New Hope for Red Robin?
January 8th, 2010 by Esther Inglis-Arkell | Tags: DC comics, tim drakeAlert reader Nathan Valle sent me an email. A cunning gentleman, Valle opened the email with a link to this entry, knowing that I can’t resist reading my own work. In the linked piece (on the off chance that you, the reader, don’t want to read my opinion all over again), I bemoan the fact that Tim has become grim, gritty, boring, and completely unrecognizable to long-time fans.
It seems, though, that a change has come over Tim Drake. There’s a new love interest, who both knows that Tim Drake is Robin and seems to be okay with it. That cuts out a lot of the usual superhero love story cliches, in which a superhero keeps trying to make the relationship work while keeping the dominant facet of his or her life under wraps and therefore failing at both crime-fighting and love.
Tim also seems to be more cerebral. The exact quote was, “he’s stopped acting like a crazy man and actually using his head.” Good news, indeed.
And so Valle concludes, “So essentially this is my “there are no more sharks in the beach” “all clear” message, not a two fisted urging that you come back since Yost did decide to go this route in the first place and that may be enough for most to stay away, but I personally have hope for the future now.”
We shall see, sir. We shall see. I’m picking up Red Robin next week, and if it’s still all grim, I am calling you a liar to your face! On the internet!
Any readers who wish to side with this gentleman can comment below.
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It’s really weird to see someone write with clarity, intelligence and passion about characters who don’t deserve it.
I know that sounds dismissive, but it’s meant to be – DC’s legacy/teen character books are a creative mess, and the company is pathologically unwilling to weather low sales to push potential breakouts like Blue Beetle. I’m utterly incapable of investing in DC’s books at the minute, though I’ll admit that Grant Morrison’s B&R got me reading Batman books again. Never say never, I guess.
I don’t think DC can be faulted for Blue Beetle. They allowed that book to continue far longer than most books would with that level of sales. The sales had been on a downward slope for a long time, and if it was still ongoing, it probably would be selling like 5000 copies a month. I don’t think Blue Beetle would have ever reached a point where it was selling amazingly well, and letting the book continue for so long even though it wasn’t remotely paying off for them is one of the few things they’ve done solely with the relatively few fans in mind in the past few years.
It’s really a shame that DC can’t get their teen books together, though. I don’t know if Teen Titans has become readable any time recently, since it reached such a low nadir that I haven’t even bothered to read scans_daily entries about it. And it’s especially a shame that fairly enjoyable characters like Blue Beetle and Superboy end up being shoved into the book to languish in filth.
they also cancelled Blue Beetle just before his character was set to appear on the Brave and the Bold.
Wait someone actually read one of my emails? … This is a new one.
“We shall see, sir. We shall see. I’m picking up Red Robin next week, and if it’s still all grim, I am calling you a liar to your face! On the internet!”
/glances at his jar of razor blades. I’m ready for this outcome.
But in all seriousness if Yost lets me down I’ll be the first to admit it, but after the way his 2nd arc has developed and the ungrimming of Tim’s internal monologue I have a glimmer of hope.
@AlLoggins: I’ve explained it already. I share a toothbrush with my severely autistic brother and now I have a man crush on Geoff Johns
also to clarify, he does still act the same way throughout most of the first arc, it’s through the 2nd he slowly starts acting less rabid.
Possibly they’re just going to the Angst Well too often and need to take their teens in a different direction other than fixating on death and “the good old days” – it’s amazing how many teenage narratives read like a dude’s mid-life crisis. If nothing else, surely DC should go the non-angst route now and then if only to try something other than an approach that’s failed them over and over for the past 10 years?
For instance, if they brought back Tim’s skateboard (the RedBoard!), and he spent all his time solving crimes in a manner requiring that he utilise said skateboard, like using it to catch up with rollerblading werewolves so he could ninja them in the face, and changed the name of the book and character to RAD Robin, I’d buy the fuck out of that comic like you wouldn’t believe.
I like it, but I’ve liked it from the beginning and didn’t have the problem with Tim’s character some people seemed to have. I don’t know whether I’d call Tam a love interest at this point as Tim hasn’t shown any interest in her that way, nor her in him, exactly. But she’s a prominent female character who could go that way and I like her.
Oh, and also given who Tam is she could make for an interesting ally for the family.