In Red Robin #12, Tim is a nice guy, surrounded by friends, who makes logical decisions, and narrates his actions using personal pronouns.  He’s considerate, grateful, and relaxed about relying on others.

The difference between this and the Tim we saw a year ago is so staggering that is almost produces vertigo.  What it does produce is an actual desire to read the book.  Hey look!  A hero who is dedicated, sincere and considers others!  And also flies around having adventures and fighting villains.  It is what I want to read in a comic book.  Who’da thunk?

I do wonder what it is that happened that makes everyone suddenly want to get into Tim Drake’s pants.  Did he have a birthday sometime during the run, because having a teaser for a storyline entirely devoted to getting the hero to impregnate Ras Al Ghul’s daughter doesn’t seem like something DC would do pre-eighteen.

I have to admit, I hope that they follow that storyline up, though.  And I hope they play it for laughs.

Oh, Ras, and you thought Bruce Wayne was a – well, yes, a tough nut to crack.  Just wait until you try enticing Tim Drake.  This is a guy whose last voluntary kiss was in a dank cave, surrounded by the corpses of clones of his murdered best friend.  You will have an easier time getting pandas to mate.

(Anyone know why Ras has given up on having a son himself?  He’s a good-looking, no-shirt-wearing millionaire.  It can’t be hard for him to find a woman.  And he has a lot of time.  If he spent as much time on dating sites as he did on trying to get Bruce to have sex with his daughter, he’d have an army of sons by now.)

Spoilers for the latest issue of Red Robin.

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Alert 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.

Yes, hair color.

Is it me or is comics over-loaded with redheads, blonds, and . . . there’s no noun for black-haired people?

The detective on Batgirl, Nick Gage (or as I christened him Hunter B.B.Q. Picklejaropener), has black hair and the standard superhero body (tall, football-player shoulders, large muscles, and a jaw so square that you could pack a dozen of them evenly in a cardboard box).

He also has black hair, in a town that, now that Tim Drake has grown out of his skinny-kid phase, is overloaded with square-jawed, muscled, tall, broad-shouldered, black -haired men. 

Of course you could argue that any one of those characteristics is overdone in comics.  But I have to wonder about the hair.  It’s a pretty common hair color.  Why do comics artists almost never make characters brunettes?

Once again – a cut up top for Red Robin #1 spoilers.

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