Tim Drake: Robin, Red Robin Appreciation 2018

[gwhh]

Another boring day in the love life of Tm Drake:

[ReverseReverseFlash]

Godisawesome: I have quickly learned it ignore anything DC says about continuity/chronology. As soon as you make any kind of sense out of the DC Universe they will utterly change the rules. Just make up your own timeline and stick with it. As far as I am concerned, Tim was 13 when he became Robin, was 20 when the Red Robin series started and is now currently 21 and leading the Titans.

Then why bother reading the comics? Utterly NONE of that is in the books or agrees with anything currently going on. Why would Tim suddenly be 21? He wasn't 21 before. He also wasn't 13 when he became Robin. Tim was 15-17 before the reboot, just as he is right now.

The current timeline isn't complicated and is actually a lot more similar to the old DCU's timeline. A lot of you guys have somehow mixed up publishing years with comic years. Tim was only Robin for about three years before the reboot(He became Robin around the time of Knightfall and Death of Superman, which were perpetually three years ago). His name changing is literally nonexistent. He was Batman's sidekick for over a year and was a Robin who called himself "Red Robin" as to not step on Jason's legacy so quickly. It's that simple, it makes sense, and there's literally NOTHING more to it. Anything else is pointless bitching on the part of annoying fans.

I've analyzed the new and old timelines and found that there aren't that many differences, you were just operating on incorrect assumptions before(fanfic, basically) and you took exception to DC taking advantage of their right to contradict your 'head canon'.

[josai21]

The age is the same, but it doesn't work in the whole five year time line. There is no way that all the events that have occurred to Batman, Dick, and the whole bat family could just occur in 5 years. Dick is the pivotal point.

The 'bitching' you speak of is the dislike fans have for vital character arcs being destroyed to accommodate this 5 year time line. To accomodate this timeline, they got rid of so much. The Titans relationships are nonexistent, the sanctity of the Batman-Robin relationship became an internship, character's growth stopped or regressed at the beginning of the N52.

I get that they wanted to make it more accesible to new readers, but as it stands it just doesn't make sense to keep Batman's events the same if it all occured in five years. As much as I hate to say it, if they went with five years they should have started fresh. Bruce, Alfred, and Dick. I love the other characters, more than I love those two actually, but if you're going to do five years...do it right.

[The Conductor]

Then why bother reading the comics? Utterly NONE of that is in the books or agrees with anything currently going on. Why would Tim suddenly be 21? He wasn't 21 before. He also wasn't 13 when he became Robin. Tim was 15-17 before the reboot, just as he is right now.

The current timeline isn't complicated and is actually a lot more similar to the old DCU's timeline. A lot of you guys have somehow mixed up publishing years with comic years. Tim was only Robin for about three years before the reboot(He became Robin around the time of Knightfall and Death of Superman, which were perpetually three years ago). His name changing is literally nonexistent. He was Batman's sidekick for over a year and was a Robin who called himself "Red Robin" as to not step on Jason's legacy so quickly. It's that simple, it makes sense, and there's literally NOTHING more to it. Anything else is pointless bitching on the part of annoying fans.

I've analyzed the new and old timelines and found that there aren't that many differences, you were just operating on incorrect assumptions before(fanfic, basically) and you took exception to DC taking advantage of their right to contradict your 'head canon'.

Do you just enjoy being needlessly aggressive? It's cute.

Why do I read comics? Because I enjoy them, I just don't feel like I need to fellate the editorial team unlike you. I will always and forever stick to the 3-to-1 rule for mainstream comics, because it works and gives events a lot more gravitas. The New 52's timeline (and the New 52 itself) was a barely thought out, poorly implimented cash grab that gives incompitent editors plenty of chances to employ their friends instead of people with talent. Clingly so desperately to what anyone at DC says about continuity is lunacy because they will change their mind in the next three years.

