isn't a new character where this arc can feel fresh. Tim debuted 34 years ago, and underwent this same arc (and more) under Dixon's tenure, which is considered the gold standard for Tim's history. Tim, meta-narratively and in text, has outgrown this type of arc, as seen with Yost's Red Robin arc.

FM's story is well intentioned, but the problem is her execution sorely lacks. The biggest issue is she attempts to tie Tim's coming of age arc to his bisexuality to freshen things up...but does nothing interesting with it. It's like Tim wakes up one day and goes "I'm bisexual" and everyone claps. This is a HUGE status quo change, not just for Tim, but for TimSteph, yet FM speedruns things so she can get to TimBer without any development of substance. It's all surface level.

The issue for me is that a coming of age story NEEDS to have internal conflict for it to land, but this story didn't do it well. The most we get from FM is Tim questioning if him and Bernard are boyfriends...after 6 months of dating. It's honestly a lame internal conflict and doesn't reflect any type of self-discovery journey realizing one is bisexual should reasonably bring.

The internal conflict for this series SHOULD have been Tim realizing he was bisexual and dealing with that - and whether than means he loves Steph any less (a question a lot of newbie bis navigate when realizing they feel attraction to more than one sex). Something I think is a good comparison is Heartstopper. Nick's coming out arc is so good because it FEELS real. The questioning, the confusion, the fear, slow acceptance, then joy.

Tim...did not have that. He was at the end destination of his journey (i.e he “came of age”) at the start of FM’s story - which a huge conflict with her intentions to have Tim "grow into the person he wants to be” by the story’s end. She left him nowhere to go, which is why the series just felt like it lacked any sort of substance.

Her story just didn't come together, with so much of her writing hinging on both meta- and internal history that never existed, leaving important character beats to happen off-panel, or just being poorly paced. It wasn't helped that characters would make decisions and act in certain ways to move the plot along rather than feeling organic. This can definitely be seen with Bernard, whose characterization changed to fit whatever the plot needed him to be. Tim also was written inconsistently, making amateurish mistakes a seasoned detective would have NEVER made just so the plot can get to point A to B.

The new characters also were underwritten, with Darcy being the obvious Steph stand-in (though FM forgot that Darcy was HOH half the time) and the best of the new characters, though she's not given anything interesting to do to separate her from the Steph comparisons, Detective Williams was there more as a "gay rep" prop than an actual character, Moriarty was a discount Clayface, and the Marina characters felt like cutouts than characters.

Overall, I'll say this. It's not the worst comic I've read, but it's definitely the worst Tim arc in recent memory. It just has nothing of substance to say - which is a death knell for a comic IMO.

[Drako]

It's baffling that FM is still pretending that Tim doesn't think he has a place in the Batfamily. The scene that he gets surprised that they came to rescue him is so forced. Tim just went into a multireality journey to bring Bruce back home and he gets surprised that Batman would come to his aid as soon as he needed? Same for any other character in the Batfamily.

"My god, they came for me" What? Of course they came to save you!

This is the same guy that let Ra's push him off a building being 100% sure that Dick would come to save him cause they were brothers. And that was AFTER all the bickering they had around the Lazarus Pit and Bruce's death.

There is nothing here in this book for him to think they are not by his side.

[Astralabius]

It's baffling that FM is still pretending that Tim doesn't think he has a place in the Batfamily. The scene that he gets surprised that they came to rescue him is so forced. Tim just went into a multireality journey to bring Bruce back home and he gets surprised that Batman would come to his aid as soon as he needed? Same for any other character in the Batfamily.

"My god, they came for me" What? Of course they came to save you!

This is the same guy that let Ra's push him off a building being 100% sure that Dick would come to save him cause they were brothers. And that was AFTER all the bickering they had around the Lazarus Pit and Bruce's death.

There is nothing here in this book for him to think they are not by his side.

Idk, the way a lot of Tim fans act you would think he would get constantly abandoned by the batfamily even if he doesn't.
I'm not suprised to see a writer treat it as if it was a real thing since Tim fans talk about it so much online.

[Drako]

Idk, the way a lot of Tim fans act you would think he would get constantly abandoned by the batfamily even if he doesn't.
I'm not suprised to see a writer treat it as if it was a real thing since Tim fans talk about it so much online.

The only time that could be argued were in the Batman Reborn era and Tim was extremely angst in that time and pushing everyone away. And it was all good a year after.

Currently he is completely fine with Batfamily and they all were supportive of him when he came out, there is no drama here.
Hell, they came to help him find Bernard some issues back in this very book.

[NOCTPHOENIX]

Idk, the way a lot of Tim fans act you would think he would get constantly abandoned by the batfamily even if he doesn't.
I'm not suprised to see a writer treat it as if it was a real thing since Tim fans talk about it so much online.

That's fanon or twitter/tumblr/A03/tiktok Tim "fans"

[NOCTPHOENIX]

It's baffling that FM is still pretending that Tim doesn't think he has a place in the Batfamily. The scene that he gets surprised that they came to rescue him is so forced. Tim just went into a multireality journey to bring Bruce back home and he gets surprised that Batman would come to his aid as soon as he needed? Same for any other character in the Batfamily.

"My god, they came for me" What? Of course they came to save you!

This is the same guy that let Ra's push him off a building being 100% sure that Dick would come to save him cause they were brothers. And that was AFTER all the bickering they had around the Lazarus Pit and Bruce's death.

There is nothing here in this book for him to think they are not by his side.

Yep. Aside from the fact he already learned this in Red Robin and Detective Comics Rebirth, While it worked in Red Robin due to Bruce's death and his belief he was alive and trauma that came with it and in Rebirth due to seeing his future self and the trauma that came with that there is no reason whatosever here why Tim would think that as the Batfamily were shown to be supportive of him and he never had any kind of fallout or push to this mindset. It's why his whole speech in issue 2 of "only belonging on the boat or with Bernard" fell flat. Especially as in Zdarksy run shows he's still close with the family, working closely with Bruce and just had a breakfast with them and organized it. Even though he moved away to have his own space (still don't know why he needed that) he was shown to be far from the loner or guy who does everything alone. He had Darcy as a sidekick, hell in issue 4 he went to Cass and Steph for help, had Dick and Kate helping him in issue 5, and issue 9 shows the family still keep in contact with him and help him. It feels like regression for the sake of it and forced to get "melodramatic Tim :back we never learn why the boat of all places is where he feels welcome or belongs.

[Triniking1234]

It's baffling that FM is still pretending that Tim doesn't think he has a place in the Batfamily. The scene that he gets surprised that they came to rescue him is so forced. Tim just went into a multireality journey to bring Bruce back home and he gets surprised that Batman would come to his aid as soon as he needed? Same for any other character in the Batfamily.

"My god, they came for me" What? Of course they came to save you!

This is the same guy that let Ra's push him off a building being 100% sure that Dick would come to save him cause they were brothers. And that was AFTER all the bickering they had around the Lazarus Pit and Bruce's death.

There is nothing here in this book for him to think they are not by his side.

This is the same guy who got kidnapped in "Robins" and was sure Dick and the others would bail him out.