[godisawesome]

It is mostly the lack of previous adventures and nominal lack of development I identify as the problem with New 52 Tim Drake. The Lynx/Golden Dragons/HKPD subplot is better than all of the Teen Titans stories were, with better execution and an intriguing twist, the old rivalry/tutorship of Lady Shiva was a great continuing string throughout Tim's stories, and Tim's new status as a peer of Nightwing with his own subset of supporting characters that crossed over from his old cast to his new one was actually fun to read.

Now, all of that could be brought back into continuity in one or two issues. Of the Three Robins, only Tim received a major overhaul for his previous career, and unfortunately Lobdell did a poor job and created an inferior character context. He did show some improvement, but his one issue origin for Tim (motiveless-Olympian-super-hacker-easily-sliding-into-an-internship-with-some-respect-for-the-position's-previous-holder) pales in comparison to the two major arcs done by Dixon and Wolfman (skilled-young-detective-with-mediocre-fighting-skills-sees-a-need-for-a-Robin-who-requires-training-by-Batman-and-Lady-Shiva), and the resulting discrepancy hurts.

And I'm not that big on the "respect for Jason leads to Red Robin moniker" thing just yet. I think that decision requires some introspection and irony added in with a full Jason vs Tim backstory, or some kind of previous association while Jason was Robin (now there's an idea for the five year timeline; Tim as one of Jason's intelligence assets and friends). The implicit demotion in the new timeline also hurts Tim a little bit; would it hurt too much to have him invoke the same response Dick and Damain had for being Robin, "Batman and Robin will never die"?

And just curious here, how many of you guys think the "always Red Robin" decree is editorial instead of Lobdell himself? Because I feel an awful lot like that.

[josai21]

And just curious here, how many of you guys think the "always Red Robin" decree is editorial instead of Lobdell himself? Because I feel an awful lot like that.

I'm not sure honestly, but I still don't really understand the 'why' of it. It seems there to pointlessly antagonize the fans of Tim...

[godisawesome]

The most logical explanation I have is that it's supposed to quietly shift the paradigm of the Robins by making it so there's "really" only been three as opposed to four, or to try and make him more unique. The problem is that the name is extremely derivative and the removal of his official status as Robin III is a nominal insult to the character's place in comicdom; "Robin" is a pop-culture icon with appearances in all media, while "Red Robin" is much more obscure and immediately requires explanation, but also lacks the "promotion" comparison Nightwing and Red Hood have.

And without the promotion, Tim loses some pride of place, and it emphasizes how he's basically been shoehorned into the archetype of "the Robin on the Titans," which isn't a characterization but a set of tropes and cliches he has to follow. I still say his current costume, with an excess of details, domino mask, gold accoutrements, and splayed-wing look make it the "Disco-Collar Nightwing" suit for Tim. And Lobdell's handling of "romance" in the book feels like an attempt to graft on even more of Nightwing's traits onto Tim; hey, Dick was raped in the 90s because of his sexual magnetism, now Tim has too! And he's a player. Because we all know there was nothing good about Tim being more of a hilariously awkward chick magnet, confirmed virgin, and all around more "safe" teenager than most of his pop-culture peers, right? It's not like it was a unique direction for the character or added humor and tension to his personality or anything.

[josai21]

The most logical explanation I have is that it's supposed to quietly shift the paradigm of the Robins by making it so there's "really" only been three as opposed to four, or to try and make him more unique. The problem is that the name is extremely derivative and the removal of his official status as Robin III is a nominal insult to the character's place in comicdom; "Robin" is a pop-culture icon with appearances in all media, while "Red Robin" is much more obscure and immediately requires explanation, but also lacks the "promotion" comparison Nightwing and Red Hood have.

And without the promotion, Tim loses some pride of place, and it emphasizes how he's basically been shoehorned into the archetype of "the Robin on the Titans," which isn't a characterization but a set of tropes and cliches he has to follow. I still say his current costume, with an excess of details, domino mask, gold accoutrements, and splayed-wing look make it the "Disco-Collar Nightwing" suit for Tim. And Lobdell's handling of "romance" in the book feels like an attempt to graft on even more of Nightwing's traits onto Tim; hey, Dick was raped in the 90s because of his sexual magnetism, now Tim has too! And he's a player. Because we all know there was nothing good about Tim being more of a hilariously awkward chick magnet, confirmed virgin, and all around more "safe" teenager than most of his pop-culture peers, right? It's not like it was a unique direction for the character or added humor and tension to his personality or anything.

^This.

I've heard some rumors flitting about with whispers of some new crisis happening. Like just from editorial decisions. I would be so happy if they retconned the whole N52, but since i doubt that would happen I would love it if we could get a "New Earth" line of comics going. Kinda like what Marvel did with Earth 616 and Ultimate.

[Punisher007]

I don't think that they were DELIBERATELY trying to demean Tim with the whole "he was always Red Robin thing," nor do I think that it was supposed to be a "demotion." I think that it was meant to A. address the fact that Batman apparently went through Robin's like chewing gum in the New 52, and B. Help establish the Tim/Jason friendship that Lobdell is clearly keen on. And I do think that it was an editorial mandate since Lobdell explicitly identified Tim as being a "former Robin" in the first issue of TT, and it was only retconned later.

[godisawesome]

Yeah, I don't see any deliberate spite there at all, and the demotion is more a consequence of the action than anything else. It's just that when Dick's classic origin receives an update only, when Jason's is still largely the same, and when Damian's is largely unchanged in spite of the conflicts that theoretically hurt its probability, Tim being the only one to receive a total overhaul stands out in comparison. And it's just painfully obvious that less time and effort was put into his new origin and that it was crafted to fit the character as he was being written at the time in Teen Titans, with a heftier dose of arrogance and much more resemblance to an Internet troll then to a bookish but polite nerd.

[Jadeb]

Good points, Godisawesome. They stripped Tim of nearly all his key attributes -- his lovable nerdiness, his eternal virginity, his struggles to be a hero, his network of family and Batfamily, his bond with Kon and the Titans, even his name and his reason for becoming Robin -- and turned NuTim into an arrogant overachiever who's more a collection of Gary Stu-isms than relatable protagonist. That he was never Robin just underscores the insult. On its own, I could have lived with it, but it's symptomatic of how one-dimensional and flavorless this great character has become.

[godisawesome]

Is anybody on the Batboard's both a Tim Drake fan and a reader of Future's End? Because I'm curious as to whether I should be interested in that story at all. The overall format and main plot details seem lame to me, but Tim's apparently heavily involved. And I realize it'd be a little surreal of me to have three books all feature Tim Drake, two of them weeklies, and still feel he's underrepresented or being miswritten.

[Dzetoun]

Is anybody on the Batboard's both a Tim Drake fan and a reader of Future's End? Because I'm curious as to whether I should be interested in that story at all. The overall format and main plot details seem lame to me, but Tim's apparently heavily involved. And I realize it'd be a little surreal of me to have three books all feature Tim Drake, two of them weeklies, and still feel he's underrepresented or being miswritten.

Interesting question. I find Tim Drake in Futures End to be an interesting and attractive character, actually. He has turned his back on both the vigilante life and Bruce, but his anger and pain are handled in a mature, believable way. So far, mostly he has only become enraged when a couple of louts made light of Cassie's death, and when he thinks that Terry is a new sidekick that Bruce has taken in for his "meatgrinder." Thing is, actually having a pretty clear personality, and even a healthy romantic relationship, he us hard to relate to the Tim of the rest of the New 52. He doesn't even physically resemble the younger Tim all that much.

[dantefrizzoli]

I have grown up with Tim Drake since his beginning with batman and the scarecrow. Awesome character.

[DurararaFTW]

I don't think that they were DELIBERATELY trying to demean Tim with the whole "he was always Red Robin thing," nor do I think that it was supposed to be a "demotion." I think that it was meant to A. address the fact that Batman apparently went through Robin's like chewing gum in the New 52,

It doesn't address that problem at all. Tim WAS still Batman's sidekick for a while in between Jason's death and Bruce's own death.